The new year is a time of change, a new date, a new month, a new start. The sky is slowly brightening as the winter solstice falls in the past. For those in the corporate world, the new year is often a new fiscal period, a new quarter, a chance to evolve and try new strategies.
In one’s home, the new year is a chance to clean away treasured holiday décor and return to a normal cadence. It’s a time of resolutions, refreshes, and renewal amongst a backdrop of frozen air and salted sidewalks.
In one day, a simple shift in perspective has brought new life into a stale routine. And with the shift comes opportunity.
For me, the primary goal of this shifting new year is burnout recovery.
Burnout has become a loaded term in recent years, with inauthentic rhetoric of HR friendly work-life balance slowly depriving the term of its meaning. But burnout is, well, a bitch.
You can slow down when it works for you, or your body will choose a time and force a full halt, whether you like it or not. And I didn’t like it.
2025, for me, was a year of culmination. The culmination of decades of mental health care journeys, hypotheses, and breakdowns. A single diagnosis this year proved to be the key to many of my past struggles, and the now unavoidable mapmaker of my future.
ADHD, that’s right, I am joining the trend of adult women who went undiagnosed throughout childhood, and while I could spend my time ruminating about the providers I’ve talked to over the decades, the providers who should have known, I don’t find that helpful or productive. They didn’t know, but I do now, so what am I going to do about it?
I knew I was speeding towards burnout in September, and since this wasn’t my first bout with the big nothing, I decided to be proactive. I sought care and, armed with a new diagnosis, opted to seek accommodations at work to try to mitigate the issue.
But getting an accommodation can take months, or so I’ve learned, and getting issues documented, having meetings, and filing paperwork only added to the stress my poor ADHD brain was struggling with.
Come December, the inevitable was here. I no longer had the time to find my balance; my body had had enough. Fatigue hit hard, my immune system was failing, and migraines grew in ferocity each week.
So, where does that leave me going into 2026?
It leaves me excited, of all things.
I’ve made some big decisions regarding my career and how I’m going to prioritize my brain and my health in the new year. And while those decisions were made quickly and out of sheer necessity, they excite me.
This new year will be a year of rest, of creative rejuvenation, of growth and evolution.
This year, I will be building a life that fits me, and not spending my limited energy forcing myself into boxes meant for someone else.
As our sun slowly returns, I know that so too will be energy. So too will the colour in my cheeks. And so too will the joy and passion I have for writing.
Until then, I will be sleeping long, dreaming big, and being gentle with myself as I explore the ways in which my brain was meant to work.
Dayna Lang 