Ritual Sacrifices
On work, devotion, and knowing when to stop giving
I’ve spent years chasing projects and organizations I cared about. What does that mean for a chronically on call engineer? Late nights, weekends, cancelled plans, an oft disappointed partner, and energy I didn’t always have. Some routines kept me alive: quiet mornings, focused sprints, hand-grinding my favorite coffee beans - little habits that actually mattered. But some patterns weren’t sustaining at all, they just wore me down, and I didn’t even notice until it was too late. I inadvertently crossed the line between occasionally prioritizing work, and always prioritizing work the mission.
For those of us with the privilege and choice to use professional skills towards social impact and mission-driven work, it is a constant balancing act between our rituals to fill our cup, sacrifices we make at work, and avoiding turning those sacrifices into normalized rituals that don’t serve us or our goals. Sometimes the worst enemy is ourselves, and sometimes it is a system designed to thrive off mission exploitation.
Rituals that Sustain
The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted;
but few are the ears that hear it.
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Walks, runs, and quiet moments outdoors have always been my anchor. Growing up near Forest Park in Springfield, one of many parks with the DNA of Frederick Olmstead flowing through, allowed me to benefit from this early on. Visits as a toddler with grandparents, high school cross country races, and falling in love all happened in a place that felt at once wild and natural, but also safe and soothing.
Olmsted’s principle was clear: thoughtfully designed spaces don’t just look beautiful, they restore, sustain, and quietly hold you. A connection to nature is a part of the human condition. I felt that early, thanks to Olmstead, without even realizing it.
Presently and for over a decade, I’ve made it a point to remain close to Prospect Park, a 500+ acre space in New York City fondly known as “Brooklyn’s Backyard”, another gift from Olmstead. The park’s curves, wooded trails, and open lawns are familiar companions, almost like a choreography I’ve internalized. I bear a large tattoo of the storied Camperdown Elm on my right arm, rooting myself further deeper to the quiet resilience of the tree’s persistence and beauty. Whenever I feel unmoored, stepping into these spaces, moving through them, or pausing beneath the trees reattaches me. I processed the news of my grandfather’s passing by putting down the phone and immediately chasing a blurry 8 miles of dusk, wandering through the quiet foot trails of the park without a destination. Every run, whether under streetlights or first light of dawn, reinforces that sense of perspective: the world moves fast, but here, I am slowed, centered, and fully present.
A recent visit to Mont Royal in Montreal, another park designed by Olmsted, brought the same sensations. Gentle hills, winding paths, and open spaces invite the quiet immersion that Olmsted sought in many of his parks. Even far from home, I could feel how these naturalistic designs invite the mind to wander while still feeling held, reminding me that these hours of solitary motion are not just exercise, they are rituals of being.
Olmsted’s philosophy has always been a quiet throughline: the idea that the spaces we inhabit, and how we inhabit them, can and do shape our mental and emotional well-being. These are the very same moments that make other rituals, like my morning coffee (which must be beans from Nguyen Coffee Supply), work as well.
We all need moments to recharge, maintain, give perspective, or spark joy. How we do that varies so much, but the necessity of it is a constant. Especially when we are seeking to give much of ourselves to others and to causes, long term sustainability to meet those commitments starts with putting on your own gas mask first.
Sacrifices at the Altar
The phrase “sacrifices at the altar” might sound melodramatic, but it ties directly into what librarian Fobazi Ettarh called vocational awe, the belief that some institutions are inherently good, sacred, and therefore beyond critique (emphasis mine):
Vocational awe describes the set of ideas, values, and assumptions librarians have about themselves and the profession that result in notions that libraries as institutions are inherently good, sacred notions, and therefore beyond critique. I argue that the concept of vocational awe directly correlates to problems within librarianship like burnout and low salary. This article aims to describe the phenomenon and its effects on library philosophies and practices so that they may be recognized and deconstructed.
Ettarh was writing about libraries, but the same pattern is everywhere - especially in jobs built on purpose.
Steve Burns, “Steve” from Blue’s Clues, reflecting on his career in a 2025 interview with Rainn Wilson said,
“You get two be two things as a kid’s show host. You get to be an implausible saint, like Fred Rogers, or you get to be a crack addled monster. There is no in between.”
That impossible binary shows how we mythologize devotion itself. Some roles are treated like callings, not jobs, and any boundary looks like betrayal. Vocational awe extends well beyond the profession, and is actually deeply rooted in our societal expectations at large in the US when it comes to educators and those working with children.
In mission-driven work, the same myth plays out slightly differently. You’re either “for the cause” or “against it.” There’s no room for fatigue, dissent, or complexity. In the heat of perpetual urgency, even devotion becomes disposable. It’s a false dichotomy that burns people out, while pretending to measure loyalty and normalize overwork. Healthy organizations invite critique and evidence and they improve through it. But, awe resists scrutiny. It protects identity, not outcomes.
None of this is to say that sacrifice isn’t necessary - it more than likely is. Work of this nature will always benefit from, if not require, a lot more than the pay check can fairly match. But the sacrifice should be centered in choices that you, as a servant leader, consciously make. Not one coerced through guilt, shame, or misplaced loyalty.
Ritualized Sacrifices
The real danger comes when those sacrifices start to feel normal. When we internalize, automate, self-placate, and forget about the sacrifices. At that point they have a habit of piling up over time, so much so that no matter how much you do to fill your own cup, it never seems to get full.
That’s the danger of passion work, it doesn’t always look unsustainable while it’s happening. The long hours, the quiet “just one more commit” moments, the willingness to take on a little (read: a lot) extra, because you care. It all feels righteous, and holy, and huzzah - at first. But repeated enough, even good intentions start to calcify into expectation. Both from others, and from yourself. Before long, the boundary between devotion and exhaustion disappears, as you realize you’ve worn yourself down to the bone, but still have more to do.
For me, this is the hardest part.
Finding balance amongst all this is a deeply personal journey, and one I’m still navigating myself. What begins as noble, intentional work can slowly twist into self-erasure. It’s easy to let the mythology of the mission bleed into your own story until you’re just a footnote in Something Bigger.
I don’t have any practical advice on how to avoid all this, or how to recover from it. I’m still learning about how my own head works, because I didn’t make my brain, after all. Lately, giving myself secular grace has been helping a lot though.
I do suspect, however, that maybe the best thing we can do is to stay mindful and vigilant of these things. To support your family, friends, and peers if and when you can. To take a mentalhealth.day once in a while. And if this resonated with you, I’ll bet you know someone else who may feel the same, and maybe could benefit from talking to you about it. What have you got to lose?
But seriously, if you have any solutions that worked really well, I’m genuinely curious to hear about them, and I’m sure others are too 💙
Truer words were never spoken