That time I sent an email with a typo to my job’s entire client list

It was winter of 2018.

I had been at my job for a little over two years and was starting to get the hang of things. I was getting brought onto different projects and feeling my workload start to grow. I was excited, enthusiastic and ready to show what I can do. I was taking on more, saying yes to anything I could and staying open to whatever creative projects I could have even a small role in.

Each year around the holidays, the company I worked for organized a fundraiser for a non-profit in the area. The second year I worked on this project, I was in charge of getting the emails ready to send out to our full client list. My task was to design the emails in Mailchimp, give it a last read through and hit send. This felt like the perfect opportunity to prove myself and that I could be trusted with more of the client-facing stuff.

This time, however, the project coincided with my trip to Ohio to visit my parents. After a cold airport sandwich, a 6-hour flight and an hour drive to our house, I was in no shape to be editing an email. But the fear of letting my coworkers down felt more important than taking time to actually land before diving back into work.

“But I said I’d have it done tonight”

“They’re waiting on me”

“After I finish this last thing then I can relax”

These thoughts were more potent than any cup of coffee. I had placed the fear of letting my team down above anything else. It was about midnight and the glow of the TV lit the room as my mom and I finished up a “couple more things” before we could truly unplug for Christmas.

I could feel my heart racing against the 3-hour time difference as my coworker sent me the last changes to the email. I could feel I was in the home stretch.

I gave my first read-through –– all good.

Second read-through –– check, check and check.

Final quick read-through for good luck and good measure –– she’s ready to go.

I hit ‘schedule’ and closed my laptop with confidence.

I slept peacefully knowing that I had done everything I promised I would and that I would be seen as dependable, reliable, and someone that could be trusted.

So in the morning when I woke up to an email from my coworker saying “is this the internal version or did this go out to everyone? There's an extra ‘a’ in the third line.”

My. heart. sank.

What made this even worse: I worked at a writing agency 😳 Our whole business was writing and editing for some pretty big-name clients –– and this email went out to all 2500 of them.

Suddenly everything that I had attached my worth to was spiraling downward. I couldn’t help but replay the moment in my head when I hit send.

After a week in Ohio, I expected the worst. I had spent the previous week secretly being hard on myself. I was beating myself up because I was trusted to do one thing and I had messed that up. My inner perfectionist was pissed:

“You can’t be trusted with big tasks”

“How did you miss something so simple, you’ve lost your clients’ trust”

“Your work is sloppy”

I logged onto Zoom for the team check-in with my heart racing. I felt like I needed an over-the-top apology and had built an entire case in my head around how I could justify my mistake. What actually happened was my team was understanding as they always were, they reminded me that it happens and some shared a story of a similar mishap. Then the meeting moved on. That’s it. We talked about it for about 3 minutes and continued about the day.

Looking back, there were a few things that went wrong here:

What I thought was just enthusiasm was actually the ‘Honeymoon phase’ of burnout
The honeymoon phase is where a person is so excited about their job (for example) that they accept more responsibility because they're genuinely optimistic about and committed to what they're doing. Where it shifts into burnout is the onset of stress from taking on more responsibility. This was me to a tee. I was equally excited about more work and drowning in what I already had on my plate. But I didn't want to miss an opportunity.

Lack of boundaries
This mindset of not wanting to miss out contributed to a lack of boundaries around my time and energy. Instead of asking for support when I knew that it’d be a struggle to finish everything after my flight, I prioritized the appearance of having it all together. I knew that the timing wasn’t going to work. But because I hadn’t voiced that, I felt like I was stuck in an impossible situation: add one more thing to my coworker’s plate or just power through? So I powered through.

Fear of failure
This was one of the few creative projects I had been assigned to and I was so excited and equally afraid of messing it up. That fear of failure led me to overthink, act hastily and neglect my own needs all in the name of doing a good job.

Striving for perfection
The biggest thing at play was the need for perfection. It’s wild to see the mountain of pressure that perfection creates in the rearview mirror. I went into work expecting to never work on a creative project again meanwhile it was a blip on everyone else's radar. The panic that a simple extra letter caused when really it wasn’t a big deal at all. 

It makes me think of all of the mountains I’ve built in my head because I was afraid of doing something imperfectly. That fear of messing up has held me back from trying new things more times than I’d like to admit.

So whenever I start to feel my inner perfectionist ramping up I have to remind myself: perfection isn’t the goal –– and  it never was.