Burning Out on the Fire Inside

Up top I want to go ahead and put your mind at ease by stating that at this precise moment in time, I myself am not terribly burnt out. I have a habit of getting pretty candid on here from time to time, so please believe if I was in the red alert zone I wouldn’t have much issue admitting it. Luckily, I’m doing pretty okay at the moment - not perfect, but back on the health hustle and doing everything I can to live good or whatever. I think it’s working.

So all this said, I do want to admit that up until some time last month, I was severely burnt out and in terrible shape. I was having trouble focusing, making good decision, and responding to challenges with resilience. For so long I’ve been preaching to my colleagues to keep an eye on their mental health, to balance things out and prevent burnout at all cost. Yet somehow, I found myself coming to the sudden, stark realization that I’ve been severely and chronically burnt out since probably the end of 2019… That’s right, I was having a pretty difficult time before the whole pandemic thing, so of course it only got worse.

Recently I was fortunate enough to be able to take some time away from the day job and begin the long slog back towards good health. With a better vantage point gained, I want to continue doing everything in my power to improve all aspects of my life that I can. I guess you could say this is the kick I’m on currently. Don’t worry, I’ll loop this back to fiction writing in just moment - that is, after my monthly writing updates:

Since my last entry I’ve been dedicating myself to finishing the draft of my current work in progress. I’m so close now, so hungry for it to be done. I’ve turned my focus away from editing each chapter as I go, as I think I’ve finally come to terms that (at least with this novel) such a method will likely create more work in the long run. Besides, focusing on only the drafting and planning just enough to envision the destination has increased my productivity exponentially - that and a few other methods I’ve picked up recently. Who would have thought studying project management for the day job would pay off in the realm of fiction writing? So while this means I’ll have at least do one full pass of editing before the book is in readable shape, the speed and joy I’ve experienced in getting to the end of this leg of the journey has been incredible. All that said, I have only a single act left before the draft is complete, and from there it’s on to the next thing.

Hopefully by sharing the above I’ve not made anyone suspicious that this entry is actually about preventing burnout. All I can really say is that managing the burnout was a massive part of my current trajectory, so while I’m by no means perfect at keeping things balanced yet, I hope what I have to say will help you get where you need to be if you’ve struggled with this as much as I have.

Not to scare off any of you full-tilt pantsers out there, but something that’s helped me get control over my burnout and remain productive has been a good bit of planning and forethought. When it comes to writing my books I tend to lean a bit more towards planning anyway (I’m really trying to get over this too), so it does come naturally for me. When I say planning, I mean getting organized and setting reasonable goals that are mindful of where you’re at and what you have going on. Maybe it’s just me, but the sheer joy of achieving a goal, short term or long term, tends to provide me with enough of a dopamine drip to keep the process moving and stave off burnout. Essentially, having discreet goals keeps the fun juices in the brain flowing, and when you’re having fun, you’re less likely to be suffering, yeah? That said, it’s also important to make plenty of room for analyzing what you’re doing as you go and figure out what’s not working. For example, last week I had two 3k-word writing days in a row - which was awesome and made me feel great! However, those 3k words were bonuses, as 1-2k was actually my goal, and once I started to feel the grind a bit too hard, I backed down to a more reasonable word count for a few days and managed to keep pace and stay sane by taking advantage of the extra time I’d already bought myself. That’s the power of planning, a little bit can go a long way.

Next up we gotta talk about priorities and the other sorts of commitments one has going on in their life. I’m ultimately a very privileged person, but I had a lot of rough years when I was younger, and trying to find a stable means to live, let alone a safe, supportive place to write, took a few years away from my writing journey. I know it’s the same for most of us. Even published authors, the industry being what it is, often find themselves having to work another job to survive. Publishing is a long journey that requires time, patience, dedication, and sacrifice. All that said, I can’t even begin to broach the topic of families. I can’t imagine anyone doing this with both a job and a child, let alone a few of them. That’s beyond superhero shit to me, and honestly, I don’t know how well I myself would be able to handle such a lifestyle and stay committed to the extent I currently am. What matters the most is that you keep the priorities in your life straight, only you know your journey and your background, and only you can set yourself up to succeed at writing on top of every day needs. Modern life itself burns almost everyone out, unless you’re at that point where writing is nothing but pure joy (and even then, there is still work involved and a burnt out mind can only do so much), you must give yourself permission to take the breaks you need, even when you’re desperate to finish that work in progress.

The impact burnout can take on your health is no joke. I can say the damage it caused me was so severe that it took from my ability to recognize what was going on, even though I was putting in as much effort as I could to watch out for it in my colleagues. I felt like I was terrible at my job, terrible at writing, and nothing I did brought any joy - but still I didn’t recognize it as a product of burnout. Then my body started to break down. The sporadic and uneven progress I began to make backpedaled because my body was in so much pain. I couldn’t workout and I fell back into not wanting to leave the house. My back was next - sitting in my work chair was agony (and yeah, it’s a dang shitty chair to be spending 8+ hours in a day, I admit), and there came a day where I literally couldn’t bear it and had to call in sick. That ended up being the first day in a very very long time that I didn’t even do so much as read - which has been the one thing I’ve managed to do at a minimum throughout the worst of it all. Eventually I had a moment of clarity and realized how far into the year it was and how few days I had actually taken off (it was two - almost half-way through the year and I had taken only two days off…). And I just freaked out at the realization. How could it have gotten so bad? Luckily, taking a week off gave me enough healing time to start waking up early again, start walking around the block, slowly getting back to a place of health. I’m doing pretty good now, though it took a long time and some difficult discussions with myself. I have to remain mindful every day, but obviously the little bit of effort is nothing compared to the alternative.

I hope all this wasn’t too much to share, I just felt that I really needed to speak from a sincere place to get the message across. While the forward momentum I’m now making has been exponential, so too were the detrimental effects due to the severity of my burnout. So hopefully you won’t let me have put myself through writing all this mess without taking heed and stopping to think what you need to live your best life and keep pushing towards the stars (or whatever the fuck it is you deserve). It won’t be easy for you, and I have no idea what struggles you yourself are up against, so my thoughts can only speak to so many experiences - just believe that you do have to be aggressive, you do have to go to war sometimes for yourself. It’s a battle, but it so often begins to be waged before we realize it. If anything, I hope at least this gives you some good vibes to help out wherever and on whatever journey you’re currently on. Keep going, I’ll see you around the next bend.