Object in Motion

Gabby is riding a wave of motivation she hasn't felt in years, juggling three jobs, a growing podcast, and a brand she's building from scratch, and it feels incredible. It also feels familiar in a way that scares her a little. The last time she moved at this pace, in college, it took years to recover from the burnout that followed.

This episode sits inside that tension instead of resolving it. Gabby turns to Keke Palmer's TED Talk on hyper-functioning as a survival skill, and to the parable of the Tortoise and the Hare, not for answers but as mirrors for the questions she's actually asking herself: where is the line between driven and burned out, and would she even recognize it before she crossed it. It's a conversation about rest, ambition, and the moments, like a quick drive for a third espresso, where the questions actually show up.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_01 0:00

If I say, hey, instead of going to bed at 2 a.m. tonight, I'm gonna do something crazy. And I'm gonna bed at 10 p.m. tonight. Of course, my brain immediately says no and says, hey girl, you're not saving lives. So the world isn't gonna stop if you pause for a few hours. And my body immediately says, But you have so much to get done today, so you need to just go ahead and lock in. I spent 16 hours last week alone editing an episode of this podcast because I wanted to have video and I liked the take that I did, and there was an issue with it. Um, and it didn't even kind of occur to me that if I could have a good take one time, I could probably have a good take a second time. And so I should just try to record it again until after I'd spent all that time going to bed at 5 a.m. one day to get it done.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

I'm Gabby, and you're listening to While I've Got You. Let's start the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Since starting this podcast and really getting more consistent in this work, I have been burning the candle at both ends. And it is bringing me so much joy. I feel so good, I'm so happy. Even with the fact that I am working three jobs, my to-do list is never ending, and somehow I need to get everything done today because there's no time tomorrow. I can't explain it. But juggling work and building this podcast and a brand behind it feels really good. And it reminds me of how I was my early years in college, late high school. I was doing a lot. I was working, trying to discover the next best thing, selling, doing like MLMs, doing all of that kind of stuff in addition to my schoolwork. And when I got to college, I was working more than one job and still trying to find a creative way to express myself. When I graduated college, I was working two jobs and started a YouTube channel. Just so many iterations of this podcast of me as a creative has existed over the last, let's say, 10 years. And with all of that, I would say about four or five years ago when I first moved to LA, I was so burned out. I had a full-time job. I was working towards my master's in social work. I had clinical hours that also turned into a part-time job. And I had another part-time job doing contract, like virtual assisting work. And I was so beyond burned out that I wasn't creating. Not seeing things through, not being consistent caused me a lot of shame. And in addition to that, I was still going to therapy and hiring lifestyle coaches and talking with my doctor about depression, anxiety, ADHD, any combination of things that was affecting my ability to be as driven and focused as I knew and remembered I once was. I won't say that now this consistency and the way that I'm showing up with multiple jobs and this iteration of my creativity and this podcast is me being back in that same place. But there is an element of me thinking, man, she's back, baby. Stella's got her groove back. I don't know what those therapists were talking about. I don't know what the doctors were talking about. Nothing feels as good as how booked and busy I am right now. And it hasn't been until lately that I've started thinking, this pace barely worked for me in college. And so I want to be mindful to not set myself up to fail again. I want to rest. I want to go the slow and steady route. And in a lot of ways, I feel like I can't. Not necessarily that there is a fear attached to what happens if I have an episode that doesn't have video because the video is shit. What happens if I push this task till the next day? What happens if I have to skip a week on the podcast when I've been consistent so far? I don't want to say that it's necessarily the fear. It's a lot of I don't want to. I think that I have this rich, yummy, delicious energy and motivation right now. And that is both fueling my drive and giving me a little bit of fear. Don't know what my line is. I of course want a nice, quiet, restful day. The kind of day where I have a lovely cup of coffee and then I rot in my bed while reading a book all day. Of course I want that. And because things are so busy and I feel so driven and so aligned, I'm not really sure how to take one. There's that idea that the universe will keep putting you through things until you get the lesson out of it. And when I felt like this in college and was like pulling all nighters to study for class because I didn't get off my first job until a certain time, and then there was stuff due for my second job, and I also wanted to come up with an idea for the podcast. When I was running on the fumes of caffeine and 30-second naps I took in between blinking, I thought I was doing the best. And it wasn't until I hit that line that I realized and can look back and see that something was taking a hit underneath all of that. I'm definitely not someone who believes that rest has to be earned. But I do think that there are seasons where you have to put your head down, work really hard, and grind towards the things that you want. I am currently in the process and trying to work through where the line is between being driven and working hard and being burned out. It's almost like running a red light. You think it's yellow, you think you're gonna make it, and then oh shit, you ran the red light, and now you hear sirens because you got to get a ticket. Kiki Palmer has a TED talk and she talks about something similar to this about becoming the breadwinner and this sort of generational curse breaker as a preteen. She acknowledges that having that level of pressure meant that by the time she and her family actually reached a level of stability, she didn't remember or know that rest was a possibility anymore. I think if you spend long enough in survival mode and asking yourself, can I take a break? Can I not live in survival mode? Can I not live in fight or flight or freeze? And the answer to that question continues to be no. If you keep asking those questions and do I need to do this to survive, continues to be a yes. You get to the point where you stop asking that question. So, how do you build something and rest and survive without getting to a place of being burnt out? How do you make peace with the aspects of your life that have to take a back burner? Other than the logical answer of you can't do everything at once. What do you do when it kind of feels like you can? When you've got the energy, the motivation, the drive. In addition to the need to survive, how do you pick what gets pushed aside? For me right now, the thing that is slipping through the cracks a little bit is working out. Typically, I find myself right in the middle of getting some work done that I really need to get done, that I really want to get done. And I'm checking the time. I know what time I need to be to the gym by so I can, you know, meet all these criteria and other circumstances and blah, blah, blah, blah. I know what time I need to do that, and I'm watching the clock while I'm doing this work that I want to do and that I'm having a good time doing. And I say just a few more minutes. Okay, I just need 20 more minutes and then I'll be done. I'll be able to wrap this up and go. And then 20 minutes within a blink of an eye is four hours, and I've missed the window of time that I know I can go to the gym. So now that I've missed the window of time that I know I can go to the gym, I think to myself, I'll just do a home workout. It'll be fine. And then that window passes because I get distracted doing something else, and then needing to do all of the other survival things like feed myself for regular life reasons and walk the dog so she can do her business as well. All of those moments come into play as well. Not to mention there's a whole other social media layer to it and comparison being the thief of joy that it is, when I finally do finish what I'm doing, or when I finally do get to a place where I'm like, Yes, girl, you did that. You dominated the day, you checked all those things off your to-do list. You are a bad bitch. Hot girl. Yes, love that. Then I'm doom scrolling in my bed, and a 19-year-old just buys her first house in the US because she's already got another one in Dubai, and then she is like, uh, I just got a Maserati and I'm supposed to just go to sleep. No, I got work to do. I gotta get up. I feel like there's still that level of comparison of being on your own journey and also feeling hella late to the club, to the party, all of it. When I was outlining this episode, it made me think about the parable of the tortoise and the hare and how, you know, the message is the tortoise moves uh slow and steady and moves in a way that's built to last the whole race. While the hare, you know, pushes hard and fast right out of the gate, gets burned out, and then is forced to stop and therefore loses the race. There the great, beautiful message, slow and steady, we love it. I think that because it's a parable and it's just a little story, we don't take into consideration the possibility that what if there was a life-changing prize at the end of this race? What if the hare is the fastest runner that anybody knows of? Anyone in the hare family. And so it is up to this hare to win this prize to save his family, to pull his family up out of their current circumstance. It's gotta fall on the hare because he's the fastest runner. We don't consider the fact that maybe the hare is being chased, or that the bystanders are impacting his desire or his ability to slow down. Maybe they're encouraging. Maybe they're saying, you can do this, don't give up, you just gotta push through. Yesterday you said today, and today you said tomorrow. Just do it. Maybe that's what's being yelled at the hare. So much so that he pushed through being tired until his body forced him to rest. How in the hell was the hare supposed to know that he'd pushed too far? Especially when the signals were being drowned out by his present circumstances. That the signals were being drowned out by the motivation, the energy, the excitement, the creative expression. We can even add another element and say, what if life was a highway and then your circumstances changed and now things are no longer peachy keen and you're pushed into a level of survival that you've never even been in before? What if you've already tasted the sweet, sweet taste of victory, and then things have changed, and now you're just trying to make it back to where you were. I think conversations like this have to go beyond dismantling like a toxic productivity or a hustle culture. Because a lot of times those are blanket pieces of advice that don't actually account for someone's genuine circumstances, and definitely don't consider for anything happening outside of pursuing a big dream. This is for anyone trying to find the balance between hard work and dressed. When it feels like those words don't even belong in the same sentence, when it feels like you don't care about all of those things at the same time right now, because you're just feeling so freaking good. And when you also know logically that they have to coexist. Here are the questions that are starting to come up for me in those tiny little baby moments when I'm on my way down the street, less than a mile, to go get shots three through six of espresso so I can come back and continue working. Are the bystanders is the survival noise, is the possible destination or the accomplishment accomplishment of my goals, drowning out what my mind and body is trying to tell me about rest? And underneath that question is will my path to my goal be washed away, erased? Will any of that happen if I slow down and take a rest? Does my ability to survive disappear? Do my dreams get washed away if I say, hey, instead of going to bed at 2 a.m. tonight, I'm gonna do something crazy and I'm gonna go to bed at 10 p.m. tonight. Of course, my brain immediately says no and says, hey girl, you're not saving lives. So the world isn't gonna stop if you pause for a few hours. And my body immediately says, but you have so much to get done today, so you need to just go ahead and lock in. You need to go ahead and make that matcha so that way that little extra kick of caffeine will be there when the six shots of espresso caffeine have worn down. I say all of this lovely rest and balance stuff, and I want to acknowledge that. And my mom said, wouldn't it have just been easier if you re-recorded the episode? Honestly, girl, yeah. Didn't even didn't even think about it. Should have talked to you sooner this week. I say this as someone who stayed up till 1 a.m. last night to outline this episode because I knew that I had a very limited amount of time to outline, record, edit, publish, advertise this episode before going away this weekend. If you guys have been listening to my last episodes, then you've probably gleaned, or I've actually said, in the glow up tax episode and in the Saturn Return episode, that I feel really aligned in my life right now. Everything's kind of coming up gabby. And to have this yummy little motivation and energy on top of all of that feels like truly the answer to prayers I've had for years. Almost like an object in motion stays in motion. I got a little bit of motion and I just haven't stopped since. Only been recently that I've been asking myself, what's the line? The last time that you moved at this rate, and you were living off of those fumes of wishing a prayer, you got burned out and it had you down bad for a couple of years. So what's the line? And how much longer do I have to catch it to find out? I'm not here to give any advice, let alone any bullshit advice, and say that there is a world in which you can move away from having to work hard for the things that you actually want. Or that it's easy to just ignore and mind wipe the weight of survival. But I'm working through and processing that maybe right now rest for me doesn't have to be this big dramatic, you better sit down and drink some water before you pass out type of energy. Maybe the work I need to do right now is just noticing whatever messages my mind, my body, the universe, etc. is giving me about what I need. I don't know if I plan on slowing down or stopping or resting, quote unquote, really anytime soon. I mean, it took Kiki Palmer until she had her son to decide to prioritize rest and presence over another achievement. And I don't know if that's where I'm at yet, but I am naming that I am aware. It's something on my mind. And if it was or was not on your mind, I wanted to offer my thoughts as well. Before I let you go, I want to say thank you so much for listening and for being in this with me. This is episode 11. We hit 10 episodes last week. You can follow me on While I've Got You on All Platforms and While I've Got You Pod on Substack. And I'll be back with a new episode next week. Thanks so much for listening.

unknown 18:21

Bye.