I don’t know how people do it. I tried. I worked at Google for four years, trodding along every day in the corporate hamster wheel. And it drove me crazy. Literally. I developed anxiety disorder. I was diagnosed and everything.

Every day became a struggle.

For the latter half of my time there, I worked as an executive admin assistant. So my time and schedule were already not my own. I’d accompany my exec to meetings (or go in their stead if they were double booked), prep them for the next one, and make sure they were fed and caffeinated in between. So now my days had become: go to meeting, run to bathroom, have a panic attack, cry, hyperventilate, maybe throw up, then fetch lunch, go to another meeting, run back to the bathroom, and so on and so forth, on loop all day long in a vicious cycle.

Now to be clear, I’m not saying working at Google (or other large corporations) is as horrible as I’m making it sound. Google was actually quite a magical place to work. The rumors are true. There were so many perks, especially at the mothership Mountain View headquarters where I worked most of the time, that it was hard to ever justify leaving. We had a gym, twelve cafes (each with a different culinary specialty), free laundry machines, dry cleaning delivered to your desk, and ridiculously discounted massages you could grab between meetings (a 15-minute chair massage was only $5!). We called it campus. It was basically college 2.0. You might call it heaven. And it was, for a time.

But as with all good things, it’s perfectly natural for it to eventually come to an end. It’s also true that no one person is the same, so no one work life will fit everyone the same either. This one simply did not fit me. I just didn’t see it. So my body forced me to stop and pay attention.

It’s as if it was saying to me,

“This life is hurting me. You don’t feed me well. You don’t rest me enough. I’m unhealthy and weak and tired all the time. I don’t know what I’m getting out of bed for anymore. I’m going in circles and it hurts. So I’m not going to function for you anymore until you change it.”

“Until you do, I’m going to give you sleepless nights with restless limbs and cold sweats and bad dreams. I’m going to make you hyperventilate and shake all over and throw up. I’m going to give you cough after cold after flu. I’m going to mess with your head, so that you question the devotion of your friends and family, and fall into a deep depression. I have that power and I’m going to use it until you listen.”

The way I like to put it, my body had an allergic reaction to corporate life.

One day my amazing exec pulled me aside and asked if I was okay. She said, “The light’s gone out of your eyes.” She could see something was wrong. We talked and she encouraged me to take some time off to first get healthy, then reassess what I want to do. So I found a therapist, met with our HR, and together we made a plan to give me three months of paid medical leave – which I was incredibly touched they offered despite the very real possibility that, after all that, I might decide it best to leave Google altogether.

So off I went. Once a week I saw my therapist, learned about cognitive behavioral therapy, and attended group panic classes. I sat in a circle with other anxious Annies and Adams like me and learned breathing exercises. Or how to calmly stop and evaluate the realistic changes for all those worst-case scenarios running madly through my head. They were helpful, to a point. And I gave them my all.

But the perhaps far more valuable exercises from my three-month leave were the ones I did with myself.

Now now, nothing dirty mind. Just good clean soul-searching fun. I spent hours alone doing countless introspection exercises on myself. I read every career book and took every personality test I could find. Meyers Briggs. Strengths Finder. The 4 Quadrants. What Color Is Your Parachute?

I journaled every day, stream-of-consciousness style, and analyzed what came out. I tried to remember and write down my dreams first thing every morning, and pulled what insights I could from those too.

I made lists upon lists. 5 things I truly love about my current work. 5 thing I hate about my current work. 5 things I honestly think I’m great at. 5 things others say I’m great at. 5 things I know I suck at. 5 skills I’d like to improve. 5 subjects I’d love to study more. 5 careers I’ve always wondered about. And so many more.

I really do love making lists.

Then I took a long hard look at all of those great insights, and at myself, and identified my 10 “passion core” – the core values I must have in my daily work to feel excited to wake up each morning and fulfilled at the end of each day.

Here’s where my 10 Passion Core landed:

1. My Tribe – More than anything else, I’ve learned it’s the people I work with who have the biggest positive impact on my professional joy and fulfillment.
2. The Subject Matter – It’s gotta be something I’m passionate about, or can get passionate about. Even if I don’t know much about it yet, I do love to learn.
3. The Implementor – I prefer to take a more behind-the-scenes role implementing others’ ideas, rather than struggling to come up with great ideas myself.
4. Location Freedom – I love being nomadic and multi-city, so I don’t want any work that might compromise a healthy balance with that travel and lifestyle.
5. Constant Learning – Again I love learning, so I want opportunities to constantly expand my knowledge on a variety of topics from people who are better than me.
6. Cyclical Change – Expanding on variety, I prefer work with a natural rhythm of frequently changing projects, roles, and topics for fresh perspective and challenge.
7. Creative Development – I love storytelling, particularly in fiction, and want to have significant creative input with whatever project or team I’m on.
8. Tangible Results – I also love building things, and prefer to do project-based work where I can easily see the results of my work with my own eyes (and often hands).
9. Frequent Movement – Stagnancy is my greatest fear, so I want work that keeps me moving, building strength, rarely sitting still – both physically and mentally.
10. Livable Pay – Money is of least importance to me, but it’s still a reality of life, so my goal is just to make enough to comfortably thrive in this unconventional lifestyle.

Identifying these 10 Core Values was not so much a reinvention of the self as it was a reconnection to the self. The self that I’d lost somewhere along the way. I was lost and now I am found. It wasn’t easy. It never is when you’re trying to find your way back from lost. But I did it. I put in the time and work and a whole lot of reflection.

Now I believe looking back is only has useful as it helps you look forward.

And move forward. It’s not about living in the past, but rather learning how to be better in your future. I didn’t get back to the way I was pre-anxiety. I became a newer, stronger version of myself. There is a reason we grow up, grow older, and grow more into ourselves as we go.

Because living is a verb.

It involves doing, moving, growing. The opposite of stagnant.

I never would have done all of that self-discovery and learned so much about myself, let alone made such a huge change down a new exciting and challenging path, if I’d never gone crazy in the first place. If my mind and body had never forced me to. If it weren’t for that, I could still be stuck in that comfy corporate routine, going through the monotonous motions of the same daily grind, puttering around in a cloud of corporate processes and org restructures and watercooler talk, a shell of what I was, not fully living or truly alive.

Now I have this amazing, ever-changing, untethered, unconventional life. It’s not comfortable. Far from it. But it’s mine. And it’s still teaching me new things about myself all the time, even now over eight years later. That’s what happens when you step outside of your comfort zone. You grow.

So I don’t regret any of it for a single second. My anxiety sparked a whole new journey that reminded me what I’m living for.

You could say panic attacks saved my life.

Here I thought I was completely miserable being back at work. But funnily enough, the past few days here have been oddly happy ones. I’ve had the random luck of running into a few old favorite friends and colleagues, and indulging in some long overdue quality catch up. It’s amazing how something like that can really pick up your spirits.

Now I know I said the culture here is one-dimensional and the interactions lacking authenticity. But that of course is a generality not necessarily applicable to everyone. In my four years here, I was lucky to find a number of truly wonderful and candid people. And it’s been these people who’ve made working here for this long bearable. Truthfully, anytime someone here has resigned and sent around the usual mass farewell email, they’ve often sited the people they’ve worked with as the best part of their time here.

Likewise for me, it’s been the people I’ve known here who have kept me coming back to work everyday.

I’d almost forgotten that, lost in my woe-is-me-I-hate-my-job whirlwind. But over the last couple of days, I’ve been fortunate to run into some of these folks and experience real heartfelt conversation. It’s a wonderful reminder that there are genuine souls here I’ve had a lasting connection with. These are people I actually plan to stay in touch with and make a part of my life’s next journey. Just a few happy days, and with it some long overdue Facebook friend-ings and promises that my last days here won’t be the last days for our friendship.

What’s more, many of these people were inspired by the tales of my next journey and have confided their own secret dreams of freedom and exploration. I was so caught up in my own vision that I didn’t stop to think there might be others here with the same aspirations. It’s an unexpected treasure to discover I’m not the only artist-turned-corporate-drone who wants to return to my roots.

It somehow makes me feel less alone, and eases some of the guilt about abandoning this seemingly perfect company and dream job.

So as I struggle to keep my composure in this place day by day, and as I endeavor to preserve the precious bits of my soul recently recovered, I can take comfort in knowing that these people have become another much needed source of comfort and confidence. And that I, in turn, have the ability to provide them with the same thing.

I know now how the hell I’ve lasted a whopping four years here. And why the prospect of leaving, though relieving, still feels a little like breaking up. It’s not because of the cheap massages, or the free laundry, or the gourmet meals, or even the state-of-the-art gym.

It’s because of the people.

I wish I could be like those people who get excited to wake up at the crack of dawn, jumping out of bed at the sound of their alarm, business suit ready to tackle another productive day at the office. Ah, those happy corporate drones, finding accomplishment sitting at a desk, working on a computer all day, writing a few redundant emails here, attending some pointless meetings there, making the cogs in the wheels of revenue generation turn.

Why couldn’t I be just as happy doing that?

Why instead do I have to feel suffocated and unmotivated in such an environment? I physically ache at the idea of submitting purchase orders and expense reports. I tire too quickly of the endless daily swarm of emails asking this impossible request or that unnecessary question. And all I want to do is get out, just get outside and away from the sounds of monotonous keyboard typing and hushed water cooler gossiping.

I thought loving the company was enough. Believing in the incredible impact Google has on the world’s community, how we are changing the game, creating more access and opportunity for more people.

But I’ve gotten to a point where I just have to face the fact that what I do here does not interest me. I’m pretty sure it never did, to be honest. It was just my way of making my mark in a company that I thought had so much potential to do so much good, that it was worth just getting my foot in the door. And perhaps it still has that potential, but that doesn’t change the fact that my day to day remains tedious and distant.

And for that matter, do I even still love Google as I once did? As a young business, it was such an awesome story to tell: the growth and success it reaped so quickly, while maintaining such a philanthropic start-up culture. But now? Now it’s become so much like just another large corporation, forced to make tougher decisions and more compromises. Now it’s become this large company, desperately trying to still run itself like a small company, and having a terribly conflicted time in the process.

I can’t actually make a difference through this company, or at least the kind of difference I think I want to make. I can’t manifest that impact I desire from this desk. Not given where the company is now, and the role I play in it.

And I’m tired. I’m exhausted every day that I have to wake up before the sun rises, and sit at my desk typing busily away, while the best part of the day passes serenely by. And then you see, the wearier I get of my job, the less I get done. And the less productive I am, the longer I have to work to finish. And the longer hours I work, the later I get to sleep. And the less sleep I get, the wearier I become. And so it perpetuates, the vicious cycle I’ve become.

More and more I’m beginning to see that in order to fully restore my health, my energy, my passion for life, the only thing left to do is to no longer be employed in such a job, at such a company, in such an environment.

And so I must conclude, with a somewhat less heavy heart that I expected, that I must now begin planning my inevitable departure from the Google bubble.