The Next Step: One last year

You may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?”
—Talking Heads

The new fiscal year means my new contact takes effect. It brings changes, a slight but much-appreciated bump in pay, and financial security for another year—my last as an editorial assistant.

Working for the journals has been a blessing. It has provided steady and secure employment, and I have had the pleasure to work with amazing, caring, and understanding people who treat me like a human being. But I am very burned out and need to do something else.

My job is killing me softly. Years of meticulous recordkeeping; shepherding papers through the review process; copy and pasting countless names, emails, and institutions (more than anyone should in a lifetime); making the same edits over and over; cleaning inconsistent and sloppy typesetting; weeding out typos in proofs; troubleshooting “the system”; mediating conflicts; going the extra mile for luddites and lazy authors, referees, and editors; updating contact information and affiliations; compiling stats by hand; downloading reviews, manuscripts, figures, and tables; endlessly scrolling through documents and webpages; uploading and organizing accepted-paper files; and transferring information between the five Word documents I have open at all times has taken a serious toll on me. It is not hard work—I am well aware there are much worse jobs in the world—but the repetition and my longevity have wrecked me. I cannot do it much longer, so I want this to be my last year.

I have felt trapped for a long time, uncertain about what to do next and wary of leaving a good job. However, I realized I cannot continue doing something that is starting to make me physically sick, that I feel no joy doing, that does not provide any pride or sense of accomplishment, that will always be a dead end, that I have done for way too long, that has nearly killed every passion in my life. I am not creating anything. I am not making the world a better place. Multitasking has destroyed my focus. Working from home has damaged my social skills, left me without a sanctuary, and turned everything I do into an obligation (I live at work more than work at home). I am unable to appreciate or enjoy anything. I am angry at myself for allowing it to go on for so long.

I have been feeling that line from “Once in a Lifetime” a lot recently. How did I get here? How do I go somewhere else?

I had a frank chat with my boss’s boss, the woman who signs one of my checks. I told her I cannot do this job for much longer. She empathized and relayed her own experience with burnout, apathy, and professional uncertainty. It made me feel better others understand and acknowledge what I am going through. But the work must be done and nobody else is doing it.

I plan to do it for only one more year.

In the meantime, I need to take better care of myself so the job does not get to me as much. (How much has that contributed to my burnout? Probably a lot. I have enabled my job to kill me softly and played along. I was the one who did not take a vacation for eight years.) I need to pace myself, allow things to sit, and take more days off. How many of my 10 paid sick/personal days did I use last year? Zero. I get 12 this year, so I will take them all.

One year. One last year.