“Hi Frank, how are you doing?“
“Good man. How are you?”
“Great. Long time, no see!”
This typical ‘how are you (doing)’ question was the start of a great talk with one of my dearest friends, with whom I spent numerous hours on and off the lab during my PhD project. And for the first time in a long time, I answered this question. Moreover, for the first time in a longer time, I answered it honestly. And it felt pretty good!
Looking back on the past seven months, I must conclude that life in general has been rather crappy. Due to health issues, parental challenges, and (self-inflicted) work overload, I initially slipped into a kind of survival mode. This mode was sort of doable, but it could not last for too long. Also, I was not able to absorb additional setbacks in that period, which unfortunately did not occur.
By the end of April, I slowly started to abandon the survival mode, and the future looked quite bright for a moment. But then, at the beginning of May, I was confronted with a situation which hit me significantly harder than the loss of my mother did one year earlier. I always said that nothing in life could burn me out, yet on the first Tuesday of June, I said to my partner that there was likely a 50% chance of me declaring a breakdown (and reporting ill) before the end of that week.
In the end, I did not declare such a breakdown, partly because I was too scared to do so. A new course had just started, and I did not want the corresponding students (and also my colleagues) to experience any negative consequence of my misfortune. Furthermore, the three Master’s students I was supervising were in the final weeks of their projects, thereby entering the phase of their projects in which likely the most important lessons can be learnt. I also did not want them to experience any negative consequence of my struggles. Although naturally, my mood and energy levels were far from ideal, hence some (hopefully minor) negative consequences may have been experienced. However, me dropping out was probably a worse alternative.
Somehow, I managed to make it to the end of the semester, after which the decreasing workload allowed me to slow down and to start getting myself together. Purposely, I did not opt for a vacation right away because I was afraid that I soon would enter a crash mode. Instead, I committed to recovering on-the-job thereby forcing myself to realize a healthy state under normal circumstances with regular day-to-day stressors. And so far, I am doing quite well.
Lastly, the past period taught me a lot of things which will inevitably help me in my life. For example, I now know that I am not immune to burning out. Also, it does not hurt to ask the follow-up question ‘are you really okay?’ when someone gives a positive answer to the common conversation starter I started this blog post with. And when a person does not respond to this conversation starter but randomly starts talking about the weather (as I did in the last few months), I should maybe sit down and have a coffee (or two) with this person to find out his/her/their true feelings.
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