For the last nearly 10 years, I’ve worked in a role that required jumping from task to task quickly and pivoting the work I was doing at a moments notice.  Not just shifting tasks related to the project but in entirely different avenues (ie dealing with a financial clearance case to a marketing crisis to a registration error).  I was in charge of navigating that ship for other people as well—I wrote piece after piece about the expectation to drive 3 boats at once.  I’ve since switched roles and this role is just as ADD inducing although far less invasive and gives me the opportunity to set my own pacing.  I’ve struggled this last week because we’re in the middle of several large projects and there are still missing pieces, missing input, and missing clarity on a few items.  Truthfully, that’s pretty normal with large scale projects.  The issue that is bringing back some trauma is the constant pressure to complete something only to have it dismissed.  Like spending the day planning a meeting, the meeting goes an entirely different direction, spending the remainder of the afternoon correcting and pivoting, then being told it was no big deal we can go with the original plan.  What a waste of energy both from the creative perspective and the unnecessary pressure.  If we’d have gotten all our pieces together before we started moving we wouldn’t be in this situation.  Failure to plan is a plan to fail, isn’t that what they say? So I’ve already been feeling the overwhelm and frustration in that type of environment and that isn’t even counting life.

So I tried to take a bit of break from that and I was listening to a podcast that immediately hit home on the same subject and I realized we NEED TO TALK ABOUT THIS MORE.  The sense of panic that things would go away and implode if we don’t have all the pieces together perfectly, the false sense of urgency we place on things that we will somehow miss out if we don’t act now, how we are so fixated on looking perfect, the feeling of fighting to survive if we aren’t perfect: it’s all bullshit.  I talk about mental health because we have been so set up to fail and that set up has made us insane.  This goes beyond mindset for me.  Anyone can have a positive outlook but if we are continually bombarded with outside influence and expectation and false deadlines and false expediency it will totally break us down—and it has broken me down.  Not only are we being told we need to move faster all the time, we are being told we have to do more.  I can’t reiterate enough that we aren’t machines.  We aren’t meant to run 24/7.  We NEED to rest.  We NEED to recharge.  We NEED to take a break away.  The ironic thing is that I’ve always been a stickler for getting things done, like if I said I was going to do it, I would do it.  I’d ask for a deadline and get it done by that time.  But working in an industry that requires constant shifts in focus and sustained attention at the same time coupled with a society that is addicted to 30 second clips and those are interrupted by commercials telling us more shit we should be doing, like this is enough to make someone’s head explode. 

I’m tired of feeling guilty for feeling crazy.  I’m tired of feeling behind the 8 ball because someone got a whim to change things. I’m tired of being confused all the time and trying to make sense of what is actually needed. I’m tired of feeling weak for not being able to bear the mental load required and then having that frustration being brushed off as if toying with someone’s mind is somehow normal. The idea that normal is the shortest attention span in the world that we are supposed to bounce from topic to topic and we’re somehow irrelevant if we can’t keep up is infuriating to me.  We talk about this influx of ADD and we fucking wonder how it’s “such a thing” now and it’s because we did it to ourselves.  We created the issue, we are genuinely suffering for it, and then we’re told it’s our own fault for not being able to navigate through it.  That’s a pretty shitty thing to do to people.  We need to stop crossing boundaries and stop expecting people to be more than they are just to exist.  The mind can break and we put so much pressure on ourselves to be it all do it all show it all and we contradict our own actions and expectations.  Set the norm that the craziness is not normal.  Dial it back, stop taking on too much.  It’s ok to live at a more realistic pace.  One breath, one step at a time.