Burnout is all over the internet at the moment. For the first time in my life I feel fashionable. I’ve been spending a bit of time just trying to give myself as much rest as I can get when not at work or looking after our little toddler. I’m feeling better for it, although I clearly still need to work through some strategies for coming back to feeling more myself.
Realistically, workload is not going to change, and the nature of my university work involves a lot of emotional work, high energy and high attentional focus, heavy mental loads, and a whole swarm of immovable deadlines. I think to some degree people like lecturers (if we care about students, and I really try to) are in a similar caring role to some of the more classic burnout professions. I guess teachers in general are also often part of the story, and I am broadly inside that sphere.
So what to do?
My previous thoughts and plans are still more or less what I’m focused towards. I’ve been doing some other hunting around for tactics and approaches to coping. Some common things that come up:
- tell someone you trust and talk about it
- meditation and/or mindfulness
- exercise
- social interaction
- creativity
Interestingly enough, one of the movements to help doctors cope with burnout involves creative writing. I think my fiction has become something that I take seriously enough that it probably can’t serve that purpose… or at least, I would need to write things that were just for myself. Maybe that is a good idea. It’s something to think over anyway.
I don’t have any real answers yet. I do have to find a way to address workload and personal emotional demands at work. How I will do that, I do not know, but at least I am aware of it. I will be posting here a bit more often. The fiction may or may not be very frequently updated for a while, but I’m certainly not walking away. I needed to give myself permission to take a break, or else I was going to break, so to speak. And that’s fine. Sometimes we have to stare down the limits of our reserves and efforts, and find a way to regroup. This has, to my mind, be going on for quite a while in a low-grade way. I’m glad I’ve finally gotten sufficient perspective to be able to identify that something needs to happen.
In the meantime, while I figure things out, here’s a really interesting video on the Seven Habits of Highly Effective Artists. There is some great advice in here. Enjoy.