I’ve been writing this week about my burnout, examining what went wrong during the 2022-23 school year. I created a timeline of the events that led to my burnout, and yesterday, I looked at how those events eliminated my buffer and put me at risk for a nervous breakdown. Today, I’d like to examine another reason the 2022-23 school year reduced me to a burnt out husk: I volunteered in ways that were not authentic to my true self.
I volunteered to be an AYSO soccer coach for both my kids’ teams and the experience taught me an important lesson: I AM NOT A SPORTS COACH. Do I enjoy watching my kids play sports? Yes. Do I enjoy shooting hoops with them in the driveway or passing the soccer ball on our front lawn? Absolutely. Do I want to organize drills and study the strengths of each player and come up with a strategy to dominate and win? No, not even a little. That shit just doesn’t interest me. (But someday writing a novel about being a soccer mom? Absolutely!)
Because I’m not a soccer coach by nature, practices and games depleted me. I love thinking about my energy as water in a bucket. Some activities, like writing and crafting, add water to my supply. Other activities, like cajoling a group of six-year-old boys to dribble a soccer ball around cones, deplete it. Coaching two soccer teams was the equivalent of throwing my bucket off a cliff.
Honestly, as I look back on the 2022-23 school year, being an AYSO soccer coach was enough to burn me out. But I went the extra mile and also volunteered to be our PTA’s VP of Volunteers. This meant recruiting and organizing volunteers for every PTA event. I had to send email after email, check schedules, nag, harass, beg AND I HATED IT. Within one week of the school year, I hated myself for taking on what was basically a thankless HR job, except I didn’t have employees because almost no one wanted to volunteer.
But here’s the thing: someone out there is reading my description of the PTA VP of Volunteers job and thinking, That sounds awesome. In fact, lots of people were born for HR roles. They love to organize folks and events. This sort of work fills up their bucket to the brim with cold, fresh water.
The same goes for being an AYSO soccer coach. Tons of people love it! I’m just not those people.
And that’s okay! The world needs different people with different talents and passions. If we were all meant to be AYSO soccer coaches, who would cheer from the sidelines? If we were all meant to be PTA VPs, then we would need to arranged cage matches to pick the best candidate.
I felt obligated to take on these roles because as a mom, I’ve been hammered with the importance of volunteering. AYSO and PTA are very vocal about this, and as a recovering people pleaser, I heeded their call and signed up to volunteer and in so doing, I committed to huge responsibilities that did not feel authentic to my true self.
Writer and podcaster Gretchen Rubin talks about this often. She seeks to Be Gretchen. (There’s like a 50% possibility I misquoted her, but I couldn’t find the quote, and that’s the spirit of her words!) I need to Be Courtney, and Courtney is not a soccer coach or a PTA VP.
In the future, before I volunteer for anything, I will ask myself, Does this help me be the most authentic version of Courtney that I can be? If the answer is no, then I should decline the opportunity. Life’s too short to fill my days with volunteering obligations that crush my true self.