System Break Down

What happens when, after a decade of go-go-go, you all of a sudden just... stop?

Did I spend the first month of my newfound liberation sitting on the couch, drinking tea and bingeing shows like the ‘One Day’ remake on Netflix? You better believe I did.

“You have to break down all the structures you spent ten years building,” says my best friend in London, sitting across the table in a low-lit Burmese restaurant.

“I thought leaving full-time work would feel like a dream come true,” I had just told her. “But it’s been alarmingly hard,’ I confessed.

We were catching up over dinner when she asked me how I am doing. I used the term “very complainey,” which I acknowledge is not technically a word, but best describes how I have been feeling latley. I've tumbled into an abyss of sorts, caught in a limbo with no place to be and no one to see. The bitter end of winter has extended far beyond its welcome, and I’m caught in a loop of lethargy and pointlessness. Hence, the complaining.

A regular day as a nine-to-fiver typically begins with a jarring alarm ringing in your ears, potentially paired with a Phillips wake-up lamp mimicking the sun to wake you from your slumber so you can shower, dress, eat and caffeinate ahead of your working day. Said working day usually preoccupies you from about 8:00am - 5:00pm or thereabouts, depending on various factors such as children and length of commute. The hours between 5:00pm-7:00pm could be occupied with such activities as gym, team sports, parenting, dating, or socialising. Dinner follows, then a little Netflix or reading, and then off to bed we go, ready to repeat it all again the following day.

This structured lifestyle has been my norm since 2014. No stranger to a professional pivot, over the last ten years I have tried my hand at PR, Marketing, Business Development and Team Management. Yet since reading ‘Girl Boss’ by Sophia Amoruso in 2015, an internal tug-of-war between stability and autonomy has also persisted. At one point during my time in marketing, I threw the towel in completely whilst launching a lifestyle campaign, ‘Never Settle’ which dared Australians to leave their comfort zones behind and pursue their passions. The campaign must have unlocked something in my subconscious, because soon enough I found myself handing in my notice to move abroad and become a ski chalet host in the French Alps. This was, in fact, my first Big Pivot.

Shovelling snow in France was a welcome change from stifling in the office during one of Sydney’s sweltering summers. One of the happiest times of my life, there wasn’t a company-issued laptop or ergonomic desk chair in sight. Les Gets, 2016.

Side hustles have come and gone over the years; there was the online baby gifts company ‘Little Gifts,’ a Scandinavian homewares Instagram account, my self-made podcast ‘Bumps Along the Way.’ But no matter which idea I threw myself into at the time, I was always reeled back into the perceived safety net of full-time employment. (It’s ironic to think I once viewed it as ‘safe,’ when it ultimately lead to the very real mental and physical burnout that prompted me to take a break from full-time work altogether.)

This current break, though intended to be liberating, has presented its own set of challenges, confronting me with the deep discomfort and prickling anxiety of stepping away from a life defined by continuous productivity, structure and routine.

Let me tell you about what I’m calling ‘The Unanticipated Rollercoaster of Liberation’.

Initially, I felt a high like you have never felt before. Freedom! Autonomy! Time! In order to maintain some structure to my day, I kept my 7:00am alarm, but gave myself a little leniency to wake up slowly. With nowhere to commute to, there was newfound time in the morning for journaling, a walk with the dog, a cup of coffee. Ideas came flooding in - I could write a book! I could launch season 2 of my podcast! I could start a weekly newsletter! Everything seemed possible.

Next, a crash. I’d been go-go-go for 10 years, and all of a sudden, I stopped. The 7:00am alarm kept ringing, but instead of getting up slowly, I stopped getting up at all. Having fallen back into a deep sleep, it would be after 9:00am when I’d wake to my dog licking my dead-weight hand, hanging off the side of my bed. You know when you wake up early and fall back to sleep, then for the rest of the day you struggle to wake up properly at all? That zombie-like state became the new normal as I vegged on the couch, watching entire series on Netflix (Griselda, Dead To Me and One Day filled the void) and only getting up for food, water or to let the dog out.

Following the crash came a forced productivity phase. ‘Ok, come on,’ I thought almost hourly. ‘Don’t be lazy. You have an opportunity to finally start something for yourself. It’s January and you haven’t “achieved” anything. Get moving!' So I kicked myself into gear, remembering I did this for a reason, reminding myself not to be tempted back into steady employment and stable income. Determined not to waste these months off, I revisited all the ideas I had during the “liberation” phase and considered which ones I had enough energy to start pursuing. I started getting serious - writing a plan, downloading courses, reaching out to my network for coffees and tips. A little flicker of optimism wormed its way back in...

And then, the doubts hit. ‘Don’t bother with that idea, you will never be good enough,’ said the wicked little mind intruder. ‘So-and-so is already doing that - and look - they already have 250,000 followers,’ chimed the social comparison brain. ‘There’s no room for you to add your voice to the conversation. You do not even have a voice, because you are no-one,’ relented the harsh inner-critic. Every time I opened up a page to start writing or drafting a post on LinkedIn, my fear-brain activated. This is probably when I entered “complainey” season. I wanted to start so badly, but I felt frozen.

The negative self-talk can be paralysing. ‘You’re 32, unemployed and battling infertility,’ pops into my head at an alarming frequency. It’s difficult not to feel like a “failure.” The stop-start-stop-start productivity is jarring and sometimes makes me doubt the decision I have made. Only yesterday I found myself back on LinkedIn, scrolling through jobs I know I will hate in the industry I just left because this liberated lifestyle doesn’t feel as reassuring as it once did.

Imposter Syndrome is currently the single biggest hindrance to my life. Writing this today is my attempt at overcoming the doubt phase. These words are coming together because I have physically forced myself to sit down and generate something. I do not care if they are badly written, irrelevant rambles. The point is to just start.

THIS is what encouraged me to sit down and write today. As articulated by Elizabeth Day, “If you can remove your ego from a process, then there really isn't any difference between success and failure. They're just both parts of a process.”

So what comes next?

The focus point for now is learning to “be,” without the structure of the 9-to-5. It’s about adapting to a different type of pressure, because it’s completely self-imposed. There is nobody checking my activity, monitoring my online presence on Slack or following up with me in weekly 1:1s. I’ve got to get it done (whatever “it” is) on my own.

Building my own structure has proven challenging. Re-jigging my system is still taking time. Avoiding distractions has been an immense learning curve. But I can feel the light breeze of a second-wind approaching. I’m working on being patient with myself, and remembering it takes more than a few months to flush ten years of the daily grind out of your system. Hopefully things will fall into place and a new operating rhythm will emerge.

I am reminded that pivoting is not just about changing careers; it's about transforming our relationship with work, success, and ourselves. It’s about establishing a totally new norm for yourself, setting aside your ego, and pushing through your darkest doubts. I’m learning to acknowledge disarming thoughts and gently set them aside. You have to embrace the uncertainty, redefine what productivity looks like to you, and stay consistent. And you have to be strong to avoid being pulled back into something familiar, which is easily confused with what’s best for you.

Steven Bartlett’s LinkedIn is peppered with strong reminders that our current behaviour is no longer serving us.

I will continue to write about this transition period, because that’s the point of this newsletter. We’re here to explore the unvarnished truths and raw realities of pivoting, so I figure it’s best to be open and honest about my own experiences too. I’m not here to gloss over it and make it seem like everything is peaches all the time.

My gut instinct tells me that everything I have written about today is a very normal part of leaving your comfort zone behind. I have entered the point of no return: do not look back, keep moving forward!

Because if we revert to the safety nets of structure, we will never know what we are capable of on our own.

Anna x

PS - I am most likely changing the frequency of this newsletter from weekly, to bi-weekly. Please bear with me while I work it out!