On burnout, quitting, and redefining what matters

This post I saw on Threads a few weeks ago has been living rent-free in my head:

It stopped me in my tracks, because that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. I took several weeks off writing this newsletter, and here’s why:

After three years at Spot AI, I made the bittersweet—and frankly heartbreaking—decision to leave. It wasn’t sudden. It wasn’t dramatic. (Okay, it was a little dramatic.) It was a slow realization that the career path I was on, the one I had worked so hard to follow, was mentally and physically harming me.

From the outside, everything looked great. I was leading multiple teams, expanding my scope, trusted at the exec level. I was a highly influential individual at the company. I’d built systems, led my team to ship critical parts of our product, and helped close major deals. I was succeeding by every traditional measure, and I was proud of that.

But I was also burned out.

And that burnout wasn’t happening in a vacuum. It was the result of a lot of things—being stretched too thin, spending more time on what the company needed than what energized me, and realizing I was no longer able to grow. It’s hard to feel like you’re moving forward when you’re constantly playing defense. I knew something had to give: not just to feel better, but to build something better for myself. To become whole again.

Still, I didn’t even realize how bad it had gotten. I’d been dealing with mental health struggles for the better part of six months. I was in therapy, trying to navigate through it, but I wasn’t actually doing anything about it.

I told myself I could push through. We all deal with hard things, right? It’s just stress. It’s temporary. I thought I was masking it well, but it turns out I don’t have a great poker face.

First, my therapist told me that I would never actually recover unless I got my stress under control.

Then the two people I trust the most—my best friend and husband—called me out. I was making plans then backing out at the last minute. Any small request felt like you were asking me to move mountains, and I’d react accordingly. I was consciously isolating myself from everyone I cared about, and I honestly felt in the moment like this was the best choice for myself and everyone around me.

To put it dramatically, I was a shell of a human. A blob in human clothing.

Here’s the thing about burnout when you're a high performer: you can try to hide it. You keep doing the work, showing up to the meetings, hitting the goals. You rationalize the exhaustion, downplay the resentment, and tell yourself that this is just a season.

But at some point, it stops being “just a season” and starts being your life. And people will notice.

I tried to fix it. I offloaded meetings. Attempted to set better boundaries. I stopped responding to messages over the weekend. But the truth is, sometimes burnout isn’t just about needing a break—it’s about needing a change. And change often requires loss. Of comfort, of certainty, of a version of yourself you’ve worked so hard to become.

Leaving wasn’t easy. I care so deeply about the people at Spot. I care about the mission. I care about the work. But I also care about myself, and after several weeks of reflection and therapy, I finally decided to put myself first.

I’m no longer willing to trade long-term sustainability for short-term status.

I’m not sharing what’s next just yet. I want to sit in this in-between space a little longer. But I can tell you what I’m taking with me:

• Growth isn’t always linear. Sometimes it looks like a detour. Sometimes it looks like stepping away. And that’s okay. Your career is so incredibly long that a “step back” may feel like one in the moment, but it’s such a tiny blip in the long run.

• Success doesn’t have to mean climbing. It can mean building something new. Or resting. Or just existing without a five-year plan.

• It’s okay to outgrow the version of you that once fit. Your definition of ambition will change over the course of your career, and different chapters of your life will require different needs.

• Boundaries don’t exist unless you uphold them. The time you allow someone to take will be taken. If you don’t set and protect your limits, no one else will do it for you.

Recovery from burnout doesn’t happen over a weekend or a single vacation. It’s going to take time for me to feel like myself again, but I’m so incredibly proud of the steps I’m taking now.

Kelly

P.S. I’m going to keep writing this newsletter, but I’m starting a more personal one titled After Burnout. It’s less “self-help” and more “here are my thoughts and feelings as I navigate my professional life post-burnout”. If you’d like to follow along, you can subscribe to After Burnout here.