Anonymous User asked: My work cancelled my dream project's funding, and I'm heartbroken. It's not over yet, but we've spent literal years fighting funding battles and it's been really hard and I'm tired and I don't think it's worth the human cost — almost everyone who joins the team ends up burnt out. There's one (new) person who still wants to work on it, but as one of the project leaders, I feel like I have a responsibility to not support a project that has a net negative impact on its team's health. A few people have said I'm catastrophising and that being upset is impairing my judgement.
Am I valid for trying to pause the project until we can find a way to make working on it less stressful, rather than stepping back and letting someone else keep it going without me?
Short answer: yes totally valid.
Long answer: Yes, and its annoying you even have to ask the question. I hate that capitalism has instilled this insatiable need for churn and growth and speed in absolutely everything, at the cost of people's lives. It sounds like your values don't align with that, and its shitty to be put in a position to stick with it and potentially burn yourself and your team out, or step back and deal with the loss of your dream while someone else sees it through. If I ruled the world, you could just pause. But that's not reality. In similar positions, I've made either choice before and the burn out way leads to burn out, its not rocket science. The second way preserved my values and, while it felt terrible to "abandon my dream," preserving my integrity was worth it in the end. My rosy hopes for you are, if you did that, someone would notice and reward you for that. I can't promise that will happen. But you get to fall asleep in your own bed every night, and sticking to your values might not keep you up at night as much as being the personal catalyst of a number of other humans' burnout. Its up to you at the end of the day, unfortunately. <3 But you are entirely valid for struggling in this moment and for wanting better for yourself and your team.
