If you’ve been following along with my Be Your Own Manager series – you’ve certainly picked up on my habit of separating my “Artist Self” and my “Manager Self.”
I do that a lot, when I’m consciously thinking about my commitments and obligations, and even my hobbies. I define my roles and my relationships, and I do my best to keep them well defined.
I separate the times I’m being a Bookkeeper from when I’m being a Friend. Being a Spouse is different than being a Responsible Adult who remembers to make doctor’s appointments and return her library books. All of these roles are me, but they’re also all separate from me, in a way. Like the interchangeable shirt piece for a Lego figure.
At the heart of all those roles and relationships, I am a Person. That person needs to be protected, sometimes, from the passion and influence of the individual roles that I play.
I learned this the hard way several years ago. When I was working in the non-profit arts sector, I was a wholehearted believer in the organizations I worked for. I desperately wanted them to be successful, and I tied my entire identity to that success. I couldn’t tell you where my Administrator Self ended, and where the person on the inside began.
And when those jobs got to be too big for me, when the failures started stacking up, they stacked up on Laura the Person.
That’s one of the most insidious things about burnout: it follows you home. It impacts every other part of your life, too, if you’re not careful.
Once I left that work, it took me a long time to unwind and separate all the threads. And ever since, I’ve worked to keep that central personhood clear of all the other labels. I frequently remind myself that I am Laura the Person first, and a Writer or even a Spouse second. Along the way, I’ve discovered something unintuitive. That bit of distance makes me better at everything else.
That distance allows the interplay of the Writer Self and the Manager Self, which means the Writer Self is doing better work. That distance means that when I close my writing project to do my bookkeeping work, I am entirely focused on the numbers at hand, which means I get it done better, and faster, than if I were distracted. That distance means that even when I’m stuck on a project, I can still relax and enjoy a weekend with my husband and friends, which means I come back to my work with new energy after the break.
