I couldn’t see the option because no one had shown me it was there. Everyone around me said tough through it. That was the answer. That was the only answer.
So I did. And eventually, I couldn’t even recognize myself.
In this chapter, you're going to learn that borrowing isn't betraying yourself, so that you can stop pretending to be someone you're not, and start accessing bloom sustainability.
Friday at 5pm, I left the TV station in South Carolina and drove. Seven hours through the dark. I timed the gas stops so I didn’t miss the only station open after midnight in the remote stretch. I arrived at a hotel near Fort Benning around midnight and slept until 4am.
An hour later, I reported to my Army unit for physical training. I ran the four mile course, performing as the top female athlete. The day moved through constant meetings, and my section managed the work the unit needed. I did it well, because that’s what I do.
I ate lunch in my office to save time. A male coworker, same rank, aloof in a way I didn’t respect and someone I would never want to be like, stopped by my desk. He’d watched me all morning. “You look like you don’t want to be here,” he said.
He was right. I didn’t want to be here.
But I worked the rest of Saturday anyway. And Sunday too. Same rhythm. Same performance. After final formation on Sunday afternoon, I jumped back in the car to drive seven hours back to South Carolina.
Two hours in, a tire blew in Georgia. The middle of nowhere, and nothing was open, so I got a hotel room and waited for Monday morning.
By noon, my tire was replaced and I drove straight to the TV station, hoping to make it by deadline. My team needed me there, because the 5pm news aired whether I made it or not, and we were already down a camera operator.
I was running on no sleep, no margin, no options. The drive and the work. The next drive and the work after that. Cycle after cycle after cycle.
A Sunflower. An Iris. We moved. We executed. We rarely slowed down, and we definitely didn’t stop.
What I didn’t know then, eating lunch at my desk, was that there was a question I could have asked.
The questions I did live with were different. Should I leave? Could I sustain this? Those were the questions I recycled constantly (the answers always being no, and no). But there was a better question underneath them:
What would make this better?
This seemingly unsustainable yet inescapable situation - what would make this better?
I first time I saw this question, I was researching ways to get my 5 year old to eat his chicken. It was a clean protein source that his doctor required, and he refused to eat it.
