I’ve been improving. The strange thing about burnout is that there is very little one can do to try and fix it. Taking on extra ‘self-care’ tasks may actually add to the feeling of overwhelming exhaustion. At some point I’d like put together something more coherent about getting past a state of burnout. For now, I’m satisfied with putting down some wandering and rambling thoughts. To be clear, I don’t think I’m out of the woods yet, but I can certainly see light lancing through the trees, away off over there somewhere. I am feeling a lot more positive than I have in a while.
In terms of the background and history of burnout, what it is and isn’t, I found this NPR episode interesting and informative. Very recently, burnout has been recognised as a syndrome (not a disease) by the WHO, although the advice around escaping burnout remains murky. Advice centring on increasing social contact and doing something creative wasn’t very helpful for me, because my day job is both highly social and demands a high level of lateral thinking and creativity. That’s work stuff for me. Exercise and meditation are more in line with what will help, but, I was definitely in a state where these felt like extra tasks. I did find this article useful, and in the end, what helped me was:
- Just stop. I put on hold all projects and activities that were not essential for maintaining a happy family and holding down a job. That means that my writing went on hold, but so did a bunch of other projects and some work-related things that were a bit extraneous to my core work. I couldn’t stop everything, but I also think I caught myself before passing into complete burnout, so a partial shut-down was probably all I needed.
- Allow myself to refuel. Just do some things for fun, no matter what it is. We all need some recharging time, and I think also those of use pursing creative fields also need ‘grist for the mill’: you need to be spending downtime reading things, watching things, visiting museums, going to interesting places, speaking to interesting people… all of this is needed to form the bedrock of your creative ideas.
- Reframe things. I’m still in this stage. I’ve done a few oddball things, like giving up caffeine cold turkey. Anyone who knows how much tea I drink knows that’s quite a drastic step: but, I think I was using the caffeine (albeit in mild doses) as such a constant pick-me-up that it was contributing to a general background edginess. I’m also trying to reframe how I do projects. Instead of working on twenty things in parallel, I’m going to focus on just a small number of completable tasks. I need to experience the feeling of clearing something off my plate a bit more often. But, like I said, I’m still in this phase. I also need to think about my personal narrative, which is a long, introspective process (and incidentally, the article is also interesting from a storytelling and character sketching point of view).
- Rebuild. I’m not quite here yet, but I am going to start tentatively putting some hours back into writing.
For me personally, I think my overall state is down to a combination of things, but it is primarily work related and not writing related so much. If you are worried that maybe you might contribute by asking how the writing is going, don’t be. Writing does take mental effort, yes, and along with trying to get some distance from work (as much as I can), I have taken a few weeks to ease off the writing and just take a break. But, I really enjoy writing. It is a joy for me when I have the mental space and energy to engage with it. I think I’m at a point now where I can start carefully adding some writing-related tasks that are closed-ended (i.e. something that I can do, tick-off and move on from) and enjoyable. This means that I will perhaps focus a bit on short stories and a few book reviews before getting back into the longer novel writing more seriously.
I don’t know if these posts will be helpful for anyone else dealing with burnout and juggling writing and work. I hope they might.