The building is in chaos. There are staffing gaps. Someone’s going to have to triage what falls through the cracks while you’re gone. The handoff is messy. You keep thinking about what might go sideways over the next four days, and it’s all right there in your chest—that familiar knot of responsibility and dread.
And you’re going to the concert anyway.
Not because you don’t care. Not because you’re abandoning anyone. But because if you don’t step away and breathe, you won’t have anything left to give when you come back. And someone has to be okay for a few days while things are chaotic, because the things will always be chaotic—that’s not the variable here. You are.
The lie we tell ourselves is that if we just stay, if we just push through this week, if we just absorb enough of the chaos, we can smooth it out. We can solve it. We can prevent the collapse. And yeah, sometimes we delay it. Sometimes our staying actually does make a difference. But the cost is us. It’s our sleep, our marriage, our sanity, our ability to show up for our own lives. It’s trading our health for a problem we can’t solve anyway.
Chaos doesn’t end when you leave. It might shift shape. It might land differently. Someone else will have to deal with it. And that’s not a failure on your part—that’s literally the job of leadership. You’re building a team that can handle things when you’re not in the building. If they can’t, that’s a problem, but it’s not a problem that gets fixed by you canceling your weekend.
Your staff doesn’t need you martyring yourself. They need you functional. They need you coming back rested enough that you can actually lead instead of just react. They need to know their leader won’t burn out on the unit and vanish entirely because no one ever gave permission to step away.
So go to the concert. Leave your phone on silent. Don’t check email. Don’t call to check in. Let the building figure itself out for a few days. Your unit manager, your charge nurse, your senior staff—they’re competent enough to handle their jobs without you in the room. Trust them. And more importantly, trust yourself to need this break.
The chaos will still be there when you get back Monday morning. It always is. But you’ll be someone who actually slept, who heard good music, who remembered what it feels like to not be drowning. And that person can lead. That person can show up. That person can be the steady one.
The chaos doesn’t end. But you don’t have to end with it.
Go. Enjoy the show.
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