From Hero to Zero

A boss once told me that I had the tendency to go from hero to zero in a day; sometimes even within a conversation. Her words have stuck with me all these years. I've gone from hero to zero in a day more than the average person uses the restroom. Today was no exception.

What's ironic is that I never remember waking up being a zero. But I always go to bed feeling like one. Every day, I wake up with intentions. Instead, I argue with emails, fold laundry, and cry in the two minutes I can spare alone while checking a bank account that reminds me I'm working three jobs and still not ‘winning.’

It's the small, invisible undoings, like:

• The passive-aggressive email I re-read five times, just to convince myself I didn't deserve it.
• The task I didn't finish, and now my brain is whispering ‘you're slipping, you're a fraud, they're going to find out.’
• The client I over-delivered for, hoping they'd finally see my value, only to be met with disappointment.
• The guilt of being short with my daughters, even though I'm the only one holding everything together.

The world sees the hero — the spreadsheets, the detailed decks, the over-committed calendar. But no one sees the zero.

I'm not writing this to wrap it in a bow, or to give some philosophical lesson. There's no three-step healing tip at the end. I'm just saying that if you've ever gone from hero to zero in the span of a single day… if you've ever doubted yourself because you feel like too much and not enough at the same time… there's nothing wrong with you.

There's just a system that benefits from you always over-performing. A belief that says your worth is in your productivity. A pattern that calls your burnout a ‘bad attitude.’ A culture that claps when you overfunction… and goes quiet when you crumble.

So what's the lesson here? I don't know. I just know that I get to try again tomorrow. I'll wake up a hero. And I'll go to bed a zero.