For the past few years, I have worked for a nonprofit medical company, which has a great legacy in our state. I am not a clinician and I work on the corporate team. The work we do is truly important and I am glad to be a part of it. But holy cow, I am EXHAUSTED.
In nonprofit world, everybody wears a lot of hats and you don't always get paid what you would at a private company. In particular, I wear so many hats. I support every single department. Everybody in the company (of more than 200 people) knows who I am. Recently, I've found that I am more and more at my breaking point. Sometimes I feel like I just have a constant anxiety attack going. I've literally chugged an energy drink just to feel like the rapid heartbeat feeling is coming from something tangible.
Here's the thing, and I'm not being naive or something for saying this: my colleagues really do care about me. My direct supervisor is an incredible woman who listens to me and supports me however she can. I have actually known the CEO since childhood. That post I've seen circulating about your company not caring if you died or something – I don't for a second believe that would be true of this company.
But I just feel completely ground down to a nub. I get great benefits, work from home, PTO, the pay isn't terrible honestly. But I can't help but feel like I can't go on. I'm on depression medication and am going to see a psychiatrist next month, but I don't want to medicate myself through the roof just to deal with my job. I feel like I need to take a years-long break from having a job – like I just need to stare at the ceiling for a while and maybe go lay in a field. I spend almost my whole day in front of a computer, and then I medicate my anxiety by being addicted to my phone.
I think the workforce needs massive reforms and we are more burned out than ever, but I have been grinding for my whole life – straight A's all through school and college, always doing ten activities and keeping up appearances and going to the gym and being a good girlfriend-now-wife – but it just all feels so hollow now. I went to a luncheon with a bunch of other nonprofit people in the industry and everyone was so excited about how they were changing lives and I was just smiling, disassociating.
Is it supposed to be this hard? I don't want to torpedo my career. I need money to live. I like – even love – my colleagues. But I feel like I need to revert back to a life I've never known, a life without spreadsheets and phone calls and deadlines and donations and grants. Everything feels so hollow.
Edit: I didn't mean to say that being a wife feels hollow. My husband is just about the best thing in the world and he is the love of my life.