I have a case of senioritis...

Each year around this time, I sit at my desk and look out the window at the pretty sunshine that’s finally peeking out. I scramble to make summer vacation plans. I refresh the weather app. I think, "ugh, Monday."

And here’s the thing: I love my job. Like, LOVE love it.

Still every May, like clockwork, I get that nagging case of the malaise we all knew as senioritis in school. That heavy-eyelid, brain-elsewhere, who-cares feeling of… "meh."

If you’re nodding along, welcome to the club. Roll the windows down on the way home tonight, belt out some Bryan Adams, and we’ll call it our secret handshake.

Here’s what I’ve learned from interviewing a few hundred people who looked airtight from the outside and felt off-key on the inside: this feeling — the early-summer “meh” — is the most-misdiagnosed feeling in working life. People mistake it for a problem with their job. They start drafting resignation letters in their Notes app. They space out in meetings. They torch perfectly good situations because the sky got blue.

But before you fall into this trap, I'd like to invite you to the opportunity consider that there might be a better way:

The Four Elements of Consonance

When work feels off — even in the "I-love-my-job-but-also-want-to-lie-in-a-hammock way" — it’s almost never because everything is off. It’s because one of the four elements of consonance is asking for your attention:

• Calling — does the work itself still matter to you?
• Connection — are these still your people?
• Contribution — is what you produce actually moving the life you want forward?
• Control — do you have any real say over how it gets done?

Sometimes the “meh” is a real signal that your life is a bit broken, and the slower summer pace finally turns the volume down enough for you to hear the alarm.

And sometimes, if I'm being really honest, it’s just that the sun is out, your kid’s last day of school is Friday, and your body is screaming that it would, in fact, like to be at a beach.

It's your job to tell the difference.

Let Me Tell You About My Vet (Because He Did Just This)

I write about Jake Tedaldi in Limitless. His is the story I keep handing people who confuse a feeling with a verdict.

Jake is a veterinarian. He came into the work the way a lot of us come into our callings — with reverence. He loved the animals. He loved the nervous humans attached to them. He wanted to give them all the focused, unhurried attention they deserved. Then he got his first clinic job, and the clinic ate him alive. The constant interruptions. The cold sterile rooms. The day so rushed that he’d sit at the kitchen table at 9 p.m. trying to remember which patient was which so he could write up his charts. He had no time. He had no say. And the very calling that brought him in was the thing he couldn’t actually get to.

Plenty of vets in that spot quit medicine. Some open a bakery. Some go corporate. The story practically writes itself.

Jake didn’t quit. Jake diagnosed.

He held his four up to the light and saw that two were just fine and two were on fire. The Calling was right. The Connection was right. What was broken was Control — he had none — and Contribution, because the paycheck wasn’t actually buying him the life he wanted, which included four young sons and a wife in the middle of a brutal medical residency.

So Jake remixed. He left the clinic and started a house-call practice. Same calling. Same connection. Completely different control. He decided when, where, how fast, how much, how often. The dip in income got more than paid for by the dip in misery. (Full disclosure: Jake is my vet. Woof.)

Jake’s story is the quiet cautionary tale of every May malaise. Because here's what I know to be true this week: most of the time, the answer is not burning it down. The answer is figuring out which of the four is on fire and remixing around it — and, just as often, recognizing that nothing is actually on fire and your body just needs a long weekend.

What You Should Do Now

If you’ve sat with the four and named something real, here’s the menu — in this order:

1. Take the reins where you are. Build your own rubric. Bring it to your manager. Run the conversation about what success in your role looks like before someone else writes that script for you. Most of us assume the workplace is immovable. It almost never is.
2. Lobby for what you need. The flexibility. The new line of business. The development budget. The four-day week. The team. Most of the time the answer is no because nobody asked — not because anyone would have said no.
3. Go external. Sometimes the only honest move really is to leave. But option three is option three for a reason. Skip the first two and you’ll pack the exact same problem into a moving box and unpack it on day 90 at the next gig.

Don’t decide anything big between now and Labor Day. Just sit with the four. Notice which one is loudest.

If the answer is “all of them are fine, I just want to be in a lake,” congratulations — you’ve solved it. Plan the vacation. Take the long weekend. Come back in September.

If the answer is “one of them is genuinely on fire,” you know what to do — and you know what order to do it in.

Either way, you don’t owe anyone a decision today. You do owe yourself the question.

A Few More Books I'd Like to Recommend

​The Relationship Advantage: Unlock the Life-Changing Power of Human Connection by Barb Betts. This book takes you beyond surface-level networking into the deeper work of connection, starting with the most important relationship you’ll ever have: the one with yourself. Then it expands to how you connect with others, and finally, the relationships that make an impact across every part of life. These aren’t just skills for better business or leadership—they’re the foundation of the legacy you’ll leave in the lives you touch.

​All Rise: A Lawyer’s Evolution from Prison to Purpose by Rashmi Airan. Rashmi Airan’s All Rise is unique. Columbia Law. Wall Street. Respected Miami attorney. And then a federal judge sentenced her to a year and a day in federal prison while 180 people she knew sat in that courtroom and watched. What she built from that moment is not a redemption story. It is a prescriptive leadership memoir with a framework that will follow you into every hard moment you live. The RISE Framework asks four questions most leaders spend entire careers avoiding: What do I need to reframe? Who do I actually need around me? What am I gripping so tightly it’s costing me? And who am I becoming through all of this? Rashmi answers them with the kind of honesty that makes you put the book down and just sit with yourself for a minute.

​The AI Gap: Women, AI, and the Next Great Leap Forward by Erica Rooney. AI is already shaping how work is evaluated, how leaders are recognized, and how opportunity is distributed. In The AI Gap, Erica reveals how the systems we use every day have never been neutral, and how artificial intelligence can quietly scale the patterns, assumptions, and biases already built into our workplaces, technologies, and institutions. This book helps women understand what is at stake, why this moment matters, and how to move from AI-curious to AI-confident so they can help shape what comes next.