How the pandemic brought me back to life by almost knocking it out of me
If you follow me on Instagram, which I’ve been a whole lot more active on while I wasn’t blogging, you’ll see that my summer was filled with travel: destination weddings, weekend getaways, a surprise birthday trip, and tons of family time. It felt amazing. After two years of feeling like I was trapped, and in some sort of weird time stand-still, I couldn’t sit still or book flights, hotels, AirBnBs, and experiences fast enough. Part of this freedom came from being released from a global pandemic, yes, but a lot of it also came from not being in a soul-sucking, toxic, and thankless job anymore.
Very abbreviated version: I left the company that I’d been at since March 2020, in April of this year. Like many things of 2020, I was on a roller coaster of feelings about my job and the company. In the beginning, I felt extremely lucky that I secured a job before the entire world collapsed, in the new city I had just moved to, that just happens to be one of the most expensive in the world. By the end, I was overweight, had horribly high blood pressure, and was getting random nosebleeds at work. Mark, my husband, had a battle cry for the last six months of my job, sighing at me while I sprinted out the door, frantic, hurriedly responding to/swearing at the emails and texts that had been coming in since 6:30 a.m.: “Jamie, you’re no good to me if you die from a stroke.” And he was serious. Long story short, I hit my limit after what can only be described as, in hindsight, an abusive relationship. I gave my notice after overseeing and managing the completion of a $3.2M full construction build-out of a medical practice with two surgical suites on Madison Avenue. All of this under a leadership team that refused to pay their employees fair salaries, while demanding the capacity of three people out of them, ever-changing metrics designed to not give people their bonuses, and an employee turnover rate that would make your head spin and blaming it on the employees, with not one ounce of introspection on the leadership and management team.
Anyway! I digress. So, I quit my job in April, and two days later I was on a plane to London, UK with my dear friend, who had planned with my husband, this entire long-weekend girls trip as a birthday surprise. I felt like someone might feel after they just got out of prison. It was an incredible vacation, and with a friend who used to work at the same company; we both left after reaching a tantamount level of burnout, four months apart. We laughed. We ate all the food. We drank all the libations. And we reflected on our old company, and vowed we’d never go back – not to that company, obviously, but back to oppressive, soul-crushing, and abusive jobs, with no work/life balance. The pandemic had changed the working world, and we were not ever going back to Draconian bosses that couldn’t progress with the times.
After I got back from London, I vowed I was going to take a break. I didn’t need to find a job right away and I was burnt the fuck out. It took me three months to not wake up every morning with a start, pit in my stomach, and reach for my phone to start answering the emails and texts coming in. It took me three months to stop stress eating. Yes, I love food, but as I mentioned before, I was the heaviest I’ve ever been at one point and because food was my old pal, but I wasn’t being a good friend back to it. I was abusing it, like I was being abused, and we lost our way. Food never changed – it was always awesome; I had changed. I was taking comfort in something that was meant to bring me pleasure, not answers or relief from the destructive decisions I was making that affected my well being. While I was enjoying not working and frankly, recovering, I thought a lot about how I’d gotten here. I’m a Type A, overachieving perfectionist, and I’ve always derived a lot of satisfaction and self-worth out of being excellent at my job and learning. The pandemic, like it did with our bodies, preyed on my Type A side, and made it easy to blur the lines between work and personal time; I was working remotely in the beginning of the pandemic and felt a sense to “prove” that I was working even though I wasn’t in an office. There was also a very real feeling of knowing that I couldn’t just move on and get another job for most of 2020 and 2021 – the world and the economy were in a free-fall (funny, so was I!) and no one was hiring except hospitals and trust me, no one wants me operating on them or taking care of them. All of these things made it hard for me to quit when things got progressively worse at my company. For the first time in a long time, I was second-guessing myself. I know I am not the only one that this was happening to during the pandemic but it was very real for me.
I talked a big game to my husband about not working for three, maybe six! months.
It lasted a month.
I tried, I really did, but as much as I didn’t want to be a work slave anymore, I was also climbing the walls by week three of no job. I needed to be doing something. I had a new job by May, right around the time we were heading to a wedding in the Dominican Republic. But. It was with a company that right from my very first interview, saw what I brought to the table, demonstrated that their company culture very much valued work/life balance and valuing their employees. The job is 100% remote, and kids, I am here to tell you, that I can never go back! I work hard and I pivoted to a slightly new industry, so I’ve been learning a lot but my manager empowers me to take the lead and learn by doing, but everyone respects when I log off for the night, I do not answer emails after the day ends (this took some major self-work and self-control to break the habit of working and responding to emails until I went to bed). There are days when I log off a little early if I have something going on, and work a little later during the week or on a weekend, IF I CHOOSE TO. All of the travel I’ve done this summer, and I’ve taken very little PTO because I can work from anywhere and my company encourages this.
I enjoy food again; I have a healthier relationship with food as what it should be: culture unifier, bringing people together to break bread, and be part of experiencing something new, or celebrating the simple joys in life, like catching up with a friend you haven’t seen in awhile.
Guys, I promise that some posts about all the fun stuff I’ve been doing and amazing things I’ve been eating are coming – but this and my last post have just poured out of me. Foodie Jamie loves food and travel, but she’s also been living the same struggles and weirdness you have been and in order to appreciate the fun stuff, I feel it’s only fair you realize where I was when I wasn’t posting.
Food Made Me Say It 