94: Exclusive Journal Excerpts From My Time As a Workaholic

If you’ve ever worn your workaholism as a badge of honor, felt stuck in a high-paying job you should love but secretly resent, or let the fear of change hold you back, this episode will hit close to home.

For the first time, I’m reading never-before-shared entries from my personal journal—written during the height of my corporate burnout and workaholic phase. These raw reflections reveal what it really felt like to be successful on paper… yet unfulfilled, exhausted, and afraid to admit I wanted out.

You'll hear:

✅ The fears that held me hostage (like “What if we end up poor?”)
✅ The moment I realized I could walk away—and the options I had
✅ Why chasing the corporate carrot left me more empty than accomplished
✅How I began decoding the signs it was time to pivot
✅The power of planning your exit before you hit rock bottom

If you’ve been wrestling with your own “Is this all there is?” moment, let this episode remind you: You’re not crazy. You’re not alone. And yes—you can make a change.

Resources shared during the episode: 

• Career Compass
• Ep. 4: How to Read Signs from the Universe
• Empowered Exit™ call 
  
  

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Transcript

Karin Freeland: 0:40

Welcome to Rock Your Reinvention, where I help high-achieving career women like you get unstuck, make your corporate exit strategy, and successfully transition to your next chapter. Hi, I'm your host, Karin Freeland, a certified life coach and corporate exit strategist. Whether you want to start a business, become a speaker, or something else, I'm here to give you the tools and strategies to shift your mindset, build your confidence, and take bold actions so you can rock your reinvention. Ready? Let's go. Well, I have a really special episode for you today, unlike anything I've recorded before. So if you're new here, I don't want you to think every episode is like this. And if you're back, thank you for being here. Don't worry, I'm not changing the format of my show. Today, I wanted to share some real life thoughts from when I was in corporate trying to decide what to do next with my life and career. I've been out of corporate now for five years, and so sometimes it's hard to remember the exact thoughts I had or put myself back in that place of turmoil. And let me tell you, it really was a season of struggle for my soul. I've shared a lot of these thoughts in my book, Grab Life by the Dreams, but I wanted to highlight some new and never before shared excerpts from my journal today. And my hope is that you will see that you are not alone. This is a normal par for the course type of experience when you're going through a career pivot, but that there is something that you can do about it. And I'm going to sort of read a couple of excerpts and then give you my thoughts on them. Give you another excerpt and read some thoughts on it. And so obviously you're going to have your own thoughts and ideas that come up as well, but at least that'll give you a little bit of context. So, I'm not just going to read my journal and be like, good luck figuring out what that meant. If we're ready, we are going to go back to May 1st of 2017. I was working for a tech company had just come out of my chief of staff role. And after that wonderful carrot was yet moved again, I was forced back into middle management. I decided that I was going to take a week off of work for a staycation and told everyone that I was going to be in the Bahamas with no service so that I could really see what it would be like if I quit my job and became a stay at home mom. That was my original thought was I'm going to leave this corporate lifestyle and I'm going to become a stay at home mom. And if you know me, you might be laughing because that does sound like a pretty stark change, but I was at such a loss for what else I would even do that that was like the only thing I could think of at the time. Today might be the first day of the rest of my life. Part of me is annoyed at using the word might, but I'm trying to remove the pressure I put on myself. I might make a career move, I might not. I may choose to be a stay-at-home mom, I might not. I may choose to reprioritize my life and focus on friends, family, and hobbies, I might not. But I do at least hope that I can accomplish the latter. Where do I start? I'm 36 years old. Is this it? Is this my life? I mean, it's great. I make great money, have a great husband, have two healthy, great kids, live in a decent house with two cars, our dog Peanut, and have lots of stuff. So why am I feeling so empty? Why do I feel like I'm missing out on my life's purpose? I don't know. but I'm hoping to accomplish finding that out this week. At first, I plan to just read books, work, play mom, and do other chores around the house. Maybe look for a job, but only to prove that there isn't anything else out there for me. At my Lean in Circle this week, I shared my plans to take a week off for myself. And one of the women made a comment. I want to hear what you did, how you stayed focused on you during that time. I'd end up with a color coded, organized closet. Wow. Now I'm accountable to these other women for how I spend my time this week. I don't feel pressure around that, but I do feel a sense of responsibility to them and to myself to use the time wisely and stay focused. I want to spend some time exploring what makes me happy. What scares me about leaving my job? What scares me about being a stay at home mom? What am I passionate about? What don't I like or do I like about work? I'm not sure it has to be all or nothing. At the great advice of my previous career coach, I can accept things as they are, change them to make things more comfortable or leave and do something totally different. Okay. So let me walk you through those two little segments that I chose to share here. There's a few things I want to call out. Just because you have a good life on paper doesn't mean you can't be unhappy. Just because others would kill to have what you have doesn't mean you're ungrateful. You can be grateful and be unfulfilled, right? This really isn't a gratitude thing. You can be grateful for your life and still want a change. I also want to call out the importance of accountability, right? Because this passage showed that by having others to report back to, I was able to be more focused and follow through on the plans for that week. And I like to think of this as my discovery phase. This is really where I was like, nope, I'm going to dig in and figure out what makes me tick. What do I really want out of life? And the third thing I think this highlights is options. We always have options. Now we may not like all of the options, but we still have them. And I knew that I could accept things as they were, which meant I'd still be miserable, but it was a choice. I could make things more comfortable, like setting boundaries, hiring help, improving my life outside of work, or I could leave. I could start a business. I could be a stay-at-home mom. I could go to a nonprofit and do something a little more heart-centered, whatever. I have that option. And for the first time, I started to see that I could make a change. So what are your options? Have you thought all of them through? Like even the ones that you're like, oh my gosh, that's crazy. I would never buy a franchise or like I would never really start a dog rescue. whatever, write those things down. And I highly recommend downloading my career compass. It's a free guide on my website. If you haven't done this yet, it is going to help you with this exact step, really thinking through all the possibilities and then weighing them against your values and the other criteria that you identify. So you can go to karinfreeland.com/ career- compass right now and get yourself a copy of that free e-guide, the career compass. Now I'm going to go on to my next two excerpts that I want to share with you. And this is during the same week. And I say, just as I was set on leaving corporate, something changed. My new marketing leader said he wanted me to report directly to him. Oh no, here we go again. Another carrot, another opportunity for me to tell myself, this might be it. You might get director and make $ 300 to $500,000 a year. That would change our lives. Mine, my husband's, our boys, but is it worth it? It's so hard for me to walk away from that. Might sound familiar, but I've been looking for signs and I think I might be seeing them. Any coincidence that Jabberwocky's performance in Vegas was about being the walking dead, going through life, just doing the motions, but not really enjoying it? Not dancing and really feeling the movement? I feel like I was meant to see that show, to have the courage to go alone in a city I'd never been in before. It was worth every penny. This morning, I saw Gabourey Sidibe on the news talking about her new book. Should I finish my memoir? I mean, why not? I worked for someone last year who wrote a book. Surely he'd give me some pointers or advice. What other signs have I been missing? Who knows? Okay, so for high achieving women, we always seem to be chasing the carrot that our employer is dangling in front of us. And I was no exception. But there is a clue here, right? Because I was already asking the question, is it worth it if this was something that I wanted truly deep within my core if this was aligned to my purpose then there wouldn't be a question here right I would just have been continuing to climb the ladder I would have known like nope this is great I'm super pumped about this and everything would have been roses do you see that right I'd be pushing forward full steam ahead like I do now as a coach, right? As a life coach, I mean, I'll stop at nothing to change women's lives. It's inherent, I'm aligned. There's no question if this is for me. So if you are in a season of questioning it, there's a good indication, there's a reason, and this needs to be explored further. Now, I also talked about signs. And we overlook this so much because we want to feed ourselves a specific narrative. I wanted to force myself to stay in corporate for the good of my family. And I'm using air quotes here. So I used to ignore a lot of the signs that I was given. Eventually, I learned to read them and could no longer ignore them. And to others, some of these occurrences are They wouldn't mean anything, right? But to me, they did. So we have to always, usually we have to decode these signs ourselves, right? It's not something someone else can point out. And I laugh when I say like, oh, for the good of the family, because really what was good about me being miserable? Nothing, right? It really wasn't for the good of my family, but that's what I had tricked myself into thinking, right? And if you want more support on recognizing the signs, then I highly recommend you go listen to episode four of Rock Your Reinvention, How to Read Signs from the Universe. And I know that I'm sharing a lot of different resources in this episode, which generally is like against the podcasting rules. You know, you're supposed to have one call to action, but every single one, like whoever's listening to this, you are going to have a different issue than maybe someone else, right? So maybe you need something with signs or maybe you need the career compass. And so I want to be able to point you to the right place. So don't feel like you have to go do all the things that I'm going to share today. Just pick the one that is most relevant for you right now. Okay, so let's keep going in the journal. I'm going to read excerpt five. Now, I read the book by Megyn Kelly, Settle for More, and you can think whatever you want about Megyn Kelly, but I was given this book and I really wanted to dig in and see how she made her career pivot. When Megyn recalled her long, exhausting days in law, wishing she would get in an accident, nothing serious, just enough to take her out for a week or two, that really resonated. It's so easy to read that and think that's crazy. Why would anyone wish that upon themselves? Why would anyone want to get hurt? But the truth is I've had that thought more than once. And of course, in reality, I do not wish for anything bad to happen, but it is a sign, a gauge that I'm not in the right place. During my year as chief of staff, I had that thought frequently. And then again, when I was working on the show for Vegas, one of our trade shows, surrounded by mean girls and feeling like no matter what, it's never good enough. All I wanted was to be out of pocket for a few weeks. The second thing that stood out was making a plan. When she realized it was time to move on, she made a plan. I would like to have something similar and documented. a plan for whatever I choose, even if stay-at-home mom. I think if I'm still at this company and in my same role at the end of 2017, I will have failed myself. I cannot let that happen. And the third thing that stood out were hobbies. She found a hobby and met someone in news. Danny has recommended this to me several times. And I need to listen. I decided to take a hip hop yoga class with my cousin in New York City. I had a great time and want to commit to a class monthly. I'd like to consider dancing again too. Okay. So I hope this helped normalize any thoughts you might be having. Because if you're like me, I felt crazy. I was like, I must be the only one who is thinking of running her car into a tray. And again, I don't want to die. I just want to be in the hospital for a few weeks. And so obviously, if you're having serious thoughts about hurting yourself or someone else, please, please, please, please, please seek professional help. I am not a therapist. I am not a psychologist. I cannot offer support in that area. I personally was never in danger. It's never anything that I was going to go through with it. It wasn't like I wanted to do it. I was just like, oh man, wouldn't that be great to just like get in an accident, right? And not have to go to work for a couple of weeks. And these were some pretty dark thoughts if you think about it. So that should have been setting off some alarm bells for me that, hey, something here is wrong. But I kept pushing them down because they were inconvenient and you may be doing the same thing. I hope that we can like normalize this, but then also like not stay there, right? We don't wanna stay in that place. And so I love how this idea of making a plan came to fruition, right? Because exits don't happen overnight. Change does not happen in an instant. You have to make a plan to transition no matter what you're transitioning to, right? Even people who are retiring shouldn't just like quit work one day and be like, okay, so I'm retired, now what? Right, like you need a plan for how you are gonna go from the corporate world to retirement. You need a plan for how you're gonna change jobs, change industries, go start a business, write a book, become a speaker, right? Whatever it is the thing that you wanna go do. Now you can DIY this, of course, but as you heard, I had a coach too, right? And I was kind of leveraging some of that guidance and advice that he had given me. And I wasn't too far off at this point either from getting my next coach. And that's what I get to do now every day. I love it. I get to help women make their career pivot plans because it makes it so much more tangible. When you have a plan, everything starts to feel possible. And that's exciting. That's when the real change happens. So whether you get help or support from someone like myself, or you decide to DIY it, there has to be a plan. That's a non-negotiable. Now, the other thing I mentioned here, which you just heard was around hobbies. And if you've read Grab Life by the Dreams, you know that there is an entire chapter talking about rekindling your hobbies. And you can see why that's so valuable. It makes us a whole person. It gives us pleasure outside of our careers. It deepens our identity. It feeds our soul. And for the burnt out corporate professional, it's a start to healing the burnout. This relaxation and release is so important for your mental and physical well-being. And even if your hobby isn't physical, like mine was hip hop yoga, right? you know, you could be doing something like tennis or whatever, but if you're doing something that's not quite so physical, like scrapbooking or cross stitch or whatever else that might be more of a sitting hobby, reading, whatever, you can still reap actual physical benefits from it, right? Because it's bringing you joy. You're going to be happier. And we know the happier people are usually healthier, right? Like those benefits, right? translate, right? When you start to reduce some of the stress, less cortisol in the body, yada, yada. There's lots of reasons why we need hobbies and we need rest and relaxation in our lives. So you don't want to skip this step when you're crafting a move or a reinvention. The other thing that you might not have heard, it might not have stood out for you, is that when in that book, Megan went and got a hobby. She met someone who was in the news and she wanted to get into the news, right? And so then she had an in. So you never know who you're going to meet when you're doing a hobby, your next boss, your next client, the next person who's going to open a door for you or make an intro. And so that's another beautiful reason to adopt a hobby in your life. Okay, so during the third day of my week off from work, I wrote the following answers to the journal questions that I said I wanted to explore on day one. So let me jump ahead to the sixth excerpt that I wanted to share with you. What scares me about being a stay-at-home mom? That I'll get bored. That I'm wasting my potential. Will be poor. We won't have money to enjoy our time off, like going to the circus or baseball games. My husband will realize he doesn't want the pressure of being a breadwinner. He'll be annoyed I'm home all the time. He'll work overtime to make up the financial gap, and I'll be lonely. I'll be bad at it. I can't cook, and I'm not the best at cleaning. That I won't be able to get back into the workforce when I'm ready. I'll lose my sense of self-worth and purpose. I'll be letting others down. I don't put a lot of emphasis on this, but there is a little voice here. I won't have money for me to have a hobby, so I'll lose my sense of self. Danny's job isn't very secure. If he's laid off or injured, we'd be in financial trouble. Okay, he's an electrician, by the way. So, you know, you get injured. Okay. So then I answered the question, what excites me about being a stay-at-home mom? The lack of pressure and stress from work. Being fully present in the lives of my children. Working on my domestic abilities. Connecting with other moms that don't work. Not sending my kids to before and after care. Being around for their events, sports, or school activities. Having time for just me. Spending more time with Peanut. That was our dog. Okay, so... It's funny for me now to see how, and I hate to use this word, but really, truly, how ridiculous some of these fears were. Worrying we'd be poor, please, I would never let that happen. I would go back to corporate in a heartbeat before it was even close to a reality that we didn't have food on the table or something. And remember, this isn't always a bad thing. Sometimes we... make a change and we think it's very black or white right and it doesn't need to be right and i've had clients say well once I leave corporate there's no way i'm going back and if that's fuels you and it's like okay now i'm going to jump into my business and this is really going to fuel me because i know i never want to go back then that's great you can hold on to that thought if it's helpful but for a lot of my clients it's actually harmful because it then makes the stakes so high, like it's, this is it. And once I make this decision, I can never go back. But the reality is you can always go back, right? And there will always be a place for you in the workforce. What I couldn't imagine in those moments when I was journaling all that in back in 2017 was all the ways I could occupy myself. Like how I've been teaching myself to swing trade the stock market or how I volunteer for a lot of my time. And no, I'm not a stay-at-home mom, but I don't work a 40-hour week as a coach. I have a lot of downtime, and I get to explore and learn a lot about myself with other activities that I enjoy. But at that time, when I was in corporate, boredom felt like a real possibility because I had no time to explore other things outside of work, so I really didn't know what I would do with myself. And in terms of what excites me, you know, a lot was missing from this list because, again, I couldn't really fathom what it would be like until I got into a schedule with more flexibility. I mean, I do like a coffee catch up or meeting with someone almost every single week. Right. So I have a ton of interaction. I never got to do that stuff when I was in corporate. So just know that even though you can answer a lot of these questions in your journal, and I encourage you to do that, you do not have the full purview, right? Like you have a limited view of what life could really be like if you made a career change, especially if you're making one outside of that corporate lifestyle.

Karin Freeland: 23:50

All right, let's jump forward to excerpt seven. And this was from my very last book. day on my week off. Okay. Given all my soul searching and internal work for this week, I've come to the following conclusions and affirmations. I must take time for myself. I must prioritize my family over work. I'm not replaceable to them. I must use my resources to make our lives easier. I must be happy with my current job and status, but be open to signs and new opportunities. Shift focus from what I don't have, the director title and pay, to what I do have, a great job that is building my resume and credibility in creative marketing. I must find and make time for my hobbies, dance, hip hop, yoga, et cetera. I must be involved in the community to have a deeper connection. Having a week off was a wonderful gift to myself and my team and my family. I'm hoping that with more care and feeding of my soul, I can cultivate a purposeful life for me and my family and a great work environment for those I interact with. It would be challenging to be a stay-at-home mom right now. We're so accustomed to a great lifestyle that I'm not ready to give that up just yet. However, I reserve the right to change my mind at any time. This has been a very productive week and I feel proud of what I've accomplished. I'm going to try to make journaling a more regular practice. It's been a great way to capture and sort through my feelings. Now I'm going to bump you forward three months. This is July 29th, 2017, right? I've just gone, I went back to work. After all of this, I realized, nope, I'm going to hire someone to help me out with the kids at home. I brought in their daycare lady, and I used my resources to make things easier, right? So if you go back to those initial options that I shared from that first excerpt, I can stay where I am and just accept things. I can make things more comfortable, right? So make some tweaks and adjustments to my life, or I can leave and go do something completely different. And so I, at this point, decide to take the second option. Let me make things more comfortable for So here we are now, just three months later, July 1st, 29, 2017. As usual, life has gotten in the way of me journaling more regularly. On the following page is a conversation I had with a woman at White House Black Market. To be honest, she basically talked me out of going into the fashion industry. So many retailers are struggling and it's a women-dominated field, so lots of cattiness and emotions. On the bright side, I had three recruiters reach out to me in the past month. I'm excited to say that one of those opportunities progressed and I've accepted a new role in marketing at an energy company. It's exciting and terrifying all at the same time. I'm ready for a new challenge and to learn a new industry. Can't say energy was exactly what I had in mind, but it has given me something to talk to my dad about. He was really helpful in giving me guidance on my presentation for my final interview. It's so interesting how I wrote down, if I'm still at that tech company and in my same role at the end of 2017, I will have failed myself. And here I am only three months later with a new opportunity that I didn't even go looking for, making more money, and managing fewer people. The power of God and the power of putting positive thoughts into the universe is strong and real. I now need to dig deep, tap into my self-confidence as I take the steps toward my new career. I know I can do this job and do it well. Till next time. And you might be thinking, but Karin. Your show is all about leaving corporate. Don't worry, we're getting there. I don't want to foreshadow or give away too much, but sometimes we have to try something different before we know if it's the right fit or not. So initially, I was not ready to leave corporate. but I was ready to leave the toxic company that I had been working for to see if the grass was greener somewhere else. And there's nothing wrong with that. Some of you may make that pivot and you may realize, you know what, actually it was the company. It was the people. It was that specific environment that I was in. And actually I'm very happy to be doing this somewhere else. We also see here the importance of making declarations and having deadlines that we can have a focus on, right, to get things to progress. If I hadn't written in my journal that I would have failed myself if I wasn't out of that company by a specific time, then maybe I wouldn't have been so fueled to make the change. Maybe my subconscious would have held me back or self-sabotaged me. But because my brain knew I was serious and I had declared it, it got on board, which is really important. Okay, so the last excerpt that I want to share with you today is from July 10th, 2018, just about a year later into my new role at the energy company. So here we are again. Back in the depths of soul-sucking corporate America, wishing I was doing anything other than working. Laughing at my entry from 2017 when I was starting at the energy company, I know I can do this job and do it well. Ha! Turns out I can't and I'm not. I don't know how I feel about that. On one hand, super depressing. I've let myself down, my team down, my boss down. On the other hand, I don't really give a shit. Does it really matter how many MQLs I generate? Will my family like me more? Will I be a better person? Will I get into heaven? No, none of this actually matters. Maybe that's why I'm so disengaged. Or maybe I'm just giving up on myself because I didn't perform. I don't really know. I want to walk, but how irresponsible would that be? Danny has this really great life mission, that's my husband, to raise our boys to be productive members of society and make sure they are better off than we are. I think that's really nice and that drives him. I don't feel like I have a life mission. I don't know what drives me. And that makes me feel sad. I feel stuck. I know I have the power to make a change, but I'm scared. Fear is preventing me from doing something else. I just applied for a new job at another company for Head of Americas, and of course it's more pay and work and a longer commute, as if any of that would somehow make me happier. But that's what I do. I just bury myself deeper and deeper. Buy a Benz, get stuck in corporate America. I did it on purpose, but now I want to leave more than ever. Okay, you hear me fighting with what I know deep down to be true. I want to walk. I wanted to leave corporate so bad, but kept finding reasons to stay. Oh, that would be irresponsible, right? Here we go back to this again. And actually staying and being miserable and taking it out on my family was irresponsible. That was not the example that I wanted to be setting for my kids. I also want to point out that importance of having a life mission. If you have not crafted this for yourself yet, now is the time because this will help shape your actions and decisions going forward. And it becomes a really great filter to see if you're in alignment with your mission, right? When you're making decisions or you're making pivots, you can always come back to this life mission. You can think of it like an anchor or a grounding point that helps keep you attached to yourself. So if you get too far off track, right, you always have something to come back to. And what else is interesting is how I called out fear. You know, and I wish in the moment that I'd had the wherewithal to really name it. Like what specifically was I afraid of? Because without labeling it, I couldn't address it. And the same is true for you. If you're being vague in your thoughts, I wanna encourage you to go deeper, to peel back the layers of the onion, to get to the core of your fears, because then you can actually address them. And lastly, don't do what I did. It's very common, but don't do it. Don't bury yourself deeper into the problem. It just makes it harder to leave. Every time I see someone post on LinkedIn that they just got promoted or they made more money, I'm like, I'm so sorry, because now it's going to be so much harder for you to take off the golden handcuffs. I mean, congrats, but not really. This is going to kill you in the long run, right? Unless you're being really smart and intentional with your money and you're saving like crazy. So that you have the option, like I did eventually to pivot, if you're just making more money and then therefore spending more, not saving, going into debt, all those things, like you're just shooting yourself in the foot because you're never gonna be able to break out. Now, never say never, right? But it's gonna be harder and harder to break out. So the other thing here that's really critical is self-awareness, right? Because you might be operating from your subconscious and doing things that are in direct competition with what you really want. I don't want to be in corporate, but I'm buying a Benz to trap myself there. I don't want to be in corporate, but I'm taking out a second mortgage. What are you doing? We're supposed to be making this easier for us to leave, which going back to my earlier point is why you need a plan, because then you will say, oh, this does not align with my plan. I'm not going to spend and that money. So this is where I'm going to leave you today. You obviously know that I eventually had the courage to make a pivot out of corporate, to publish two books, to start this podcast and really design and live my best life. But maybe you didn't know that I had some of the same concerns that you did, or at least similar ones. Maybe you didn't realize how much I struggled and how it took me over three years to make a change. And I don't want you to wait that long. Life is too short. I want you to take action now. So keep listening for how to book an empowered exit call with me to discuss your career pivot and make a plan that aligns with your timeline. I hope to see you on a call real soon.