Burnout and Beginning Anew

In May 2021, my husband saw a Facebook post from an old friend and colleague: “Who wants to start work in the X hotel spa in Austria next Monday?” “Me,” he wrote back playfully from our balcony in Berlin, the city where he was born and where I had lived for over 20 years. Like much of the world, we were not in love with lockdown in a big city and we had nowhere to go to wait it out. His business had collapsed overnight and there were no concerts for me to play.

I had just arrived at a tourist information center in a wild, otherworldly landscape. To the right, there was a narrow body of turquoise-hued water; mountains covered with glaciers and thick caps of snow towered over the other shore. To the left, there were dunes, tropical-looking patches of green, the idea of a beach somewhere beyond; bright light everywhere reflected by snow, sand, water. Without knowing how, I saw my distant destination: a quiet wooden lodge overlooking it

On belonging, quitting, and refusing to cheer for nonsensical things The first time I quit something, it was because I was insulted. I had wanted to be a cheerleader despite having no interest in football or football players. I was ten years old at the beginning of seventh grade; I was a year and a half younger than my classmates and desperate to do something to make myself more normal in their eyes. I attended cheerleader training one Sunday in a cavernous gym full of overex