When Success Becomes Unsustainable
For more than a decade, I built a career in the fine wine and spirits industry as a sales professional and Certified Sommelier. I had the privilege of working alongside world-class chefs, sommeliers, and hospitality leaders, visiting iconic restaurants, hotels, and venues across the country and abroad. As a passionate foodie, I loved the relationships, the learning, and the energy of an industry so many people admire from the outside.
From intimate wine dinners to walking vineyards in Tuscany, the work often felt surreal. Friends and colleagues were quick to remind me how “lucky” I was. For a long time, I believed them.
But beneath the surface of what looked like an enviable career, something didn’t sit right. While I genuinely enjoyed parts of the work, the relentless rhythm of sales slowly began to take its toll. Quotas never stopped. Goals were always moving. Evenings, weekends, holidays, and vacations lost their boundaries. Texts, calls, and emails followed me everywhere, until work was no longer something I did. It became who I was.
I told myself this was simply the price of success. That if I worked harder, pushed through the stress, and kept achieving, fulfillment would eventually catch up. Instead, the opposite happened. My energy declined. My weight fluctuated. Relationships strained. Mental and physical stamina eroded. At the end of long days, I’d collapse on the couch, too drained to walk my dog, who somehow always seemed to sense how spent I was. My personal life had become an afterthought, squeezed into the margins between obligations.
I was surviving. I wasn’t thriving.
Then came what I thought was my breakthrough: an opportunity to represent one of the most prestigious wine portfolios in the world. It felt like the culmination of everything I’d worked toward. For the first time in years, I felt genuinely excited again. Six months later, the pandemic arrived, and I was furloughed. Just like that, the career I had sacrificed so much for disappeared.
At first, the loss was disorienting. The questions came quickly and relentlessly. Would I be brought back? Did I even want to return? Was this really the life I had been building all along?
As the world slowed down in 2020, so did I. For the first time in years, there was space to think. Real space. That pause became a reckoning. I could finally see what I hadn’t allowed myself to acknowledge before: parts of my career had been rewarding, but the cost was unsustainable. Constant availability. Chronic stress. Neglect of my own health and well-being. Something had to change.
That moment marked a reawakening.
For the first time, I gave myself permission to imagine a different future. One with boundaries. One that respected mental and physical health. One that didn’t require sacrificing everything else in the name of success. I began deliberately reshaping how I worked and lived, choosing alignment over momentum and sustainability over status.
The transition wasn’t easy, but it was clarifying. And it was worth it.
Today, I’m deeply invested in helping others navigate similar crossroads. I work with high-achieving individuals who have done everything “right” and still find themselves exhausted, disconnected, or questioning the life they’ve built. I understand the fear that comes with change. I also know what becomes possible when you stop forcing more output from systems that are already strained.
This chapter of my life has taught me that fulfillment isn’t found by pushing harder. It’s found by operating differently. Balance, clarity, and autonomy aren’t fantasies reserved for a select few. They’re attainable when success is redesigned to actually support the life you want to live.
That’s the work I’m committed to now. And if you’re standing at a similar point, wondering whether there’s another way forward, there is. I’m living proof of that. As I like to say, the proof is in the Patrick.
