6/4/2023 0 Comments Mood meeterThis reality is so new to me that it’s going to take some getting used to. There’s an inherent push back from me now that might not actually be burnout so much as the beginnings of acceptance - acceptance that all the things will not get done, at least not on the same timeline that they used to be done in. Part of this feeling of overwhelm is the old work trying to regain a foothold and put me back on a path of doing what was already too much to begin with. The Pandemic made most of us slow down and it’s helped me to realize that I was doing too much before. One thing I keep thinking about is how much more I used to accomplish pre-Pandemic and how much less I accomplish now - and I don’t think that’s actually a bad thing. And then there’s burned out and the closest I can find on the chart to that feeling is a mix of exhausted, spent, and drained - these all sit in the low energy unpleasant quadrant. The closest I can find on the chart to how I describe an overwhelmed feeling is somewhere between anxious, apprehensive, and frightened - these all fit in the high energy unpleasant quadrant. I do wish I could program in a few more words because the options don’t include ‘overwhelmed’ or ‘burned out’ - two feelings I’ve been feeling a lot lately. But I do believe we will start to see increasingly more creator fatigue as well.” “We’ve heard of consumer fatigue - specifically recently in the wake of the newsletter boom. My mind feels like it’s running on empty. It’s been hard enough to do my day job while pandemic schooling our daughters at home while one daughter was also chronically ill so I shouldn’t really be surprised that lately it’s been almost impossible to channel a creative muse and write a blog, or write an essay, or work on a manuscript proposal. The start of her illness will be forever intertwined with the anxiety of the Pandemic - dual threads of pain and difficulty that began at the same time. A month before the WHO announced the Pandemic last March our daughter became chronically ill and we’re still supporting her through that long term illness. I’m trying to allow myself some grace in what feels like a total creativity vacuum right now too because things have been hard. Now I see women beginning to come out of that and starting to grasp the full extent of this pandemic on their lives,” said Boston-based psychiatrist Maureen Sayres Van Niel. “I think people have been in shock, powering through and not stopping to think of what has happened. What’s so interesting about this burnout is that it’s hitting even harder now, when things are (at least for lots of folks in the USA) more stable than they’ve ever been during this Pandemic’s timeline and that is part of the point - now that things are a little more stable we’ve got some breathing room and the result is a collective mind f*ck as we start to evaluate and analyze just what in the hell happened over this last year. My friends in the following careers - therapy, mental health, teaching, childcare, and the medical fields are all telling me that they’re beyond exhausted. I’m not just seeing this in news articles either. I also really appreciated Toni Cowan-Brown’s latest post in her Idée Fixe newsletter on creator and consumer fatigue. There’s this one in The Lily on why burnout is hitting us now and this one in the New York Times that described the term ‘languishing’ and why we’re hovering there this year. I’ve been reading many articles lately on the collective burnout that many of us are experiencing in this stage of the Pandemic. I’ve been in a down slump and it’s been incredibly hard to access and tap into any type of creative communication and apparently, I’m not alone. It’s taken me three days and about fifteen attempts to write this short post.
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