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I spoke to the Times about quitting my job after a year of COVID reporting. Nearly every interview featured a traumatized frontline worker, devastated family, or piece of news that spelled more death. At some point, I didn't know how to keep doing it. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/21/technology/welcome-to-the-yolo-economy.html
That said, I think there's a lot to say about burnout and exhaustion and trauma that are missing from this story. And I certainly wouldn't lump myself in with anyone who described their job as "high-paying" or "cushy and stable." And I've never been a "bored office worker."
Still, it's important to acknowledge how few people have the financial option to leave their jobs, no matter how drained and depleted they feel.
I also think there's a messy conflation here between folks who are "flush with savings" and "seeking post-pandemic adventure" versus folks who were grieving and didn't know how to get out of bed anymore and had to take time to breathe and recover, both mentally and physically
aNyWaY I've been reporting on burnout in the journalism industry, and I'll have more to say about this when that story publishes
ah well, even if I spend the whole day getting mocked by strangers online who don't know anything about me for being a privileged baby….. I’ll be just fine!!!!!
For folks who don’t know reporting can be trauma-facing, my therapy homework *today* is to listen to a recording of me describing the time I watched three kids under 7 scream out in agony after they were flung onto the pavement in a car crash next to their father’s mangled body.
In a few weeks, I have to do this again with the time I saw a couple burn alive in a fire as their roof collapsed in on them. And then again a few weeks later, for either the time a 19-year-old was stabbed to death in front of his mother or the 14-year-old girl who was gang-raped
Simply put, I quit my job so that I could do exposure therapy for PTSD and live in a spare room in my parents’ house while I recover. It’s really not the same.
