I’m a 5-year video editor who moved to a beauty startup, and I’m drowning. Am I taking on too much?

Hi everyone. I’m writing this just to vent because I feel like I have nowhere else to turn.

I’ve been working as a video editor for 5 years. I spent my first 2 years making interior design videos, and then moved to a law firm where I managed their YouTube channel for about 2.5 years.

Honestly, the law firm work was boring. It was the same content, same edits, over and over again. Just as I was starting to feel burned out and bored, an opportunity came up. The head lawyer at the firm was launching a new beauty business and scouted me to join the team. I jumped at the chance, thinking it would be great to finally escape the monotonous law firm work.

It’s been about 4 months since I made the switch, and this is where the trouble started.

There are only two employees in this new company, including myself. Because it’s such a small team, I can’t just focus on "video." I have to handle logistics/shipping, run ads, plan marketing campaigns... things I have literally never done before in my life.

My coworker is a designer, but she has experience with these kinds of tasks from her previous job. She handles design, communicating with overseas vendors, and shipping logistics effortlessly. Meanwhile, I have to research and study every single step from scratch before I can do anything, so I’m incredibly slow.

Because I’m so bogged down with these new tasks, I haven’t even been able to touch my actual job—video editing. I feel like I’m becoming a burden to my capable coworker, and my self-esteem is tanking.

I leave the office after 10 PM every day. Even when I get home, I can’t relax. I doom-scroll through Instagram looking at competitors' ads, thinking, "How did they do that?" and "How should we make ours?" until I basically pass out.

To make matters worse, I have freelance editing work on the weekends (which I was doing before), so I have absolutely zero downtime. My brain never gets a break.

I’m really struggling right now. Even when I have a momentary break during my freelance work, I find myself worrying about the company’s designs or marketing. I feel pathetic for not being able to switch off.

I’m mentally and physically exhausted, but ironically, I don’t want to quit. Since I started this, I really want to do well and see results. But the reality is that I’m trying to learn everything from scratch, and I feel completely lost.

Am I being too greedy or ambitious? Has anyone else here taken on a role that required doing completely different tasks from your main profession? How did you survive and adapt?

Any advice would be appreciated.