Burnout Brunch - an excerpt from “But How Are You, Really”

In 2019, I had truly horrendous burnout from five years of working in digital media. As the social media editor for a large online video company, I'd written hundreds of headlines, posted thousands of tweets, and moderated millions of Facebook comments. Even when I was technically off the clock, I never relaxed. Any moment a stray tweet or PR crisis could spell disaster for the organization. My job owned my time, my mind, and my health.

That fall I did the unthinkable: I quit my job without a new position lined up. To comfort myself in the "oh god, what have I done?" panic that followed, I read romance novel after romance novel from Brooklyn Library.

Inspired by my experience attending my five-year college reunion, I started writing a novel of my own. But How Are You, Really is about Charlotte Thorne, a young millennial struggling to stay afloat as layoffs shake the media industry. When her boss is invited to give the commencement address at her alma mater, Hein University, she reluctantly agrees to go with him to live-tweet his speech —?which means attending her concurrent reunion.

Charlotte does her best to hide her burnout from her old college friends, but they see right through her. In this excerpt, Charlotte's former roommate Jackie, her ex-girlfriend Nina, and her friend Amy break through her denial and ask what's really going on at work.

I hope my book normalizes conversations about professional burnout, mental health, and the unique challenges millennials and Gen Z employees face at the office. Please pick up a copy if this excerpt resonates with you, and share it with your friends and colleagues.

Brunch passed quickly amid a half decade’s worth of updates. The old friends traded war stories about bad bosses and out-of-touch company leadership. In every industry they had run up against the same challenges: “entry-level” jobs that required years of prior experience, and research grants that always seemed to go to a well-connected nephew.

It didn’t matter that all four worked in different fields: They shared the fear that they were scrambling their way up a down escalator. And in a cruel twist, if they got lucky enough to land those dream jobs, they turned out to be nightmares.

As Amy detailed her futile quest to get a raise, Charlotte’s embarrassment about her zigzagging career began to lift. This was the real shit, the unglamorous truth of people’s actual lives. The rosy Instagram filter fell away.

She wasn’t the only one struggling. She wasn’t the only one disappointed by how post life had turned out.

“I’m starting to interview at other publishing houses,” Amy continued. “The only way to make more money is to jump around, but that means leaving behind my authors. But my manager keeps insisting there’s nothing in the budget and this is how it’s done.”

“He sounds like Charlotte’s boss,” Jackie drawled. She speared a fluffy pancake and gave her a sideways look.

Oh great. Here we go again.

Nina fixed Charlotte in her steady gaze. “Yeah? What’s it like at Front End?”

Charlotte looked at the three women around her: Nina’s level stare, Jackie’s frown, Amy’s genuine interest. They’d already heard the celebrity-sparkled version of her life at Front End. She had a choice to make. She could trot out the practiced stories again, or she could let her guard down and confirm what they must already suspect: that she was full of crap.

“It’s all right,” she said.

Jackie sipped her Diet Coke, her eyes glinting. Amy’s head tilted to the side like a puppy hearing a new sound for the first time. Nina just stirred her drink and waited.

Charlotte wet her lips and continued. “It’s not what I saw myself doing, but it’s a paycheck.”

“Of course,” Amy trilled. “It must be nice to pay the bills and work on your art on the side.”

Ah. Well, that was an easy assumption to make. Why else would an artist work as an assistant other than to support her true passion? Never mind that Charlotte hadn’t picked up a sketchpad in years, too exhausted in those very few hours “on the side” to even consider it. Never mind that executive assistants were skilled workers with real responsibilities, or that she might have a plan for career growth within Front End.

Because she did! Theoretically.

“Are you still doing portraits?” Nina asked. “You should share more of your work on Instagram, I bet people would love your political caricatures right now.”

Charlotte avoided Nina’s eyes, unable to lie directly to her face. “Sometimes, yeah.”

Jackie put her soda down. “She’s not drawing.”

“Jackie,” Charlotte hissed. She didn’t look at Nina or Amy, instead scowling at the woman beside her in the booth.

Her best friend raised her hands, palms forward. “What, am I wrong?”

“No, but . . .” Charlotte fished for words to express mind your own business and stop looking at me like that. “Priorities change, okay? Work keeps me busy.”

Jackie rolled her eyes. “You mean miserable.”?

“Hey,” Nina cut in. “Let Charlotte talk.”

Chastened, Jackie snapped her mouth shut.

Nina considered Charlotte with her trademark steely gaze. “Is Jackie right?”

Charlotte rubbed her temples with her fingertips. A tension headache crept up on her, pressing at her eyes. After months of neatly tucking her feelings away each day, she wasn’t used to prolonged questioning and excavation.

Jackie circled an arm behind her back and prodded at the stiff knot of muscle in Charlotte’s neck. Charlotte wanted to shrug her off, annoyed, but the firm touch felt divine. Her eyes drifted closed. It made her heart ache for something she’d never known: an actual parent to hear out her woes and comfort her when the world got too mean.

She sucked in a deep breath and held it. Then she let it out slowly in a cool stream.

“I’m not drawing. And my job is hell.”

For once Jackie said nothing, she just continued gently kneading Charlotte’s neck with one hand. A loaded silence fell as the women took in her words. They knew how much it cost her to admit it. Charlotte kept her eyes shut, not needing to see the concern on their faces.

Finally, Nina asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”

What had Pauline from HR said? Maybe you misunderstood? Your generation is so sensitive.

“No.”

Jackie’s hand stilled on her back, her thumb resting against a knot on Charlotte’s spine. Then her best friend pulled away, space opening up between them in the booth. Charlotte cringed at her obvious disappointment, but she had nothing else to say.

“Can you afford to quit?” Nina played with a napkin ring as she wondered aloud.

Charlotte had enough to cover two months’ rent in her savings account if she only ate PB&Js and rice. Not exactly a freedom fund. “I’m not at that point yet.”?

Amy tried next. “Have you started looking for other jobs?”

Charlotte squirmed. She folded her napkin and put it on the table, mostly to have something to fidget with. “Not really? Media is competitive. There are hundreds of people applying for each position.” Amy’s angelic face fell. “I’m trying to move departments. There’s a project manager position on the art team that I’m up for. Once I get that, I’ll have more time to draw.”

Jackie put her Diet Coke down with a thud. “Do you really think Roger will promote you?”

“He’s not going to miss me,” Charlotte drawled. Her boss frequently made comments about preferring to work with men. After all, women didn’t know how to take a joke. HR deemed these remarks “colorful humor” as opposed to gender discrimination.

“But why would he let you move teams if he doesn’t have to? What’s in it for him?” Jackie’s forehead creased as she poked holes in Charlotte’s exit plan. “If he’s such an asshole, why would anyone risk pissing him off to hire you?”

She blinked. She didn’t have an answer for that. While Charlotte didn’t expect Roger to mentor her, it never occurred to her that other departments might not want to touch her. He didn’t need to actively sabotage her to hold her back .

“I’m not trying to be a jerk,” Jackie said as Charlotte’s face fell. “Front End just seems like a dead end.”

Charlotte picked up her napkin and folded it into a paper strip. She looked for a way to defeat Jackie’s logic and came up empty. Harsh reality checks were her best friend’s specialty, and she had an irritating habit of being right. But they were coming at this from totally different directions: Jackie could afford to walk away from a dead-end job, and Charlotte couldn’t.

Roger had all but promised her the project manager role if she came to Reunion & Commencement. Hadn’t he?

“Let me ask a different question.” Nina leaned forward. “If you do move teams at Front End, will you actually like working there?”?

Charlotte’s nose crinkled as she tried to imagine work without Roger’s constant bullshit. Even if she didn’t sit right outside his glass office, Front End was still his kingdom. Everything the team illustrated needed Roger’s sign-off before going to print. He set the company’s mission, the editorial theme of each issue, the hiring practices and the policies and the norms. If Charlotte worked with other queer folks, she had no way of knowing, as no one felt comfortable being out at work. Front End was also the whitest office she’d ever seen. A new manager wouldn’t shield her from the toxic culture that Roger had created. She would never be proud to work there either.

“I don’t know,” Charlotte admitted for the first time.

She looked at each of her friends in turn, unable to elaborate. An ugly truth fell out of her storage box, one last scrap she’d denied until she couldn’t anymore: At some point in the years, her burnout had morphed into something worse. She wasn’t sad or lost or frustrated. The effort required to go out and have a life was exhausting to consider. Most nights she couldn’t muster the energy to cook dinner, instead ordering from a rotating roster of restaurants near her apartment, which didn’t exactly help her bank balance. This weekend was the first time she’d seen actual friends in months—either she worked straight through until Monday morning, or she spent her time off watching YouTube videos in an exhausted daze.

Recently she’d started to wonder what would happen if she just didn’t get off the subway at her stop and instead rode it to the end of the line. Would anyone worry if she didn’t show up for work? Or would her disappearance be an annoyance easily rectified by hiring some other girl fresh out of school with a bachelor’s degree and untapped energy? Would anyone notice if she stopped answering texts?

If she disappeared, would anyone care at all?

Charlotte looked down at her bitten fingers. She thought she’d managed to keep a lid on her existential dread, hiding it even from herself. It was mortifying to realize her friends saw right through her.

But there were plenty of ways to signal that you were miserable, like falling out of touch with everyone you loved and sharing nothing but anticapitalist memes on your Instagram story.

Jackie pried the napkin from between Charlotte’s fingers and took her hand. She squeezed it tightly, her thumb tracing her knuckles.

“It’ll be okay,” her best friend said. Like it was that simple. Maybe it would be. Maybe it wouldn’t.?

But How Are You, Really is available at booksellers now:

• Bookshop.org
• Amazon
• Barnes & Noble
• Books A Million
• Hudson Booksellers
• Walmart

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