Well, for starters, three hours after I gave my notice, I found out that one of my scripts placed as a “Second Rounder” in the Austin Film Festival. May not sound like much, but this is one of the top screenwriting contests in the country, with over 11,000 entries. It feels pretty good to be anywhere near the top of that pile. If nothing else, it felt like reassurance from the Universe or what have you that I had made the right decision, even though the decision was agonizing.
But let me back up to what was happening before I quit my toxic job.
This was a job I should have loved. A dream job. When I was hired as the Marketing Director for a performing arts organization housed at a university and the School of the Arts at that university, I was out of my skin with joy. I would get to engage with and promote the arts every day! Gah! Yay!
And I did love this job. For a time.
About two weeks after I was hired, I was told I would also be the Marketing Director for a Museum. And its Grand Opening. At a mansion. Donated by a prominent local family. With an exhibition that encompassed not only art on walls, but multiple lectures, workshops and performances.
Say WHAT?! This was never mentioned in any of the many rounds of interviews I had for the job, nor was it in the job description.
While the museum was not set to open immediately, the timeline loomed, and frazzled the heck out of me. The date kept getting pushed back and back until I thought maybe I would luck out and it would never happen. Then the date was set. It coincided exactly with our season launch for the performing arts series that year.
As the Grand Opening approached, I was a wreck. I couldn’t sleep. My anxiety was bonkers. I have a strong work ethic and doing a good job is VERY important to me. I would come home and just sob because I couldn’t actually do two full-time jobs. I especially couldn’t market the grand opening of a museum at the same time I was launching a performing arts series and do both of these things successfully.
I expressed concern to upper leadership again and again that this OTHER FULL TIME JOB would interfere with the FULL TIME JOB I ALREADY HAD. I was met with silence.
I sent an email to upper leadership predicting that this would have negative consequences for the performing arts series the following year, as we could not properly launch the season. Again, I was met with silence.
While we had experienced a significant increase in ticket sales my first two years, ticket sales for that year slumped, just as I had warned. When we began to see exactly what I had predicted both verbally and in that email, I was asked to never mention the email again. The Dean later told me that she felt “shame” whenever that email was referenced.
Leadership was pissed that I would dare to step out of line and draw attention to this issue. This is Utah, after all, and if there is ONE THING you don’t do here, it is step out of line. You don’t question authority, and you always do as you’re told. Leadership was peeved that I didn’t just succumb and accept that I had two full time jobs, suck it up, and work 70-plus hours a week on my non-profit salary.
Then the bullying began. For the first time in my three years at the organization, I was the only person at the director level or above not invited by the Dean to the official staff luncheon. I was the only person at that level not invited to sit on the stage at graduation. Hell, I wasn’t even invited to help out with graduation, as I had been in previous years, and as was every person on staff from the part-timers on up to the Associate Dean.
In a word, I was humiliated. Nearly every day it was something. I felt like I was back in junior high, and the only kid not invited to sit with the popular girls at lunch. Junior high was bad e-fucking-nough the first time. While I will spare the rest of the gory details, this is just the tip of the shit pile.
Not only was I over-worked with WAY too much on my plate, now I was being bullied in the form of ostracization. I would literally shake as I walked into my office each day.
So I quit.
Before I quit, I had developed multiple health issues. An ulcer burned my stomach, especially when I forgot to eat, as I often did, because I was busy opening a fucking museum and launching a fucking performing arts series.
My psoriasis flared up and my skin fell off in chunks. Even from my eyelids, which had never happened to me before, even during the worst psoriasis episodes I had had in the past.
I had insomnia nearly every night. My “body battery” on my Garmin regularly registered below 25% when I woke up (if you could call it that) each day.
One evening, one of my ears started ringing. And it didn’t stop. The ringing turned into a crunching static noise, and it felt like someone had cupped their hand over my ear. I went to a specialist and they asked me if I had been experiencing any stress. I just laughed. And then I cried.
They took my blood pressure and the physician’s assistant gasped. She literally gasped.
“Is this normal?!” she asked me. “Your blood pressure is 158 over 110.”
My blood pressure is usually low.
The doctor told me I had suffered some hearing loss. He predicted some of it would likely come back, but I needed to find a way to minimize the stress.
Guffaw. That would not be possible. Unless I left my job. And so I decided losing this job would be preferential to losing my hearing.
After following through with this decision, most of my hearing seems to have returned, although I do have a ringing in my right ear that never goes away.
I have been sleeping well, and my “body battery” is now regularly above 50%, and even got up to 70% on a few occasions!
I am exercising regularly and my Garmin keeps decreasing my health age.
I READ THREE BOOKS IN A MONTH! I had had to almost completely stop reading prior to quitting, which was devastating, because I love to read. But I would “read” a page with zero comprehension, and have to reread it ten or more times. It got so frustrating I eventually just gave up.
I had no head space. No room for any thinking outside of work. I would come home, sit in my egg chair on the porch sipping wine, and just stare at the wall.
Losing the ability to read for pleasure was a loss I mourned. I LOVE to read. Fiction, non-fiction, memoirs, you name it. But I didn’t have the capacity for it while at this job. The joy in reading again is enormous. I feel like I have resurrected an old friend who had passed.
I am WRITING again! Ideas for stories are falling out of my head. I am inspired by every experience, crafting little stories or scripts to write in my head with every walk, every person I meet, every captivating view.
Of course, immediately after quitting, I experienced a mountain range of emotions – peaks and valleys, exhilaration and abject fear, relief and regret. Despite having pondered this decision for months, and discussing it many times with my husband (and hearing his persistent pleas to get the hell out of that toxic environment already for love of all things good!), leaving was uncomfortable. It felt taboo.
I know my situation sadly isn’t unique. Excessive burnout is just an accepted facet of modern American life, and it happens everywhere from multinational corporations on through second-rate, state-run universities. Saying “No” to this fixture of burnout feels a bit like Oliver Twist - shyly, bravely asking “Please Sir, I want some more.” You just don’t do it. And if you do, you pay a hefty price. The fixture bellows backs at you. “WHAT?!” Who dares to want MORE than their toxic but steady job, slowly burning them out to a crispy husk? What more is there, even?
In the days after giving my notice, my anxiety actually (temporarily) increased. I wondered how I could throw away the stability, the benefits, the generous amount of leave. What the hell was I thinking?!
Months before I had made the decision, I had made an appointment with my hairdresser that happened to fall smack dab in the middle of the time between the day I gave my notice, and my final day at work. As I drove to his studio, I recalled a conversation he and I had had a while back.
We were discussing all of our nifty upcoming plans. He was going to New York for Fashion Week, and was taking his partner’s daughter to see Taylor Swift. I was planning a trip to Greece with my husband. We talked about how we had both grown up without a lot of money, and how great it was to finally, FINALLY have “adult money.” Climbing out of poverty isn’t easy.
As I pondered this conversation, my pulse increased. I knew we would chat as he cut my hair. I would have to tell him that I quit my job. That I had given up my “adult money.” What a disgrace. How shameful.
As he shampooed and conditioned, he asked me what I had been up to.
“Uh…yeah…well, I quit my job…”
“Mm-hm,” he responded.
My head spun. “What a loser,” he must be thinking. “What kind of moron walks away from a perfectly good job?!”
The conversation meandered, and I eventually asked how his partner was doing.
“Oh. He actually quit his job too.”
I lit up. “Other people actually do this? This is a really real thing?!” I thought.
“Yeah. He was really burned out and his workplace was super toxic. He just needed a rest, so he is taking a few months off and then will start to look for another job.”
He told me that at first, his partner had experienced the same anxiety I was experiencing, especially as he was working his last weeks. But when he finally left, he felt relief. He slept for days, not realizing how burned out and exhausted he actually was. Now he can’t imagine not quitting.
I was so relieved. This chance encounter, this appointment that I had just happened to book months before at this exact moment in time gave me permission to feel ok about my decision. This is a thing that people do. Sometimes they say “NO.” They leave toxic workplaces. Life goes on.
I will also note that I acknowledge my privilege in this moment. I have a husband who is gainfully employed, and excessively supportive. He watched my mental and physical health deteriorate over the last year, and begged me to leave this job for my own sanity (and his). I am very, very lucky to have such a supportive partner.
A week and half after I walked out of my office for the last time, I went to the Austin Film Festival, where my script had placed as a Second Rounder. I met phenomenal people in the industry, I saw great films, I pitched my own film (and got a request for my script!).
And when I flew home, as the Valley came into view over the mountains and I peered out the plane window to my former workplace below, for the first time flying back into Salt Lake from a trip, I did not feel dread. “I never have to go back there,” I thought.
The following week I went to FilmQuest in Provo, where my script was an Official Selection as a finalist.
In a few months, I will start a Master’s in Communication program. In the meantime, I am writing, editing, and sending my work to connections I made at the two film festivals that just happened to occur mere weeks after I left my job.
I still have moments of gripping fear, but I breathe through them. I don’t feel like I made the right choice, I know I made the only choice.
And when it comes right down to it, Sir, I want more.
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