It has come to my attention, thanks to a dear friend, that I am doing “a lot” right now. Which honestly, fair. When I break it down into a to do list…it makes me tired to look at.
- Line-edit freelancing
- Drawing class 1x per week
- Writing critique group 2x per month
- Wedding planning
- Working standard day job
- Trying to find time to go to the gym or take a walk 3x per week
Oof. Add on to that the fact that I haven’t taken a stretch of time off since last Christmas and it seems intense. (no I don’t count my time unemployed/laid off as “time off” because the mental stress of that time was very intense). Most of them have been great individually, but combined my schedule is a bit crazy.
So, yeah…I’m a bit burnt out.
I think this can be looked at two different ways. There’s the creative burnout and the day-to-day burnout. I think the day-to-day is causing more problems and honestly causing the creative burnout. It’s very hard to be creative when you’re just kind of uninspired in general.
Time to take a page out of Kiki’s Delivery Service:
The film is well known in the artist community as having huge similarities to creative burnout. In the film, Kiki finds that she is unable to fly or use her magic after working very hard and nonstop. Ursula, an artist friend of Kiki’s, tells her to stop trying and live her life and that her magic would come back.
That was my first thought with my drawing class. I wanted to take a different type of creativity to help, and honestly it’s wonderful. I love the flow state that I can get into while drawing and I’m learning a TON. However, it is a time commitment AFTER a full day of work. So, when I take the next level of this course, I think I’ll aim for a time where there is less going on during the rest of the month.
As for work burnout, I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do. Ideally, I would take a week or so of vacation and just…chill. But, with limited PTO, I want to save my time for the holidays. I’ll probably take a day or two for a long weekend before the holidays.
Another thing I’ve heard helps for people is to focus on learning new things and processes around their work. So, listening to audiobooks and podcasts and maybe finding some good examples of what I’m trying to work on as well.
The good news for my creativity is that I am getting ideas, I just don’t have the energy or motivation to follow through. I’ll keep trying whenever I get those little sparks. I have been reading voraciously reading and genuinely WANT to create things.
So, there’s hope yet.
I’m going to work on cutting myself some slack (which I’m very bad at) and give myself some proper breaks and relaxation time. I’m also going to focus on getting some healthy habits established (less social media), get myself moving (i always feel so much better), and RELAX.
Alrighty. Here’s to taking a break and reconnecting.
Happy Relaxing!
Rachel
Subtle Stories 