What it Feels Like to Live in a Burnt Out Body.
When I was 22, I was hired to help start a hotel. Though the building had been there for over 50 years, it was gutted, redesigned, and rebuilt. The marketing team even rebranded and renamed it to highlight the new all-inclusive experience they were offering in the new building. Oh, and this hotel was at the edge of a glacier in the middle of a national park.
It was so remote that it took more than an hour to drive to the nearest town. We even had our own generators, a water treatment plant for drinking water, and another system to clean the wastewater before it returned to the river. Guests got the best views, great service, amazing food, and a guided adventure onto the glacier. There was no other hotel like it, and I was thrilled to be on board.
On my first day on-site, instead of finding perfect rooms waiting for us to fluff the pillows and fold triangles into the toilet paper, I saw that the hotel was still under construction. We were less than two weeks away from our grand opening and still needed drywall, wallpaper, flooring, plumbing, painting, and then to actually clean and set the rooms up. There was no way we would be ready in time.
As the contractors finished one room, our team would rush in like an army of ants to scrub the grout off the shower tiles, clean drywall mud from the floors with a toothbrush, wash the walls, make the beds, and set up the room. This was a small hotel with a team of just 13 people: a manager, supervisor, six housekeepers, four receptionists and three guides (myself included). We had to bring every bed frame, mattress, chair, TV, tissue box, soap dish, pad of paper and pen into the correct room. Dozens of times, we had to redo a room if we hooked the phones up incorrectly, forgot to put tea spoons with the coffee, put a queen pillow in a king room, or just to dust yet again because of the ongoing construction.
On the day of our grand opening, the president of the company was scheduled to visit but we didn’t even have toilets installed in half of the hotel. As the contractors installed and siliconed the toilets, we cleaned the rooms. Internally, I felt like I should have worked harder previously. Maybe if I had cleaned the rooms faster last week, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Or maybe I should have pointed out two weeks ago that the timeline seemed too tight. As the day wore on, my boss’s boss arrived to get things into shape. He paced the hall like a lion, pushing us to work faster, checking his watch and calling out how many hours we had left. One after the other, we cleaned the rooms in an endless row. At the other end of the hall, guests were checking into rooms already. At this end, we were still cleaning, desperately trying to stay even just one room ahead of the arriving guests. But the boss’s pressure worked; we got it done.
At last, we were open. We could finally take a step back and just operate. My job was to greet guests, help with luggage, manage tour logistics and then perform the actual tours. As a prairie kid who knew little about glaciers and 5-star service, I felt like I had to prove myself as the best butler/guide ever. Every day I pushed myself to remember each guest’s name and put them instantly at ease. I studied the glacier and worked on my tour endlessly to make it perfect. Every day, I planned around possible avalanches, anticipated that blizzards may close our only access road and worried that new millwells (dangerous, giant holes in the glacier) would open up. It was an adventure as we taught ourselves how to give tours, clean rooms, check guests in and how each part affected the other.
The adventure turned into a struggle to survive when half of our housekeeping team packed up and left in the middle of the night. Then, our manager was promoted and left the hotel. Then one day, our supervisor quit without letting any of us know. Less than two months after opening, our ragtag group was left to run a hotel in the middle of the wilderness.
With only half a team, getting the rooms cleaned between guests was always a battle. Every day, I started early to help and would race to make a bed or clean a bathroom between greeting guests. Without clocking in, I went in on my days off to organize and catalogue the storage rooms so that we had enough inventory and could find what we needed faster.
In the quiet hours of the evening, I would chat with one of the receptionists to troubleshoot the issues. We discussed big things like getting solid leadership in the hotel and little things like getting a fan to cool the lobby. Back in my room, my mind raced all night long. Maybe if I run or hike more, I will have better inspiration and ideas. Maybe if I am better at managing my emotions, I could lead people better. Maybe if we tweak how we stock our carts or fold our sheets, we can shave a few seconds off each room. Nothing was enough, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Even though we were a new hotel, with a ranking of 0, we quickly rose to the top 10 in the region. So many guests mentioned me in reviews that the algorithms made my name a searchable term on Trip Advisor, just like “great views”, “spacious rooms” and “ok coffee”. Guests loved the experience. But I wasn’t satisfied until each day was smooth perfection.
After a few months, I was burnt out and didn’t even have the words for it. There was just a feeling that I called “being in the red.” The swirling buzz of thoughts in my brain never stopped, and I couldn’t sleep. Little things, like when someone forgot to set the parking cones properly, felt unmanageable. I didn’t have time for hiking, running, or reading and felt guilty that I wasn’t dedicated enough. It felt like I was living in someone else’s body.
One day, I was cleaning and stood still in the middle of the room for a fraction of a second. The room spun around me like it does in the movies. I leaned on the window sill and thought, “I can’t do this. I’m killing myself.” But I needed to make the hotel work. So I put my head down and kept cleaning. I didn’t allow myself to stand still for the next three months because I didn’t want to get dizzy.
By October, we had daily blizzards that made it hard to operate. We were all looking forward to closing for the season. Then, just three days before we closed, things fell apart.
On the outside, it looked simple: I asked a housekeeper to clean a specific room, but instead, she took the master keys and opened all the rooms. I was livid. Now we’re going to be late because she wasted time! She keeps doing this! Why won’t she listen to me?! But, instead of getting mad at her, I quickly checked in with the receptionist on duty for advice.
Before I knew it, the whole thing exploded. Everyone was talking in the halls, saying that I was being unfair, and no one was cleaning. I am not the problem; I was helping out! My mind raced to figure out how to explain this to our boss.
Then, the lead housekeeper did something amazing. She sat me and this other housekeeper down and made us talk.
For the first time, I saw how emotions don’t magically evaporate; they accumulate and then sink their teeth into an unrelated situation, making it more painful than it needs to be. The housekeeper wasn’t trying to be disrespectful; she just wanted rooms open so she could move quickly from one to the next. Oh, that’s actually really smart. Besides, I didn’t need to worry about getting the rooms cleaned; that was the lead housekeeper’s job. They pointed out that chatting with the receptionist wasn’t “looking for advice.”. It was gossip. Oh, so I WAS the problem. It felt like something clicked. I saw how I was taking on too much and it was frustrating everyone and burning me out. I could breathe again.
After we closed up the hotel for the winter, I went to Utah for a week of relaxation and hiking. My mind cleared on the trails. I realized that opening day made me think that to be a real leader, I needed to push the team to succeed, just like my boss’s boss. But it wasn’t my job to ensure everything was perfect. In our first year, it probably wasn’t even possible! In the quest for perfection, I stopped being myself. I wasn’t a nice leader, I wasn’t running, I wasn’t reading or thinking deeply. No wonder I didn’t feel like myself. As I rested and hiked, I felt like I was slowly becoming myself again.
I wish I could say that I never struggled with burnout again. But I have. I know very well what it feels like now. Burnout feels like spinning out of control. Burnout is the swirling buzz of thoughts saying I just need to work harder. Burnout is feeling like just a shadow of myself. It always starts when I feel like I have something to prove or need to change who I am. The journey back is always the tough self-care of getting out of the situation, taking time for solitude (often in the form of running or hiking) and living my healthy routine.
Have you ever felt that buzz in your mind? Have you ever felt like if you could just… then it would be ok? Have you ever felt like you’re living in someone else’s body? Maybe you connected those feelings to burnout. Maybe you didn’t. It took me quite a while to make that connection. But now that I know what living in a burnt-out body feels like, I hope I can recognize it and get back to myself sooner.