What to do if you are feeling burned out

Feeling burnt out? Looking to sit down with a cookie and let the world know that you are not interested in doing whatever it is that you're expected to do? You are not alone, but it can feel pretty lonely when you are running your own business (that thing you always wanted to do). Maybe you don't run your own business but you are in your dream job, only it's starting to feel like a nightmare, and like a hamster on a wheel, you aren't even sure what stopping would look like. If crappy advice like, "do more yoga" or "try meditation" is all you're hearing from your therapist, then listen up. I've been there, so let's talk about it.

Heads Up! This episode was originally released on YouTube September 27th, 2024

To watch the video visit Get Real Rae

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Music: One Fine Day by Keep Calm Podcast

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I just want to sleep in and eat cookies on a beach somewhere where I am 10 pounds lighter and looking absolutely fabulous while being absolutely wealthy. Oh, I don't want to think about bills and I don't want to have to do everything myself. I don't want to have to get back to all the clients and go over the books and schedule new appointments and find new clients and keep business going. Oh my goodness, and come up with really cool ideas so that we have a really good business. I'm tired, tired, tired, tired, tired, tired. Hello, this is Rae with Get Real Rae, a place and space for life and business tips from this creative soul to hopefully inspire you on your journey, or at the very least, provide you with some laughs. And so let's get real. Craving real advice, tired of feeling like every other small business owner or solopreneur is raking in the dough while you just seem to be raking, secretly looking for a reminder that starting your own business is not as glamorous as others make it look. Whether you're looking to change the game in your relationships at home or at the workplace, you've come to the right place. My name is Rae. I went from corporate America to running my own small business to becoming a solopreneur. I'm a professional actor and dare we say a professional busybody because this body is about to be busy all up in your bins. So let's get real. Okay, I kind of even hate to utter the word burnout, but yeah, I don't know. I kind of feel like how could burnout even be a thing? I mean, didn't people go to work and just suck it up? You know, you look at those old TV shows like Oh and the Family or whatever. And it wasn't that grownups were coming home from work super happy all the time. There was a reason why, you know, the male figures in these shows were often grumpy. Life is hard and work is hard. Who says work has to be fun? I know that's the trend right now is work should be fun. Work should be something you enjoy. And that doesn't go just for work, by the way. Everything should be fun and something you enjoy. Okay, so sex used to just be about burying children. And now that's got to be fun and something you enjoy. And if you don't enjoy it all the time, shame on you. What's wrong with you? And food. Food used to be something we consumed kind of to fuel our bodies so that we can go hunt some more food or bear children or not die. Keep the species going. But now food has just got to be some like crazy life changing experience as well. It's got to be colorful or unique or spicy or adventurous. I'm like, it's just food. Can I just eat it? Some of the food I make you guys, it is ugly. Okay, some of it doesn't taste good. But I'm just like, I made it. I'm going to eat it because I got to feel my body. It don't taste good. And well, I won't make it like that the next time. Like, come on. Okay, so I am. I kind of went on a tangent. What's my point? What is her point? Okay, so my point is, yes, business is hard. And whether you're working for someone else or you're working for yourself, it's just hard. It is. It's going to be that way. And I don't even know if it should always be pleasurable. Actually, I don't believe it should always be pleasurable. I don't think it should be as hard as I'm making it right now. And there's one key, as hard as I'm making it. So I've been listening to a lot of podcasts lately. I've been binging Roblo's Literally. You're listening to Literally with Roblo. I'm like, how do you even stumble on this? It's so random. It isn't until he starts listing the movies that he's been. I'm like, oh, yeah, I know that movie. But I'm a fan of the Conan O 'Brien podcast. I've been a long time fan of Conan O'Brien. Recently discovered his podcast. I started running out of good audiobooks, you guys. I know there are tons of good audiobooks out there. I was hitting bad audiobook after audiobook on these road trips. So I gotta find something else. This is not happening. This narrator's voice is annoying me. And so I stumbled upon these podcasts. I'm like, oh, I like Conan O'Brien. Let's me listen to the Team Coco. I was like, oh, this is really funny. And somehow in the things of being suggested under the Team Coco podcast channel, there is Literally with Roblo. And he interviews a bunch of celebrities. And non-celebrities as well. Like just people known for doing something magical in life. And so it's been interesting to listen to a lot of these actors who have made ridiculous amounts of money over the years. Talk about, and there's a few musicians too. But just listening to them talk about going from struggling artists to successful artists. Some of these individuals have had various ups and downs in their careers. And it's a reminder for me as someone who is in the creative fields that even though what we see in the press and on social media is the highlights of someone's life. That life isn't life. Real life isn't just the real highlights. Like there are crummy, crummy times. And in addition to that reminder of there are crummy times, there's also that reminder of you got to keep trying. If it's what you want to do, if it's what you really want to do, then you keep trying. And why is it that you really want to do it? And that's huge for me. So another birthday has passed. Cry, cry, cry. And I've reached an age that has always been just a really big marker for me. I've said to myself, well, it's okay that my career is not where I want to be right now because I'm not quite at that number that I set. And I know once I hit that number, everything's going to be, everything will fall into place. Like by that number, my career will be where I want it to be. I'll be a rock star in my career. My business will be booming. I will have paid off all my debt, or at least in the process of paying off all my debt. And life is good. Life is good! Isn't that sound good? So yeah, I just had this goal. And I have to say, as silly as this goal sounds, I'm the one who created the number. It's super silly, but it helped me chug through the bad times. It helped me get by. When I was in high school, I hated high school. I know people were like, oh, high school was so great. I can't wait for my high school year. I'm like, really? My high school was garbage. I hated it. I hated letting most of my friends back into high school. And that's not news to them. They were just like, hmm, okay, Ray's doing that thing again. Oh, well, you know. And what did I hate about my high school so much? I wasn't really bullied, per se. I didn't like that people I'd known and loved for a long time, they were going through their feelings, right? They were going through their, you know, teen changes. But I didn't like that some people, actually, to be fair, some people that I did not know very well, but they meant a lot to other people that I knew, were being just negative. Not negative, not negative. They were just being jerks. They were being mean. That's the word. They were being mean to some other friends of ours who clearly had different developmental processes, or I guess I should say developmental delays. You know, when we were in middle school, no one really kind of like noticed or whatever. And then in high school, it's kind of like, oh, wait, you're still behaving like we were in middle school. We're in high school now. Like, we're all older and don't we think about things differently now? You know, these friends, they were just like, oh, no, let's, I still want to, you know, talk cartoons or wear cartoon t-shirts. And, you know, everyone else is exploring with makeup and talking about boyfriends. And all these things are fine. But my thing was like, how are we all sitting together at lunch, but y'all turning your back to these other two people? That don't make any sense to me. Or not even talking to them. Or when they talk to you, you don't talk back. Or you seem embarrassed to be around. That's just like garbage. So I was like, yo, I ain't got time for this. And I think, I'm wondering if like those two girls wound up just deciding to go sit somewhere else. All I know is that I just stopped sitting with my friends, my friends. And I went to go sit with these other friends. And it felt better to me because they were just being who they are. They were being honest. And I liked that. And I found myself in this high school culture, not just with my friends, okay? Where I felt like there were a lot of people around who either weren't being honest or their honesty was, we don't need to talk to you, Black girl. Right? And I was definitely in the, I was a minority in the minority at my school. At one point, another minority group came in and exploded on the scene. And it was cool, but it was kind of like, okay, it was cool. Okay. I didn't have a problem with having other minorities at school. I was like, yay, more friends, more faces. Love it. Just because I'm tired of these people that I've been seeing since middle school that are just shady. But they were like wannabe gangs happening or something. Were they wannabe? No, I guess they didn't wanna be. I don't know. Maybe not wannabe gangs. Just like cliques. Okay. Yeah. Gangs is the wrong term. Cliques. So there were all of a sudden all these cliques. And I'm like, no, no. Didn't our like movies of our youth teach us that cliques are bad? Like, no, no cliques. And so I didn't have time with the cliques. Like you're gonna be with this clique or that clique. And then, you know, I was just like, oh, I can't, I ain't got time for this. Bye. Bye. I'm gonna go sit by myself. Or I'm gonna go and try to sneak off campus and go get some fast food. I don't even have to do that with one of my friends. We were like, we need Jack in the Box. And I'm trying to think, how do we get to Jack in the Box? Did we have a car? Maybe I might have parked like down the street or nearby or something. Because you can't park on campus and then be seen driving off campus. So I definitely remember me and my friend trying to sneak back on campus and seeing one of our teachers and being like, oh, snap. We better hide here. And then we're back on. Okay. So there's a fun, there's a fun high school memory. But of the ones I hated my high school. Yeah. Hated my high school. Didn't go to graduation. Didn't go to any of those dances. Just blah. Garbage. And so what does that have to do with the misery that is today? Well, okay. It's today misery. Boyd is. Bad high school. I was like, oh, I don't know if I'm going to make it. I was just, I really felt like, I don't know if I'm going to make it. And we hear a lot about youth who get bullied on social media or they just aren't the celebrity that they want to be in high school. I don't freaking know. But they do things to themselves that are not okay. And some choose to no longer live. And that's not okay either. And so one could say, well, it's their choice. But there are a lot of things that we do in life. There are choices in that moment that we often regret later. And there are some choices that people make that are not reversible. Right. And so the choice that we make in that moment. A lot of times those choices are made because we don't know how to handle things. We don't know how to manage our emotions to manage that situation. And so I used to tell myself, if I just make it through high school, if I just do this, then I will never give up. If I just do this, I will never give up. And so I made it. I survived the high school. I will never give up. I will never look back. And I haven't given up. I have been fighting since the day my diploma was announced, I guess. I don't know. I wasn't there. I don't know. What do you do with a diploma when the person is literally not there? Also, my mom was like, I'm not paying for that cap and gown. I was like, okay, well, I don't have the money. So I guess I'm just not going to go. Like, I don't know what to tell you. I was the girl in high school who had like three jobs. So yeah, you know, do the math there. No, I wasn't spending all my money on Jack in the Box or whatever. But yeah, I have been known as the broke girl for a number of years, which is not okay. And so here I am at this age where I thought all of my life problems would just be solved and the process being solved. And gosh, the last couple weeks, days, it's just kind of been this in your face of you don't own a house. You own a car, but it's not paid off. So do you really own it? Because, you know, all you need to do is miss a couple of bills and that car ain't yours anymore. So I guess you don't own it. The things you own are the things that people can't take away from you. You'll be like, no, that's mine. So even though I'm not leasing this car, I didn't do a loan for it. I don't really own it. The house I'm in, I'm renting. I have an opportunity to buy it, but I decided I don't want to buy it. I don't think the foundation, I know the foundation needs to be fixed. And I don't know that, yes, there are grants to do that. I don't really know that it makes sense for me to be the one to fix it. I feel like if I'm going to get grants and invest in something, in a property, then it should be a property that I, there are other reasons to love it other than, well, it's convenient and I have this opportunity, right? So there's that, there's that, there's that decision. My neighbors are cool. Overall, the area is pretty quiet, but sometimes I turn to like the grumpy old lady. I'm like, this garbage, there's been this thing with the garbage blowing over from one neighbor's yard and it gets into my yard. And then I don't, I look out the window when I work. And so I don't want to see other people's garbage all over my yard. Now, with that being said, I don't even own the property. It ain't really my yard. Um, but I also don't feel like when I step out of my door, I should be stepping over someone else's kid's bikes or stepping in someone else's garbage and all these things. So with that being said, um, there are some reasons why I don't feel like owning this property makes sense anymore. There's also like this kid down the street with this, Oh my gosh, this stupid big truck. And this really like, will be blasting rap music. But clearly it's one of those things where you feel like the person listens to rap just because someone told them that rap is cool. Um, I listen to rap because I love rap, but you also, I don't know. I just get the sense that it's a self-esteem thing. And maybe it's partly how loudly they play the music. I don't know. I don't know. Um, when, when you are in the middle of nowhere, middle of nowhere in the Midwest, then you, you see things like this where you're just like, Oh, this, this person has watched a number of movies where they've convinced themselves that like, this is cool. Or, you know, if they listen to enough rap music, maybe there'll be the next Eminem, even though they don't rap. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe I'm, I'm just, maybe I think too far, but I'm just trying to paint a picture of the chaos and the insanity that is around me. My mom, um, has referred to it as kind of like a living, like Jerry Springer episode because there's this crazy lady across the street who just, well, she's not crazy, but she has some crazy, she has some outbursts and you hear things slamming and banging and mind you, I'm not outside. I'm inside. And I hear this stuff. Um, and so a part of me wants to be like, man, perhaps you're going through the change. Would you like to talk about some vitamins or go see your doctor and get some help? So yeah, there's that. Okay. So I'm living not really where I feel like this is my forever home. Um, I don't own a house. I don't own a car. My, I have, I own two businesses and have some other kind of businesses under those businesses. Um, work is not as booming as I would like right now, partly because I am not putting in the work. Um, I know that there's a lot of stuff to be done and I'm tired. I'm tired. Like I said, high school, going through jobs. I have been working my buns off since I was 12. I ain't 12 anymore. So I've been working my buns off for a number of years and that's not an excuse. Okay. Um, I remember when I was working at this plastic surgeon's office, a patient came in and I think I had said something to her like, Oh, how was your summer? How was your trip? I don't know why. But she had mentioned going on vacation with her family. And she said, yeah, every year we go to this place and it's always so relaxing. Everyone needs a vacation. And I thought, that's weird. Do they? Do they really? Why does everyone need a vacation? Like everyone needs to eat. We need that. Otherwise, after a number of days without food, you gotta die. We all need water. We all need to defecate. Like these are things that we need. We all need to inhale, exhale oxygen. But do we all really need a vacation? Like that just kind of previously, that sounded like just some weird privilege stuff. People would say like, Oh, okay. That's what somebody who could afford a vacation would say bye. But I really thought about this because I thought she is a doctor. She's a licensed professional. And do we all need vacations? Maybe we do. So maybe we do. Okay. And I was supposed to go visit my mom as a surprise for her birthday back in November. And financially, it just wasn't looking good. And my niece was expecting a baby. So I said, let me hold off. And let me push this trip to January when I know my niece's baby is due. My niece had the baby early. And didn't even tell me about it. I had to find out through another family member. I thought, okay, I know you just had a baby. But someone could tell me and not feel like this kind of third hand. Like, okay. What I guess I'm really saying is her mother should have at least said like, Oh, you know, she went to labor or she had the baby. Not me finding out days later from, you know. So anyway. Yeah, you've heard me talk about my family. I was like, okay, well, I guess that whole January thing's not happening. Doesn't even matter, though. I am going to make this trip happen very soon. And, you know, I talked to my mom regularly now. Which wasn't always the case. We were talking and I felt like, God, I'm such a rotten kid. Because she keeps dropping hints like, well, when you come visit, when you come visit. And I know this is bad. So I'm just going to do it. I'm going to book a ticket. I'm going to go see her. And I couldn't make it for my birthday. But I said, I'm going to try to do it. I have this event coming up that's not far from the airport. I'm going to go to that event. And I'm going to go to the airport. I'm going to go see her. And she's going to be so surprised. It's going to be so great. Yes. And given that sales weren't where I wanted them to be, I went ahead. Put up some opportunities of people to register for classes. Someone registered for a class. Actually, a couple people. This was great. Yes, I need this money. I've got this trip planned. But I had the time memorized incorrectly. And so it was like, great. I have a flight that is going to be departing five minutes after my class ends. And I know this airline, they will not. They're going to board orderly if they can. And if they can leave 20 minutes earlier, they want to. So that's not going to happen. So after lots of trying to figure out, can I go through a different airport? Can I get to the airport super early and work from the airport? There was just no way any of this was going to happen. So I said, OK, I've got to cancel this flight. $160 down the drain, which really hurt because I was already trying to figure out, gosh, if she gets sick of me after a few days, what am I going to do? Like, how am I going to get home? Can I at least afford a hotel? Because I don't have the money to fly back early. So I canceled the flight. And I felt horrible about it. I still feel bad about it, but I was feeling really bad about it initially. And sure enough, super annoying yesterday, when I'm getting these alerts from the airline, your flight will be departing 20 minutes late. Really? Really, fools? So I could have taken that flight. I could have gone to see my mom the way I wanted to. And by the way, I will say that there was a lot of arguing with the airline as well, because I'm getting all these alerts that my reservation hadn't been canceled. And I knew I canceled it. So anyway, I had all these feelings. Like, I hate these people who are sending me these emails. And I hate this reminder that I can't go see my mom. And I hate this reminder that I can't have the vacation that I wanted to have, because I wanted to have a vacation, because I am not putting in the work at work. And I'm losing my love for what I love to do. My love for what I worked so hard to do. I'm good to build these things. I don't want to say dreams per se, but they're not sandcastles. Sometimes it feels like sandcastles. I feel like just one small thing can wipe away my businesses. But that's not true. They are more solid than sand. So jello molds? I don't know. I don't know. They're not quite jello either. I think they're more solid than jello. Okay, I gotta go through the three little pigs. The guy with the straw. Okay, maybe I got like sticks. I don't like the idea of sticks though. I like to think I've got like wood and not sticks. But I don't have bricks. I want bricks. I want brick houses. I want a brick house empire like the three little pigs. And you should be focused on building bricks in your life too. Whether it's working for someone else or working for yourself. Make sure you got bricks. And so I do not have bricks. I want bricks. I'm at this age where I'm not having bricks. What is happening? And I can't take a vacation without still feeling like I have to work during vacation. And I'm looking at my schedule going, you know what? I'm gonna stop doing certain types of work on Saturdays. And this summer, I don't even know if I want to go ahead and do this other type of work. And I'm getting all this requests for some type of work. And I know I need to get back to these people. I'm so conflicted. And yeah, can you see why I need a vacation? But do we? Do we really need a vacation? So do I need a vacation? Or do I need to make some big changes so that I don't ever again feel like I don't have a choice? And actually, I think that's what it is. It's not that I need a vacation, right? I don't need to be on a beach somewhere. It's that I want to feel as if I have a choice. And I think that's good. I think it's, I do have choices. I have far more choices than a lot of people my age. And I'm grateful for the ability to have those choices. And so it's kind of like this perfect storm. Because I've got this podcast with all these celebrities talking about their experience. And you know, they did it. They did it. They built brick houses for themselves. I am reading some wonderful books right now. I just finished Britney Spears autobiography. Right now, I'm reading Jeanette McCurry's autobiography. I started reading Paris Hilton's one. I have mixed feelings on that one. I think she's a really good writer. Absolutely really good writer. I'm just not like, oh, I gotta fit like Jeanette's. I'm like, oh my goodness. And that seems to be a strange reaction about someone's life. But I also kind of feel like my life is a little bit of a whackadoodle experience. It's definitely unusual. It is unusual. And so I'm so grateful for these people for sharing their experiences in these books. And I just having these constant reminders of you could be doing more. You should be doing more. You need to lay those bricks. You have to strengthen your foundation. You have to do what you said you were supposed to be doing at this point in your life, right? Because I ain't getting younger. I will continue to get older and opportunities will continue to present themselves and will continue to pass me by. And so I have to make some big decisions and figure out, well, which opportunities am I really going to go for and pursue? And which opportunities will I just let slide on by? And I guess for me, the thought of I could have gotten back to that person. I could have been practicing, memorizing a new monologue. I could have been working on learning piano. I could have been practicing some dance moves. I could have done this better, that better. Be the person. I say I want to be the person I dream of being. I could be that person, but I'm not being that person because it was way more comfortable, easier, or just less risky for me to go eat some trail mix and