Depleted, Replenished

past tense: depleted; past participle: depleted

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2/5/2026 One of the things I love about this format is that I can add on thoughts as time goes by and perspective expands. I was lucky to work at such extraordinary places. Yet the real pressure on students and faculty still needs to be unpacked. I'm back on a campus working with Lifelong Learners and couldn't be more content. I'm so grateful for the incredible students and colleagues Ive worked with (and work with). 

Original Post:

One summer in the 2010s, after two visiting professorships at prestigious colleges where high achievement living was the norm, I was dripping into the ground like a melting candle. I had given 110% to my teaching and service alongside research and writing. Whether or not it was true, I felt I didn't know how to play the game. I felt my cards folding in on me. It felt a little like dying. The candle burning for love of what I do was going out. 

                                                                       

Learn to pronounce

While driving to a conference in North Carolina, I started doing some math: I was given 15 minutes for this paper, which I needed to conclude, and hadn't made it through the Appalachian range as evening crawled in. I was driving there for the beauty and adventure, but also because that kind of funding was dry for the year.

So was my cup. 

The time-energy measurements didn't match up. How much fuel was I burning for this 15-minute presentation? Where would I fill up my soul's empty tank?

 30 minutes past Asheville, I did the forbidden, and turned my car around, heading back to town.

 I sent a message to the panel organizer with my sincere regrets. I couldn't tell her that my spirit battery had run out.

 In the morning, I took a long walk around Asheville, s-l-o-w-i-n-g d-o-w-n. I had lunch at a Japanese restaurant downtown and found a 4pm yoga class. A change was on the verge of me, but I didn't know quite what it was. 

Go on, keep pushing

By the following year, I was teaching at an all-girls boarding school. Unsurprisingly, it was located near the Skyline drive where I had found so much nourishment, and within a day's drive of the coast. Boarding school culture would allow me that, n'est-ce pas? I could be more than just the French teacher to these students: I could even teach them yoga and restorative practices in a high-stress academic environment.

 On the side, I would become the assistant cross-country coach, and the school-wide yoga teacher. 

I would frequently work from 8a.m. to 10p.m., like so many teachers and administrators.

Restore, Sleep

During one school break, I undertook a restorative yoga teacher training in Manhattan with the founder of Om Yoga, Cyndi Lee. Cyndi  gave me a glimpse at equanimity. Evenings, my Queens-based Aunt Carolyn prepared healthful meals, and we spoke of Indian religions and Classical music. After dinner and conversation, I was out like a light, in the way we are meant to be. I later found out she had been a tad upset with me for not staying up all night talking with her, and for sleeping in when the training was over. Yet after all the expectations at the boarding school, my body chose that for me. As my friend Susan Tate, Wellness Wonder Woman says, "the body knows."

Idleness and the Lazy Mazy

As a child growing up in a family of high achievers, I was in need of down time. As successful academics with six children, my parents never revealed their own exhaustion. I don't remember them sitting unless they were reading scholarly books. How did they replenish?

They did encourage our extracurriculars. In fact, as a bright-eyed, 7-year-old girl with a penchant for movement and a touch of gravitas, I went to gymnastics at the crack of dawn on Saturday mornings in order to be in-body after a week of school.

 But one day--suddenly-- I didn't want to go anymore. Our teacher had a habit of saying "thin girls do 25 sit-ups, fat girls do 35" at the end of our lesson. I would always do 35,assuming he meant me. That teacher began to wear on me. I wanted to wake up with my siblings and watch cartoons. I wanted down time on Saturday mornings. 

Sometimes I would lie down on the coach in our living room for a rest after the long school day. During one of these my mother walked over and beckoned me: "don't be idle!" Her command represented a culture in which restorative behaviors were considered somewhat immoral. As a side-note, she had lovingly requested we children not refer to the rotating shelving in the kitchen as the "Lazy Susan" because her dearest friend was named Susan. Heaven forbid we call Susan lazy.

"We'll call it the Lazy Mazy." 

Laziness was lacking in virtue. It was shameful when I indulged in horizontal non-doing. Or so I thought then. By the time I was in High School, I was filling up my calendar with activities so as not to have any down time.

Fast-forward, Yellow light 

I recently confronted the ultimate yellow light during in-person pandemic teaching. Masking was inconsistent in my community, and it felt like a roll of the dice before the vaccine arrived. My then employer allowed me to drop down to part-time in-person teaching. At the time of this writing, I'm taking a break from the 7:30a.m.-3:30pm in-classroom schedule and moving fully online, which is giving me a chance to look back on an approach to life that wasn't working. 

It isn't so much the hard work, but rather the lack of recovery (in restorative ways) that is depleting for our kind. Our culture, with its "I can rest when I'm dead" approach to work life is burning people like myself out. We need to light a candle, take a breath, and reconsider how we want our flame to fuel us. 

Then we can return full-throttle to our passion.

Margaret McColley, Ph.D. is the Academic Director of the Alliance Francaise of Tallahassee, and is also a certified Hatha and Restorative yoga teacher with additional certification in Yogastrology (R) with Diane Booth Gilliam. Ayurveda is an integral aspect of this training. She grew up on the Illinois prairie, and has lived and worked in France and New Zealand, as well as the Southeastern United Sates.

Dr. McColley also teaches at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the Florida State University and is passionate about language and the neuroscience of longevity. She has written extensively on francophone women's travel to Asia, Africa, and India.