the way we work is so ridiculous. we all know what it feels like to live in constant and present fear of wondering if they are about to be fired. i don’t even work for anyone anymore and i still feel like i’m going to get in trouble sometimes.
it frustrates me so much because my mind and body are recovering from coming into agreement with the artificial hustle. we call it the pace of unbelief, this idea that if we slow down, everything everywhere is going to fall apart, and things won’t work out. this lie and their operating system runs entirely on our exhaustion.
after nearly four years of being independent, i still constantly have to unlearn and deconstruct from this everything is crazy, everything is urgent, everything matters pace that we were indoctrinated into.
whenever I feel that old panic energy creeping back in, I have to remind myself of my peak corporate insanity: the time that i rescheduled my brain scan to moderate a Clubhouse room with Reese Witherspoon, Zoe Saldana and Tiffany Haddish.
ok so, it was November 2021, i was working at Clubhouse and we are hanging on by a thread and working 24/7. but it wasn’t necessarily because leadership was being all maniacal about working us to death, we just had a super unique situation going on.
Clubhouse is an always-on social platform with users all around the world. so there is always something happening. good, bad and ugly. because we were a live social audio app, the only way to experience the community was through active listening. it’s not like Twitter or something where you could passively scroll through tweets and see what’s going on. when you are on Clubhouse you had to be present in the room and really listen. and there were so many eyes on us everywhere…from competitors, to press, our creators, and everyone watching to see what would happen with us. at the time, we were literally the most written about startup ever. but we were also just a startup. so everyday we did everything we could to build new systems, infrastructure and solve new problems that were coming up as fast as humanly possible.
it created this lethal around the clock work schedule for us. i was fortunate because i had just moved to Atlanta and was now on est. and since we were a fully remote company, hq was SF based in pst. my day looked something like…wake up at 6a, help my daughter to get to school, have an undistracted work block from 8a to noon, be in back-to-back meetings until 7p est and then moderate, host, participate or listen in rooms until midnight. and sometimes be woken up in the middle of the night with news of a crisis in South Korea. oh, and we also hosted a townhall on the app with thousands of people on Sunday morning. so of course, we needed to prepare throughout the weekend and Saturday night. it was crazy.
and so over time, that schedule is going to start to wear down anyone. but when you think about the compounding nature of 15+ years of working in high performance, we-needed-that-document-yesterday kind of cultures, single momhood into bad marriage back to single momhood, and working and leading through a pandemic. i shouldn’t have been surprised when my body was like, girl, no.
i distinctly remember driving through Atlanta after having lived there for about four months. as I was driving, i had this almost hallucinatory moment where reality suddenly hit me that i actually lived in Atlanta. prior to that, i must have been in some cortisol induced transient state, like I was only passing through. I remember thinking, oh my god, i live in Atlanta. how did I even get here?!
for the first time in my life, i started getting the most debilitating migraines. and i was not a migraine person. and these were the can’t-open-eyes, can-stand-any-light, hiding-under-the-blanket, edm-rave-throbbing migraines. my eyesight was blurry. i couldn’t eat. i couldn’t sleep. nothing. this went on for days.
i’m the kind of person who refuses to take over-the-counter medication because i want to feel the intensity of my symptoms to know where i really am in my medical crisis. i was still leading the Zoom meetings camera off from bed, looking at my laptop screen with my sunglasses on, under the covers, still pushing through.
we came up in a time where we just normalized all of this stuff. emailing and slacking at all of the hours of the night was normal. waking up to 13 unread text messages from your boss on Monday was normal. emailing from vacation was normal. and pushing through the feeling of being deathly ill and saying it’s fine was also normal.
at some point, i start to realize ok maybe this is really bad and went to the urgent care down the street. the kind folks there were able to prescribe me something decent to reduce the pain, but it was short lived. when i called back to update them, they recommended i get an MRI because i never had a history of migraines. they emphasized how important it was to check for masses and increased intracranial pressure. so ofc, i go on webmd and convinced myself that i have a tumor, potentially brain cancer and might die. i was able to get a scan scheduled for the next day at an outpatient imaging center near the urgent care after begging the front desk lady and pleading with her that i might not make it.
later that night, i get a call from Chelsea, our entertainment partnerships lead. she is this brilliant British gal whose job it was to convince interesting people in Hollywood to promote things and have conversations on Clubhouse. and the platform was struggling. these were the real headlines at the time:
Inside the Rise and Fall of Clubhouse, a Pandemic Poster Child…
Twitter Spaces, Facebook, and Spotify Are Eating Clubhouse’s Lunch…
Clubhouse Co-Founder Opens Up on Growing Pains…
growing pains was an understatement. the team was starting to lose morale and we could sense that we didn’t have much longer before our top players started looking for other jobs. so when an opportunity came through that could combat the narrative and prove our relevance, we did everything we could to maximize it.
hey, i need you moderate a room tomorrow late afternoon with Reese Witherspoon, Zoe Saldana and Tiffany Haddish, she said. we’ve been working on this one for awhile and it’s locked in. we need a strong host to facilitate and hold court with them… you are the only person who can do it.
when someone says, you’re the only person who can do it, it is the equivalent of professional foreplay.
it never even occurred to me to say, no i’m sorry. i have a medical emergency. i think i have a brain tumor. and i’m not available. the automatic corporate conditioning and urge to sacrifice myself at all costs for the company kicked in and without hesitation i said, yes ofc. i’ll be there. add it to my calendar and send me the talking points.
i had to do it for Chelsea. for our team. for Clubhouse. i had to be there for Reese.
in the middle of another migraine haze, i called the outpatient imaging center back. i got the same lady at the front desk that i begged to prioritize me only a few hours earlier. with a laughable level of seriousness, i said back to her, hey i’m sorry, i need to reschedule my MRI because i have to host a Clubhouse room with Reese Witherspoon tomorrow.
the corporate workplace maintains its power through an operating system of fear, chaos, and an unrealistic pace. it does this incredible job of seducing us into believing we are indispensable, while simultaneously reminding us that we are completely disposable. this produces a perpetual panic loop. it preys on our work ethic, our innate desire to be great, and need to be wanted and valued. the system has mastered telling you two conflicting messages at once: only you can do your job, and anyone can do your job. to resolve that inner tension, we willingly agree to a frantic, inhumane pace just to prove we are needed and that we won’t be thrown away.
for me, the panic sounded like if I don’t do everything i possibly can with every hour available to me, Clubhouse will fail, and it will be my fault. which is crazy. there were a so many forces at play determining whether we would survive. but the truth is, I was too terrified to say I wasn’t available. and that fear was entirely internal. when I actually did bring it up, my boss was usually great. he’d say things like, take the day, it’s okay, we have your back.
work is the leading cause of stress. stress is the leading cause of disease. and work is where we spend the majority of our waking hours. so if we spend the majority of our lives in a chronically stressful, frantic environment, sickness becomes inevitable.
the system wants us to believe we can’t slow down. because if we ever paused, even for a moment, we would realize just how crazy, wasteful, and ultimately unimportant so much of this really is. because the system isn’t going to change, you have to change.
you have to realize that your health is your most important currency. without a healthy body, you can’t do anything of things you desire or hope for. you have to believe in your own talent, your own capability, and trust that you will always be okay, even inside a system that is actively trying to convince you otherwise.
so please, pause. slow down. get the MRI scan. go to the doctor. take the mental health day. book the therapy appointment. turn off your phone. and go on that vacation. use up all of those premium benefits. because they will have no problem using you up. the company will survive without you, but you can’t survive without you.
sending u so much love,
m
Reading this after being discharged from the hospital this morning for a heat stroke and exhaustion. Which happened 15mins into a workshop I was facilitating yesterday #TheStruggleIsReal #WhyAmIEvenOnSubstack 😩😅😮💨