Burnout and getting your creativity back [a podcast?]

The burnout of being a creative and how to learn to be ok with being still.

Disclaimer: This is a highly experimental, free-form post in the form of a voice note. I recommend listening along rather than reading.

Intro

I’m trying something a little bit different today. I decided to just wing this post. I saw somebody else do this kind of free-form voice note type of way of writing a post. I wish I could explain, but it was VoidlightAlchemy. I’m gonna tag you. I couldn’t stop thinking about how you wrote a poem. Not a poem, but you were talking into a voice memo or recording your thoughts and putting that into a post. So this is me trying to do that.

Discussion

I was going to write a whole thing about this topic, but I couldn’t find a way to articulate it. I wanted to talk about burnout because this is something that I struggle with on a very regular basis. I have a lot of moments where I’m on fire, I’m writing a lot, I’m doing a lot, I’m feeling really motivated and creative, and then I have moments where I’m completely deflated. I have no energy, no motivation. It’s just gone with the wind. And I tend to really beat myself up about that. And I’m trying not to.

I think being a creative, in any aspect of being creative, right, whether it’s writing or some sort of art form, anything like that, you’re gonna have moments where you burn out or you need time to recuperate and rest in order to gain back that that energy to be creative again. And that’s something that I’m really learning to sit with and accept instead of constantly rejecting, right? Because we can’t always expect ourselves to be at 100 or even 90% all of the time everyday. I think that’s just not realistic. I think we undermine rest a lot in this society. It’s like we always need to be on. And I just don’t agree with that.

I think I’m finally being okay with that. Being okay with a day or two of just being a potato and not really doing anything. And then not beating myself up for it. I think when I allow myself to take this time to rest and become inspired again, I come back with even more energy and inspiration to do that. I don’t know what the point of this little voice note or post is, but I guess let yourself be okay to rest, give yourself the permission to take a step back, relax, take some time to not do anything. Take like time to feel inspired again, read other things, you know, be a supporter of other people’s work. And maybe in that time you’ll gain your energy back so yeah rest is important especially if you’re a creative person so give yourself that time, don’t beat yourself up about it, take it as it comes. You can’t force creativity you just gotta get it out and then rest recharge your battery and then do it again.

I think a lot of this comes from ADHD. I don’t know if other people can resonate with that, but that’s definitely something that I struggle with on a regular basis. I tend to have a lot of these episodes and then when I’m at a lower point, I tend to really shit on myself for not being productive enough or not doing as much as I want so yeah, rest is incredibly important.

Epilogue

Anyway, this is a really fun free-form way of doing a post, just me yapping mostly to myself. Like, I’m talking to myself. Just my thoughts out loud. Let me know what you think about this. How do you rest? Are you like me, where you try to push through and then burn yourself out? What do you do to feel energetic and inspired again? I’m probably gonna do more of these voice memo, raw, unedited, which I will probably go back and edit some of the text because I use a lot of filler words like um and stuff. But this is like a really cool raw, unedited voice memo. And I think I would like to do this again. It’s also just easier because, I don’t know, sometimes I don’t like to just sit on my computer and type type type type type. Sometimes that feels like a lot of work and a lot of planning of what to say and how you’re going to say it. And I don’t know, sometimes for me, I get analysis paralysis.

So I think just being able to talk it out instead of trying to find the perfect words to articulate it, I can get what I’m trying to say out there and have it be understood and not procrastinate and look at the screen and be like okay what the hell am i gonna write here um so yeah this feels really organic but anyway that’s it for me let me know your thoughts. Bye ✌🏻