Pandemic. Pause. Perspective.

This may be all my fault.

A few weeks ago I was feeling that overwhelming frazzled year end fatigue feeling … in February! Travel, meetings, events, projects, overflowing inbox, school notices, commitments, committees, deadlines.

I just wished, no I begged, for the world to just stop. Just stop for a moment so I can breathe, regroup and have an opportunity to get on top of things.

I am realising that you really do have to be careful for what you wish or beg for. For my own selfish reasons, fuelled by anxiety and stress, I wanted MY world to stop. Actually what I was really meaning was for the demands placed on me to stop. The world wasn’t really bothered that I couldn’t say no and that I put my hand up for too many projects. The world wasn’t really bothered that I was too conscientious and placed far too much pressure on myself to not let others down. This wasn’t a world problem. This was a Bron lacking boundaries problem.

As my work load increased so did my frustrations. It wasn’t the work or projects. Those were actually interesting and fun and challenging. It was the fact that in my pursuit of trying not to let others down, I was inadvertently letting myself down.

So now that the world is experiencing an actual serious pandemic and has stopped, (Give me some creative licence here, you know what I mean), and once my little self induced panic attack subsided thanks to a hot bath, and forced Pilates, (ok and whom I kidding, a couple of tranquillisers), I have taken this as an opportunity to reflect on my boundaries and priorities. When all your very important work projects and events are cancelled, you suddenly take stock of the amount of effort and stress created and I can’t help but feel that I somewhat over leveraged myself. Don’t get me wrong, they were very important, and involved a lot of work but while I pride myself on delivering and not letting the team down, I feel I could have produced the same results with a lot less stress and personal sacrifice had I had a clearer perspective on the situation.

While I know it is egocentric of me to think this is my fault, I am trying to be grateful for the learnings – for the pandemic, the forced pause, the perspective.