I didn't work for a month

Here's what happened

I’m back. Did you miss me? Did you cancel your subscription? Did you move on to another writer/podcaster/entertainer? One who would never take a month off? One who is hotter? Smarter? TALLER?¹

On June 22, my family and I boarded a plane and flew to Milan to kick off the trip of a lifetime². Our family was at an inflection point: in a few weeks, Ian would be starting medical school. Next year, Sophie will be in Nursing School. So before the Big Kids stepped fully into adulthood, we wanted to get the band back together. I packed a medium and carry-on suitcase. I loaded my Libby app with books. I turned all of my email addresses to OOO and left my laptop at home. More on that here:

Out Of Office

For four weeks, I didn’t write³. I didn’t email. I didn’t strategize. I didn’t take calls.

It was so fun. It was so scary.

From the first time I clocked in for my first shift at the local consignment store⁴, work has been far more than my source of income. Whether I was putting on the red Speedo for 8 hours of lifeguarding at the public pool or gluing myself to my cubicle to write press releases about Crock Pot cookbooks that would clog the inboxes of reporters and editors around the country, work has given me value and purpose and identity and stress and anxiety. It has been an escape and a distraction and it has been an addiction.

Workaholic sounds so virtuous compared to the other kinds of -holic you can be, but only if you willingly ignore the ways this perfectly legal and unavoidable substance can impact your life. I love to work because I love my work, but work became my entire life. I have lost track of the number of family events I missed out on, or attended in body only, my eyes and hands glued to my phone.⁵

I was important, you see? The work was important. Should I miss a DM, an email, a post; should a podcast episode be imperfect or delayed, should I (God and myself FORBID) turn down an obligation disguised as an opportunity…what would happen?

• The world might stop spinning (or explode altogether).

• The future would evaporate before my eyes.

• Worst of all: someone (most likely a stranger) might be mad – or worse! – disappointed in me.

So I disappointed myself and the people who love me, and I listened and nodded when kind-eyed therapists tried to guide me towards what is obvious to you reading this: that I needed to build a sense of self, a sense of self-worth, outside of work.

“Totally,” I’d say, “yeah, I really get that.” And then I would leave that office and take a phone call on the ride home, leaving no moment unmaximized.

But you cannot be in two places at once, and multi-tasking, it turns out, is a myth, and for the past few years or so I have been trying to wrestle back some kind of control in this area of my life.

I love to work because I love my work, but work cannot continue to be my entire life.

And I don’t want to speak prematurely, but a month felt like the reset that I needed to feel like a person again: we swam in the sea and ate gelato and walked through ruins and I willingly let myself get fleeced by every small vendor whose path I crossed because that is my personal role in the global economy. The voice in my head that has been screaming that a pause would ruin me and my team and our families financially dulled to a whisper and then shut the fuck up altogether.

So what happened? The subtitle said something happened.

I am not ruined⁶. The world kept spinning. And when I got back home and went through all of my emails, the rough recap is this:

• We lost 25 paid subscribers

• I got 2 emails about new writing projects

• I got 1 email with a TV opportunity I’ve dreamed of my whole life

• 2 new podcast advertisers signed on

• 2 new social media sponsors reached out

I actually feel creative again, it’s a feeling I can only describe as the Work Zoomies; where I want to run around in circles (type on a computer) until I pass out (it’s time for lunch). I’ve started to actually write the novel that

Jo Piazza

has been encouraging me to write since 2022.

Not a lot of us can just take a month off of work, I know, I know. But quite a lot of us have this kind of unhealthy relationship with work.

Actually, we made an episode about that this week:

Pull over on the freeway, it's a PowerPoint Emergency! | Corporate Horror Stories Pt. 2 with Becca Platsky of Corporate Gossip

The title of this post was almost “I didn’t do anything for a month,” but then I spoke to someone I love who was recently laid off from an intense corporate job after decades of intense corporate work who has found themselves with ample free time and literally no energy.

It’s as if the stress of those years of sprinting on a hamster wheel while bathing all of their organs in cortisol has caught up with them, and their body is trying to exorcise the corporate demons that possessed them.

They’re uncomfortable with this version of themselves, this phase where they are “doing nothing.”

And I said this to them, and I’ll leave it with you:

Yours in earnestness and imperfection,

Nora

❤️ Paid subscriptions are ALWAYS OPTIONAL and also help me pay the team who makes this work possible. Annual memberships are 20% off this month only (the next sale we’ll run is in February). This discount only applies to new memberships, which is a limitation of the platform and also kind of just how sales work sometimes, ya know? Paid memberships also support “scholarships”, because WE ARE ALL ON THE SAME TEAM! If you need one, just email hello@noraborealis.com and we’ll take care of you.

❤️ We have a new TTFA Anthologies collection ABOUT work stress. You can binge it anywhere, but here is a link for Spotify and Apple.

❤️ Health insurance is a scam! Full video.

❤️ I get 8+ hours of sleep a night because of these THC gummies. The DREAM ones conk me out for 8-9 hours, and the UPLIFT ones make me chill and fun. Code NORA gets you 15% off!

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❤️ Trying to break your phone addiction? I’m still Bricking my phone for most days and this link gets you 10% off. If the link doesn’t auto-apply 10% off, use code NORA.

1. What’s her name? Don’t tell me I won’t be able to handle it!!!

2. More on this in another email!!!

3. Aside from in a notebook!!!

4. Apologies to anyone who consigned their clothing at Nu Look apparel in 1998 and had their belongings priced by a 15-year-old girl who thought anything that wasn’t hot-pink, cropped or embellished had no value.

5. Or laptop! I often brought my laptop along!!!

6. I knocked on wood after I typed that!!!!