Hello and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast. My name is Anna and I have a confession to make. I have to come clean. To come clean means that you admit something that you've been hiding for a long time. You finally tell everyone your little secret. You reveal what you've been hiding. You admit to your wrongdoing or whatever you've been concealing, you finally tell the truth. So, I have to come clean. I am not a superwoman. There we go. There we go. That's my big reveal. I'm not a superwoman. I often put forward this very calm and collected, together, image of myself. I'm the girl who does it all. I release daily podcasts. I put out YouTube videos. I am on all the platforms. I have two children. I look after the house. I do squash and the gym and I go out for walks and I'm busy, busy, busy, happy, happy, happy. I'm doing everything. I'm living the dream. In reality, I'm struggling. In reality, I'm overwhelmed and in reality I'm not always very happy, usually due to overwhelm. And I suffer from cycles of burnout. But lately the burnout has been getting so much worse than I've ever experienced before. It's like my burnouts are hitting harder. So, I tend to be in this vicious cycle and a vicious cycle is something that is hard to get out of, but it never improves. You're just stuck in this cycle that's not good for you. And my cycle is I work hard and because I'm inspired and I'm a worker, this is the kind of person I am. I'm a workaholic. I love working and I, you know, get excited about making content and excited about creating services and products that you guys will love and benefit from. And I receive great feedback from you guys. So, I'm like, yes, let's make more, let's make it better. And I'm always thinking, even the other night I couldn't sleep because I had so many ideas in my head and I had to try and put them all down on paper. When I go for a swim or for a relaxing moment in the spa and I'm in the sauna, I'm always thinking, I'm thinking of ideas, things that I can make for you guys. And I work and work and work with all this energy and enthusiasm, but I have so many ideas and so many things that I'm already doing that I start to feel tired. Tired as you would working all the time. And then because I'm tired, I start getting brain fog and the ideas aren't coming as clearly, but I still have all the work to do because I've committed to doing all this work. I've said,"I'll do a daily podcast." So, I must stand by my word. I always keep my word as much as I can. I do my best. And then I get so tired that I get poorly, or I start to get into a bit of a funk. I become quite down and blue and then I get a mouthful of ulcers and I just start to hit rock bottom. I feel awful. I feel unwell. I feel unhappy. And I've still got to do all the work that I've lumbered myself with. And so this is the cycle. So then I, you know, I try to then prioritise rest, not over work. I prioritise rest over social activities or spending time with the children or going to play squash. And so I don't do those things. I get the rest that I need. And then I'm full of energy again. And I start plowing the energy into my creative pursuits, into making content, thinking of ideas, and then it starts all over again. I overburden myself. I work super, super hard and it just becomes this constant cycle of up and down, up and down. At the beginning of the year, I said I would do a podcast every single day. And I really wanted to do that. But this last week I've been at my lowest, have a mouth full of ulcers. I am very tense in my body. I'm pulling all my muscles because I'm so tense. I spend 12 hours a day sat at my computer, I'm working late into the evenings, I'm working weekends. I don't even have a break in those days. I don't break for lunch or dinner. I'll literally eat while I'm working. I don't give myself any head space. And I think because of that, that can affect the quality of what I'm releasing. And then I start to feel depressed because I don't feel like the quality is as good as I want it to be. And I don't have the head space to make things better and to come up with even more creative ideas. And so, I've reached a point where I feel like I'm falling short in terms of quality. To fall short is to not deliver on what you promised or not be as good as people hoped you would be. So for example, if you marry a man or a woman, because they seem to tick all your boxes and they say that they align with all your values. But then they don't, that those things don't materialise. Maybe, you know, a man might say,"I want to have children and I want to have a life with you travelling the world and doing all these fun things." But then once you get married, he decides he doesn't ever want to leave his hometown and he decides actually he'd rather have a dog than a child. Then he's falling short of your expectation of him. And so I feel like sometimes the quality of what I'm doing is falling short of my own expectations. And I am about to fall short of the promises I've made. And that's in order to protect myself and to make sure the quality of the content is always good. Okay. So, I would use the phrasal verb give up. I'm going to give up the daily podcast, but I don't like to see it that way because giving up is like, you know, completely being defeated. And I don't think I'm defeated. I could also use the phrasal verb tap out. To tap out is when you say,"I give up, I surrender." You would tap out if you're in a wrestling match or in a boxing match or some sort of fight, there's normally an option to tap on the floor a few times to say,"I'm out." Or tap your opponent to say,"You win. I give up. You win the round." So I am to a certain extent, giving up and tapping out, but I'm not because I am going to continue with the Five a Day episodes, I am going to push forward and ensure that the Five a Day thrives, because I think it's the most valuable part of this podcast. And it doesn't mean there's never going to be a Saturday episode or bonus episodes, they will still exist. They just won't come every weekend. They'll come when they come. They'll come when I have an exciting guest to interview. They'll come when I've got an interesting topic or a fun story that I want to share. When I have the time and the space to make it as good as I can do. Okay, so I hope, like me, you will accept this change and move on. So, I'm accepting it and I'm moving on. To move on is to carry on and not be concerned about things that have happened in the past. You just move forward. You look forward, you think about the future, you think about what's happening now rather than what's changed. So, I'm going to accept it and move on. Because the phrase, the proverb is true. The proverb is all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. And this is true. If you work all the time and you never have chance to enjoy life, take a moment and play, then you'll become a very dull person. And I think it should really be, all work and no play makes Jack a very poorly and very dull boy. Because that is what happens. So hopefully, while you've been listening to this, you've also picked up some vocabulary. Let me go through it. We had a vicious cycle. A vicious cycle is a constant cycle of behavior or actions that keep going round and round, and it's detrimental. It's bad, but it can't easily be broken. Then we have burnout. Burnout is the state of being completely overwhelmed, having done too much and feeling burnt out, feeling drained and exhausted. To come clean is to take responsibility and reveal something that you've been hiding. Fall short is to not meet the expectations set by yourself or other people to not be able to deliver on the promise that was made. To tap out and to give up both mean that you stop pursuing something that you said you were going to do. So, to just stop. Hopefully none of you will ever give up learning English, and I don't imagine I'll ever give up teaching English. We had accept and move on. To accept something and move on is to understand it, to acknowledge it, whatever it is that's happened, and then to carry on with your life. To continue with your life and what you're doing. And then we had the proverb all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. So, I don't think I have much more to say other than, and this is important; in light of this change, the Plus Membership that I bang on about a lot in some of the earlier episodes, to bang on about something. This is slang. It's also a phrasal verb, to bang on. To bang on about something means that you talk about something a lot. You are always talking about it."Oh, is Anna banging on about Plus Membership again?" Yes. So, Plus Membership, which I bang on about a lot, has, not gone away. What it's done is, it's evolved. It's gotten better. It's just living in a different place now. So, Plus Members should be Club Members. So, I only have now one membership, and that's the Conversation Club membership. So, if you are a Club Member, not only do you get access to all of the transcripts, not just the latest ones, but all of them that have ever been, and all of the vocabulary lists that have ever been created, the full database of the Five a Day podcast episodes, and every bonus episode that's ever been created. Not only do you get all that, but you also get a weekly live English class and four Conversation Club classes where you can practice your conversations and access to an entire resource that is the ELAN Community and access to the Telegram group. I mean, being part of the community is a highly valuable resource. And it's all available on a subscription that you can cancel at any point. So, if you are interested in becoming a member of the club, then the link will be in the description of the podcast. Otherwise, you can continue to enjoy this podcast as it is because I'll continue to make lots of material for you. And you can enjoy it and make the most of it. And other than that, I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who's supported so far. This started out as a hobby and it's now probably my biggest focus of everything I do at the moment, outside of looking after my core students. So, thank you so much for joining me. There won't be an episode tomorrow, on Sunday, if you're listening to this on the day of release, there won't be a Sunday episode tomorrow. I'm having a lie in, I'm having a day off. Woohoo! I hope you won't miss me too much, but I'll be back on Monday and every Monday with the Five a Day episodes. I say I've got a real frog in my throat. I do apologise for my froggy throat, but I'm going to stop rambling now. Thank you for listening, take very good care, and goodbye.