#my progress in this blog has been slowed down not by burnout but because I’m literally too tired to do anything | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

marshmallow-phd · 2 years

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I’m alive, I promise!

Oh gosh, I don’t even know where to begin. A lot has happened these last few months. I somehow got locked out of my tumblr, which was attached to an old email, and when I found myself staring at my computer, I couldn’t find the energy to try and get into that old email and decided, with all that had happened in the previous months in the world of kpop and how exhausted I had felt, I decided that this was a sign that I needed to take a step back and for myself to take a break. I’ve been able to focus on other things, mostly my own writings (making an awful lot of progress on that front, too), my mental health, and other personal things.

Every once in a while I would think about this account and how I abruptly left and everyone here had no idea what had happened. And I feel awful about that. Last night, at about midnight my time, like a five year old who didn’t want to go to bed, I was looking around for a reason not to go to sleep and ending up taking some time to get back into this account. I didn’t want to announce anything or answer any of the messages I had gotten because I didn’t know if I would be sticking around. But I found myself going through my notifications, seeing the new comments and reblogs on my stories and I came to a realization. A reason for my writing burnout and the struggle to keep going on here was the decline in community. It had slowed down in the last six months of writing and I hadn’t known how much I relied on that back and forth for motivation. Those comments and interactions helped boost my confidence and made me want to see what else I could pull out of the hat and surprise you all with. As I’ve gotten older and the interest has moved on to newer groups and different AU types, I’ve honestly felt a little left behind, unable to be comfortable to write for the younger groups or the subject matter that gets more reads, likes, and reblogs.

Since my break, however, as I’ve gotten to focus on my personal writings and telling the stories I’ve really wanted to write, I’ve come to terms that while the kpop tumblr community slowly moves on, I don’t have to change what I want to write or who I write for. I can go back to the days of The Experiments and Fighting Instinct where I barely had two hundred followers, a few likes on my stories, and not have a care about it. Because I was simply writing. My passion, my love, the one thing I feel good at and want to do for the rest of my life.

With all that being said, I can’t say that I’m going to pick up where I left off on the still incomplete stories on this blog. I know that wasn’t what you wanted to hear, but I don’t want to make a promise that I can’t guarantee to follow through on. I will be around, talking, reblogging, and connecting. I might go back and finish my rewrite of The Beauty and The Tragedy. I might post a small fic or add a scenario to a moodboard that inspires me. My number one focus is getting my personal writings to the point where I can get it published. That’s my dream. But I need you all to know that you’ve helped me with that. Your comments, your feedback, your encouragement - it’s gotten my writing to the level that it currently is. And I will never be able to thank you all enough for that. I hope you are all taking care of yourselves and are healthy and happy. I love you all and, one last time, I’m sorry for disappearing for so long!

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annies-toy-box · 2 years

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((Girl help all of my low effort prompts have become essays))

#mod speak #delete later probably #idk #I’m gonna laugh #I ask people for things I can put minimal effort into #and then proceed to rant endlessly on any topic I do wish #and three days later I’m still editing #and I’ll be editing tomorrow too #at least I’m making progress now #CAN I TALK ABOUT MY WEEK IM GONNA TALK ABOUT MY WEEK #my blog my rules IM SO SLEEPY ALL THE TIME #I WAKE UP TOO EARLY AND GO TO BED TOO LATE #my progress in this blog has been slowed down not by burnout but because I’m literally too tired to do anything #my job #has me doing a lot of stuff during a long period of time #and that’s why I haven’t been posting #because capitalism #✨

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sometimesrosy · 4 years

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Is it ok to not write everyday? Is it ok to just take a week off or something? Is it ok to not force yourself to write?

Yes!

Yes it is okay to take a day off or a week off or even, who knows? a month off or more.

The concept that writers must write every day or they’re not real writers is, I believe, a rule that someone came up with, I’m not sure who was first, and told other that was the hard and fast rule. “Writers write.” And while that’s true, writers do write and that’s what makes them writers, that doesn’t mean that you are only a writer while you’re actively writing. Some people write every day because they build a comfortable writing practice into their day. Some people can’t stop writing, like a compulsion. Some people are weekend writers. Some people keep notebooks with them where ever they go. Some people only write when they have a story to tell or when it’s vacation or when there’s a challenge or an assignment they have to write.

I, personally, am a rather compulsive writer. I need to write, not in order to call myself a writer or to keep my stories going, but for my mental health. I have been keeping a journal for thirty five years. Almost daily. There are periods where that slows down and I write less. Often because I’m writing somewhere else, like on a blog, or writing in school, or writing poetry, or writing analysis of a favorite tv show. There are other times when I set myself a daily wordcount for writing fiction. Over the years that has gone from 300 words a day to 3000 words a day. Let me be honest. Neither is right for me. 300 makes me feel like my progress is too slow and 3000 exhausts me, but I sometimes have to do it for work deadlines for weeks at a time. And let me tell you... when I hit my deadline, I just STOP writing for a while. I rest. I recover. I binge watch tv shows in bed.

And the truth is that while a daily writing practice is necessary for SOME writers, it isn’t necessary, wanted or possible for EVERY writer.

The thing about being a writer is that we ALL have different writing processes, and those writing processes can change throughout our lives.

Life is hard and chaotic and unruly, whether we’re talking about external responsibilities or your own health and mental well being. Sometimes we have to redistribute our energies.

I have gone through long stretches of time where I do NOT write. I don’t particularly like it and it starts to make me anxious if I don’t write for too long, but taking a break doesn’t mean you’re not a writer.

Particularly in this current writing climate when lots of people do nanowrimo and binge-write hard for a short period of time. If you write like that, without conditioning yourself to write that much daily, you are at risk of burnout. Believe me. This is my 15th year. I didn’t understand at first why I couldn’t write after doing nano, but now I get it.

Your brain and your creativity and your body all need to rest sometimes. Just because you’re sitting in front of a computer, sedentary, does not mean that you are not expending a great deal of energy. Learn to pace yourself. If that means not pushing to binge so hard, then so be it. If that means to take a rest after you write for awhile, to let your brain settle or let the story settle, then that’s okay too.

There IS a danger, when you stop writing, that you will fall off the writing habit and stop writing. You have to recognize that.

Sometimes it’s harder to get started writing again than it is to just keep writing, oh, 300 words a day, or a journal, or character outlines in a notebook. Just like being an athlete, if you stop exercising, and stop playing, you lose your muscles, the habit slips away, and in order to get back into top form, you have to work out again, build those muscles up, condition yourself to the marathon of writing a novel or the football season or the olympics or whatever sports metaphor rocks your boat. Wait. Don’t ask me about sports. Bad analogy for me... but GOOD analogy for writing.

TAKE CARE OF YOUR BRAIN AS A WRITER THE WAY AN ATHLETE TAKES CARE OF THEIR BODY AS AN ATHLETE. It’s your tool. And writing is hard work. If you STOP stop writing, you have to build it back up again. But if you take a rest day now and then, or BUILD time off into your writing schedule, or take a vacation, that doesn’t mean you’re not a writer.

It means you’re a writer who is filling the well, taking a rest, gaining experience so you have something to write about, mulling over your next story, giving your mind some air so you can go back and revise, going on vacation, taking in some content via movies or books so you can check out how other storytellers work, or you know... you’re a writer who is living their life, because you’re not JUST a writer, you’re also a person.

So in short. Yes writer’s write, but how they write looks different for everyone. It’s okay to take writing breaks. You get to figure out what your writing practice looks like. There are no universal rules for what a writer is or does. Each writer needs to learn their own writing process and how it works for them. If someone tells you you HAVE to write a certain way, don’t listen to them. If someone offers you a suggestion for what works for their writing, listen to them, check it out, see if it also works for you or if it doesn’t fit your process.

#writing advice #writer's write #writing process #take care of yourself #rosywrites

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st-agatha-city · 3 years

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St. Agatha Gazette 🦋

Hello, citizens of St. Agatha! Welcome to our first ever weekend update! If I am able to keep up the steam, I’d like to release weekly updates on progress. Naturally, these will slow down once I am again meaningfully employed, but for the time being I believe this could keep me sane until then!

I think Saturday is as good a day as any! Okay, on to the updates!

Traffic

Well, things are chugging along just fine! Everyday without fail, since it’s conception, St. Agatha City has been worked on - adding code, scenes, art, and sometimes (on rougher days) just fixing my grammar throughout the dialogue heavier scenes.

Though I usually put in about three hours a day, as pacing yourself is important to avoiding burnout, I’ve spent a fair few nights up until the early hours working on St. Agatha City, as it’s incredibly fun and rewarding, if time consuming, work.

As such, I have finally started work on the intro/Chapter 1 of St. Agatha City, which introduces you to Pixy, who has just moved, and her roommate, Norman. This will of course lead to exploration of our fair city, and some of the games first and most formative choices.

Weather

It looks like this week it’ll be sunny and hot hot hot here in St. Agatha, and while there might be low chances of rain, we are likely to see me working on the interactive town map!

That is my desired mode of transport through St. Agatha, very much inspired by the old flash dating sims of yore. It will be challenging to draw little buildings, however, and something resembling a real city map might be hard to accurately represent or read due to St. Agatha being fictional, so I’m going to see about making our fair city’s nav system resemble a subway map :) besides, taking the bus is significantly greener than driving solo, and it’s great fun to people watch! If you’re not trying to avoid eye contact with strangers (sometimes scary.)

The map and introduction to using it is something you’ll likely get from Norman, as he is the first person you really meet in St. Agatha, besides of course Pixy.

Sports

It’s summer! With Fourth of July coming in hot on our heels, families are finding the time to spend it together. And I am using that time to do this! 🚃

The sports section going forwards will be to highlight and touch upon current developments, as traffic focuses on progress, and what I have recently accomplished, the past, and weather what I hope to achieve, in the future. Maybe those lines are a bit blurred, and this section will be changed or fazed out entirely, but I digress!

Ooo~! Home run!

Great news, citizens! We have developed a list of potential canon characters for this game, and I finally added a third character model to St. Agatha City! You may have guessed already that it’s Norman, Pixy’s new roommate, who is now joining the ranks of Pixy and Denver as ‘people who have faces.’ While this is a relatively small development, I’m still pretty proud of myself, because I have to do all of the art myself, as needed (unless I require an asset such as backgrounds or music - which for the time being I am finding from lovely folks and sites online who offer license free options.)

Now, here’s a bit of insider info. Every character I model and who appears in this game will get an intro here on this blog! Pixy’s comes out tomorrow, and Denver’s I believe is two days from now, since I’ve got my queue set up to post once a day. Norman’s will be arriving shortly, but for the time being, here is a photo of this cryptid man.

I know it’s risky having this sickly Victorian child be the first person you meet in a ~romantic dating sim~ but I want to measure people’s expectations. Also, please consider this fact: I love him 💕🍲

Closing Thoughts

Alright, folks! Thanks for being here for the first issue of the St. Agatha Gazette. Short and sweet, but I don’t want to fall into problems similar to Yandere Simulator where I spend all of my time making updates, and never actually updating.

We’ll close out with a Weekly Fun Fact!

This time (and probably most times, I’ll be real) about our game’s development! The placeholder title for St. Agatha City was originally ‘pixydays’ as my biggest inspiration for the dating sim elements of this game was Pacthesis, who as a teen (I believe) made flash dating sims that she released on DA, that I played instead of talking to real people. Each title ended in the word “Days” so this is just a little hidden homage to my cringey past, and a nice hello to my cringey future.

~ Fairyfly

#st agatha city #st agatha gazette #news #updates #dating sim #visual novel #game development #game developers #indie games

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a-student-out-of-time · 3 years

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April Fools Special Review: Final Part

A Deathly Warrior and Final Thoughts

Hibiki reconnecting with the new Kanade is still an ongoing progress, which has sort of taken a backseat with the rise of the first of the Big Three to defeat, Maverick Storm, but I predict once we crush the malevolent demon that he is, in the next few arcs we will see more of Hibiki rebuilding her relationship with her sister and have a proper sibling bond. Assuming something doesn’t happen to Kana in the Puppetmaster Arc I feel like she’ll be a massive help here as Chiaki much like Hibiki is the elder sister so they can support each other with helping out the two little K-Vocal sisters. And there is also the future prospect of becoming a mother as Mikako’s visions have revealed that Hajime and Hibiki do perform Love Hotel acts and Hibiki winds up producing Sayuri, the most adorable NextGen character you will ever meet, and even the fact that Sayuri might be taller than her mother in the future doesn’t faze her, highlighting her character maturity as a few months ago, she would have been wound up to high heavens about it. And said emotional maturity means that now Hibiki can comfort others such as when Gundham opens up to Hibiki about his backstory. Her last act that I’m allowed to talk about is her grabbing the evil brochure that Storm distributed to attract victims to his island of doom and delivering it to Hope’s Peak so that the QC can watch the video of Storm being, as Kyoji puts it ‘A Motherfucker’. And that is what Hibiki has been up to until the Puppetmaster arc.

Hibiki has completely transformed in this blog. Going from a bratty immature idol who was basically a mind slave to her demonic younger incestuous serial killing sister, to having her shackles broken, finding a sense of self, finding love and finding a will to fight for what she believes in. If I went onto a SDRA2 Discord server and said that a Tumblr Ask Blog exists where Hibiki is a badarse ronin that slices robots by day and criminal scumbags by night, all while standing up to her evil sister, I’ll be laughed at unless I provide the link. She has for the moment, my favourite character development. I say ‘at the moment’ because there are characters who I care for more but are either still in the midst of their arcs or said arcs haven’t started yet so we still have plenty of time to appreciate Hibiki for what she is at the moment. Was losing two lives to Kanade worth saving Hibiki? Yes. Yes, it was.

And with that we have concluded my special April Fools character review! This is a brand-new format for me so feedback on this is strongly appreciated and I also want to know if you guys would like more character reviews/analysis like this. Bear in mind should I do another one, I’ll wait until we are going through some downtime or slow pace before uploading another to avoid burnout. And I’m actually glad that the Mod slowed down through the Puppetmaster Arc because that gave me precious time to put this together because when we next come back, I’ll be back to my usual Arc reviews and we have the Puppetmaster Arc to review and HOOOO BOOOYYYYYY that’s going to take me a while to do. Until next time, bye-bye! - Review Anon

//Thank you for this ^^

//Honestly, writing Hibiki’s arc has been one of my favorite parts of this story, even in something like the Oncoming Storm, I feel like her development was one of the best parts. She really was one of the characters that got done dirtiest in SDRA2 and I wanted to give her a chance. And I’m so glad it’s turned out well ^^

//Your contributions are always greatly appreciated!

#mod talks #a student out of time #submission

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missmentelle · 5 years

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This might sound very silly but I just don't know how to be more proactive. I've been very passive all this years until this point where I feel like I can't anymore. I wish I could be more hardworking for the things I want but I get all overwhelmed and don't even know how other people have the energy or the motivation. People think Im just lazy. I don't have almost any skills let alone any that I can monetize, I feel like Im going to be a looser forever.

I think this is a problem that a lot of people - especially younger people - are struggling with right now. We want to achieve great things, and we feel like we should be achieving great things, but many of us are so paralyzed by doubt/anxiety/apathy/uncertainty that we have a hard time mustering up the motivation to run basic errands, let alone chase our dreams. I’ve certainly spent more than my fair share of time beating myself up for the countless days that I’ve fucked around on Reddit all day instead of actually achieving anything, even when I was fully aware that I was sabotaging my own dreams and goals by doing so. I just couldn’t always muster up the ability to care about the things I needed to be doing, even if there were dire consequences for not doing them. The good news is, there are definitely ways to overcome this issue, and reach a point where you are happier with your progress and your life. To get started, I recommend:

Decide what it is you actually want. Telling yourself to “be more proactive”, “work harder” or “have a better life” is not helpful if you don’t actually have specific goals that you’re working towards. It is very, very easy to find ways to be “busy” for 8 hours per day - but being busy doesn’t necessarily mean progress. Take some time, and think about some rough goals that you’d like to actually work towards. Don’t worry about how much work or effort it would be to achieve those goals, just start thinking about what you want in life, and what’s the most important to you. Think about the kind of life that you would like to have someday, and start figuring out the steps you need to take in order to get yourself from your current life to the life that you envision. It’s okay if those things are very far apart - the point is not for you to get overwhelmed, but for you to have something to be proactive about.

Start slowly. You cannot go from “spending 8 hours per day mindlessly browsing the internet amidst a pile of old take-out containers” to “running 5 miles every morning before making art for 8 hours in a spotless apartment with a fridge full of vegetables” overnight. Trying to change your routine too drastically and too quickly will lead to you burning out in a couple of days and going right back to your old ways, with an added dose of self-hatred because you tried and failed. Trying to be more productive and more functional is a process, and a long one at that. It’s not at all unusual or abnormal to take several years of work before you get your life to where you want it to be. Start slow. Start with incredibly tiny changes, and slowly build up those changes over time. If you currently live on a diet of fast food and candy, and you want to be a shredded, clean-eating fitness guru, you can’t rush into that all at once. Start by swapping out full-sugar pop for diet pop for the first month, and trying to drink more water. That’s it. Don’t make any other changes. Then the second month, switch out diet pop for flavored water. And so on. Change only sticks when it’s gradual.

Focus on one thing at a time. Again, trying to do too much, too soon is a recipe for fast burnout and self-hatred. Start by trying to change one area of your life, and one area of your life alone. Once you feel like you have a pretty solid handle on that part of your life and you have established some new habits, then you can add on a second area of focus. Spend some time, and really think about which area of your life is the most important for you to change, and which area of focus will improve your life the most. If it helps, envision your problems as rocks that you are carrying around in a backpack with you at all times. What’s the heaviest rock in your backpack? If you are overweight, unhappily single, making no progress building your YouTube channel and failing out of college, then your college grades are probably the thing causing you the most stress in your life, and they’re your most urgent concern - focus on that, and give yourself permission to let the rest of it sit on the back burner until you have boosted your GPA. Only then will you be ready to start changing something else.

Go easy on yourself. I think one of the pitfalls that many young people face these days is that they absolutely crush themselves with unrealistic expectations of what they “should” be doing with their lives; it’s hard to get up the motivation to do anything when you’ve convinced yourself that the bare minimum for success is an impossible ideal. I have friends with master’s degrees who still consider themselves failures that haven’t done anything in life. Remember that you are not a machine. Even at your most successful and high-functional, you will not be perfect and productive 100% of the time. You will still have lazy days where you don’t get much done. You will still occasionally order takeout instead of making a home-cooked meal. You will still occasionally procrastinate. Don’t set yourself up for failure by comparing yourself to an unattainable ideal - just aim to be a slightly better version of what you are right now.

Get used to tracking, even without making changes. It’s hard to set goals for improvement if you don’t have a solid idea of what you’re actually doing right now. Telling yourself things like “stop being so lazy and do more things” is setting yourself up for a spiral of self-loathing if you don’t actually track what you’re doing, because you won’t be able to see the small, gradual progress that you’re making. Being able to actually see yourself taking baby steps toward your goal is important for keeping you motivated, and keeping you from beating yourself up. Don’t track absolutely everything in your life - that becomes obsessive after a while - but keep an eye on some of the major things that you might want to change in the future. Install apps on your phone and laptop that track how much time you spend doing what. Set up the step tracker on your phone. If you want to eat better in the future, start tracking roughly what you eat now. I’m a pretty avid bullet journaler, I track a lot of my daily habits. Keeping track of the things you do, even if you’re not proud of them, and even before you start to work on them, gives you a baseline to work with, so you can establish how bad the problem is and see when you’re heading in the right direction.

Forget the obsession with monetizing. A lot of us have gotten this idea in our heads that we need to find ways to monetize everything that we’re even remotely good at, or doing that thing is somehow a waste of our time. I don’t want to generalize about millennials and gen z too much, but I do feel like our generation was raised on the belief that “doing what you love” is the most important thing in life; I personally have many friends that are obsessed with monetizing, to the point that they no longer do anything unless they can find some way to funnel it into advancing their blogger/influencer/creator career. I think this is a mistake. When you monetize something that you love doing, you turn it from a hobby into a job, with all the stress that comes with that, and I think it’s important for everyone to have at least one thing in their life that they do just for the joy of it. It’s okay to let work be work, and play just be play. And I say this as a person who has monetized one of my hobbies; I love true crime and forensic psychology, and I co-host a true crime podcast that has recently had a huge surge of popularity and is on the cusp of being monetized. I could write an entire post about the mental health side of being a creator with a public online presence, but in a nutshell, turning my podcast from a hobby into a business has required me to take it a lot more seriously, and it now falls more into the category of “work” than it does “fun”. My enjoyment of life requires that some of my other hobbies - like playing music - just stay un-monetized hobbies. Let yourself create and do things that don’t have economic value.

Don’t compare yourself to what you see on social media. I have had both personal friends and followers on this blog tell me that they feel bad about themselves because their life doesn’t measure up to what they see on Instagram, or because they feel that their own lives would not be worthy of posting online. This is a toxic mindset to get into. The things you see on social media are not reality, no matter how much they appear to be - people put incredible amounts of effort into carefully cultivating an online persona that makes them look more productive and accomplished than they actually are. I have a brother who who is a somewhat successful Instagram “influencer”, alongside his more successful girlfriend, and I could write an entire post about the lengths they go to to fake having perfect lives on Instagram, and the toll that their Insta careers are having on their mental health. If you are looking to be a more productive version of yourself, it’s best to steer clear of “motivation” from people who are paid to pretend to be successful online.

Set measurable, achievable goals. Goals like “be healthier” and “do more stuff” won’t get you anywhere - they are so vague that it’s not possible to tell when you’ve actually achieved them, or how much progress you’ve made. If you want to be more productive and feel like you’re getting more done, you need to set goals that can actually be worked towards and checked off when they are done. Instead of “go to the gym more”, aim for “go to the gym 5 days per week” as your end goal, and start with a solid couple of months with “go to the gym at least once per week”, and slowly increase from there. If you’re aiming for something big like “have an awesome job”, break that down into medium-sized goals like “finish an undergrad degree”, and then break that goal down even further into “hand in all my assignments on time this semester”, and break that down further into “write the first 10 pages of my paper by the end of the week”. Set tiny goals for yourself that you can easily achieve, and that will gradually accumulate into big accomplishments.

Remember that slow progress is better than no progress. If you write one sentence per day, it is going to take you a really long time to write a novel. It will take you a whole lot less time, however, than if you get overwhelmed at the thought of writing a novel and never write at all. Sometimes you need to break goals down into steps so small that they also seem not worth doing. It can feel a little silly to congratulate yourself for things like “brushed my teeth today” and “texted someone back today”, but those are little habits that add up into bigger things, and giving yourself that positive reinforcement is important. “Greatness” and “success” are not things you achieve all at once, they are made up of tiny habits that you’ve been working on for months or years at a time.

Take care of your mental health. Not feeling the motivation to do anything, even things that you enjoy, can be a symptom of depression. Everyone beats themselves up from time to time for not being more productive, but if your brain is constantly on a feedback loop of “I’m human garbage and I’m wasting my life”, that’s a pretty serious problem, and a solid sign that it’s time to seek out some professional help. Trying to make major life improvements without addressing underlying mental health concerns is kind of like trying to drive a car without wheels - you’re just not going to get anywhere until you’ve dealt with the obvious problem.

Remember that setbacks are okay. Even the most highly proactive and high-functioning people have days where they say “fuck it” and order takeout to eat in front of the TV. Everyone occasionally misses deadlines or leaves things to the last minute when they shouldn’t. Everyone shows up late occasionally. These things happen - we are humans, and none of us are perfect. The key to long-term proactivity and productivity, though, is not to let those small setbacks define you, and not to throw away all the progress you’ve made over a bad day or a bad week. Eating healthy six days per week will put you in a much better position than deciding “fuck it, I blew it” after one bad meal and returning to eating unhealthy meals 7 days per week. As the saying goes, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good - in other words, perfection is not attainable, and getting hung up on being perfect will prevent you from achieving many things that are good. The idea is not to be perfect; it’s just to keep striving to be a slightly better version of yourself.

Best of luck to you!

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megan-cutler · 6 years

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@merigreenleaf recently asked me: I've always wondered what it would be like to be a full time author, but then I worry that I'd get burned out and it wouldn't be fun anymore. Is that something you've ever experienced?

While I contemplated my answer, I realized I actually have a lot to say on this topic. And since it's probably relevant to a lot of other writers, I decided to post it here. (Sorry but this is kinda a wall of text; there’s a TL;DNR version at the bottom.)

I will preface this by saying that writing full-time was always my goal. Even when I studied IT and subsequently worked in the field full-time for three years, it was always with the goal of becoming an author and making writing my full-time gig. I will also add that without my husband, his career choices and his fantastic support, I would not be able to do what I do. Some of this may affect how I view this particular scenario and I'm well aware that what works for one writer doesn't necessarily work for all. So take what follows with the appropriate grain of salt.

First, some background. I started writing full-time in 2011; my husband had just gotten his first full-time teaching job in Quebec. He was teaching at an English school but the town where we lived was very much French. Having not grown up in Canada, and having taken only two years worth of French classes in high school, I spoke not a word of it. I was okay with not really being able to work in a French community because writing was what I really wanted to do. I had struggled my way through writing my last novel while I was working full time, squeezing scenes into my lunch break and during the time after I got off work and it had taken me three years to finish the first draft. I was eager to put behind me the constant lack of energy and dig into the thing I most loved doing.

I learned quickly that wanting to write all the time doesn't make it easy to actually write all the time. I had struggled with this once before, while I was getting my citizenship and was unable to work, so I knew I could overcome it. But it wasn't easy. I found myself up against a lot of obstacles at this point in my life. One was simply not knowing the best way to proceed. Another was probably depression, although I was never formally diagnosed. I woke up every day wanting to write and went to bed every day lamenting that I hadn't. I've written a lot about this struggle before, so I won't dig into the details here but, suffice to say, burnout wasn't on my radar because creation didn't happen as steadily as I hoped it would. I spent so much time worrying about how to make myself do the thing I really wanted to do that the idea of running out of steam never really occurred to me.

It took about three years to get to the point where I produced regular content without having to strong-arm myself into productivity. I tried a lot of tactics during that time but the one that worked best for me was just butt in chair until the work was done and not really allowing myself to do much else until I finished (you results may vary). During that time I learned that writing is a largely mental exercise. Writer's block is a state of mind and it can be countered with other states of mind (or sometimes just pure, stubborn muscling through - again, your results my vary). But in all that time I never suffered the dreaded burnout. I never sat down at the computer and felt like I couldn't bear to write another word. Sometimes I lamented that the words wouldn't flow fast enough or that I my pace felt too slow, but I never had trouble creating because the fire had been snuffed.

In 2014, I launched my 100 words of work experiment where I committed to doing at least 100 words worth of work every day for one year. At the time I counted creative writing and editing as 'work' but not blogging (I have since revised that stance and now count my blog posts as words of work). The goal was simple; I could write or edit more every day, but as long as I hit 100 words I would satisfy the goal. I learned enough that by June I had already written about my experience. And if you peek at the post you'll notice my last point: don’t forget to give yourself a break.

So I was three years into writing full time, and had already published my first book, before the first tendrils of burnout crept into my life. I had been looking for ways to increase my productivity, and I found them. At the expense of myself. At the expense of relaxation and spending time with family and friends. I had found ways to push myself to new and formerly unprecedented levels of creation; and I had learned about the cost.

Since then I have struggled, on and off, with burnout. For those unfamiliar with the term, burnout is a type of creative fatigue that makes it difficult to think or act creatively. The mere idea of putting words onto the page makes you want to do literally anything else. Like clean the entire house. Or curl beneath the covers and go back to sleep for at least a week.

But as time has gone on and I have continued to track my writing progress, continued to increase my yearly goals and my monthly productivity, I've learned some interesting things about burnout.

Burnout is not born from an abundance of creativity. Burnout is born from a lack of time spent recharging.

I've made no secret of how I've struggled with work/life balance. Being a writer, especially one who self-publishes, demands a lot of time and energy. It always feels like there's more to do, it always feels like you can never get enough done, and it always feels like everyone is out-performing you (a danger when you want to succeed in a competitive market). I hit a point where I was working 14 hours a day (not all of that is writing, mind, there are a lot of marketing and social aspects to my job, but they all count as work). I was working so hard that I had completely neglected my health and developed cubital tunnel in my left arm (that's the less well-known brother of carpal tunnel, which happens in the last two fingers of the hand instead of the first three). My husband noticed the degradation of my health and put his foot down; enough was enough.

But once you open the faucet, once you get into the habit of working until you drop, it's surprisingly hard to turn it off. It's surprisingly hard to walk away without feeling guilt over all the things you think you should be doing but aren't because you're resting or having fun. And this is a really insidious thing, because not only will it affect your health, but it is what ultimately leads to burnout. The harder you work to the exclusion of all else, the harder it is to keep working.

Because writing, like any other creative activity, requires energy. The more energy you put into it the less energy you have for other things. And in order to generate new energy to keep pouring into the creative pool, you need to stop. You need to relax. You need to enjoy yourself and get refreshed.

So I guess the short answer to the question 'have you ever suffered burnout as a result of writing full-time?' is yes. I certainly have. And I have hit many places where writing feels like work (mostly because it is) but it has never stopped feeling fun or fulfilling.

Because I don't believe that burnout was caused by creativity. I don't think it happens because I write too much and I just can't find any more words to put on a page (though certainly it is possible to write so much in a condensed period of time that you feel exhausted). I think the burnout I have suffered came from making poor decisions. From pushing myself when parts of my body screamed at me that I needed a break. I think burnout is born of imbalance between the creative/working portion of your life and the relaxing/social aspects of your life. If you can find balance, you can keep burnout at bay.

Being a full-time writer has been one of the most fulfilling things I've ever done. When I do get exhausted from a blast of creativity, I fall into bed at night reasoning that at least I got that way doing something I love, something for me.

So balance is key. If you can find a happy work/life balance, you need never worry about burnout again. I'm still looking for the balance that works for me (honing steadily in on it), but I have at least learned to recognize the signs of burnout enough to slow down and relax enough to stave it off. TL;NDR version: Yes, I have suffered burnout since I started writing full time, but I’ve never felt like it was a result of writing too much. It’s almost always over-working myself and over-stressing myself without resting that does it. I will probably, at some point, post a slightly cleaner version of this on my blog, but I hope this makes sense ^^;;

#writing #writer #writeblr #writblr #writing resources

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theseadagiodays · 4 years

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May 25, 2020

Orchestrators of Attention

Hayati Evreni’s Persistence of Covid

I typically have a very vivid dream life. Whole evenings of movies with characters I’ve never met and settings I’ve never seen. It’s one of the reasons I so love to sleep. Every night, I have an imagined altered reality to look forward to. And most mornings, to keep the stimuli of these vistiations fresh, I regale Geoff with a detailed recollection of these colorful fictions. But last night my reverie was disturbingly similar to my waking life. Zoom calls with real music students that I’ve been teaching. The delivery of our commissioned fence mural, which is actually scheduled for this Wednesday. It’s like so much else during this period, where everything seems to be bleeding into each other. Days to Weeks. Work to Home. And now, even the treasured boundary between my subconscious and conscious life has been compromised.

The fluid nature of perceived time in our current reality is problematic in so many ways. We are animals who’ve found real comfort from the compartmentilization of our lives. Separate spaces for every endeavor, from offices to gyms to libraries. We mark time in dozens of essential ways, with calendars, outfit changes, meal routines, holiday celebrations, happy hours - most all of which have dramatically changed during Covid. This weekend, I read the best explanation for why we find the circular time that has been foisted on us so difficult. Man Booker International Winner, Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights is part travel-fiction, part-memoir. Each vignette is a musing about the human propensity to wander. Here, she explains why perhaps only those of us truly tied to natural cycles, like growing seasons, can thrive in circumstances like we face today.

Sedentary people prefer the pleasure of circular time, in which every object and event must return to its own beginning, curl back up into an embryo and repeat the process of maturation and death. But nomads and merchants, as they set off on journeys, had to think up a different type of time for themselves, one that would better respond to the needs of their travels. That time is linear time, more practical because it was able to measure progress towards a goal or destination, rise in percentages. Every moment is unique; no moment can ever be repeated. This idea favors risk-taking, living life to the fullest, seizing the day. And yet the innovation is a profoundly bitter one: when change over time is irreversible, loss and mourning become daily things.

So, given that most people in modern society are far more aligned with the nomad/merchant class, it makes sense that we are sentenced to this inevitable grief once our “Just Do It”, “Follow Your Bliss” plans get derailed off-course. This analysis does not provide any solutions. However, I do think it absolves us of a certain culpability, so that we can stop blaming ourselves for feeling bad or for not handling the new norm as well as we should. Meanwhile, I think it can still be helpful to look for coping mechanisms, and I’ve found some from Jenny Odell, the unintended Queen of Quarantine who I crowned such after the cogent messages from her 2019 book, How To Do Nothing, came to be the perfect precepts for our time.

An avid bird-watcher, walker and observer, Odell is a proponent of slowing down to make space to notice. She calls her book a “field guide to doing nothing as an act of political resistance to the attention economy.” Her suggestions serve as antidotes to the distracting and fractured nature of attention that the limitless connectivity of our plugged-in lives demands. So, while most of us are still highly connected online, there are so many other ways in which we’ve become uplugged from life as we knew it. And I think she is suggesting that, perhaps, instead of seeing this as disconnection, or as an untethering, we can appreciate the space that this is creating for us to develop subtler forms of attention.

Odell describes herself, and all artists, as “orchestrators of attention”. She sees artists as curators of objects and ideas, re-imagined in ways that allow us to see things differently. I certainly turn to artists and writers to help me do this. And ironically, it is a circular journey of a different sort that brought me to her wisdom in the first place. Lately, I’ve found myself in a strange intellectual fractal. A quest for philosophical nuggets that has me spinning inside a loop of similar thinkers.

I regulary subscribe to BrainPickings, the source of many such nuggets. And that’s where I found Victor Frankl’s Yes to Life quote (from March 28 in this blog) about “the power to choose our response”. That newsletter also quoted Rebecca Solnit (Hope in the Dark), who I checked out further on Krista Tippet’s podcast, On Being. Looking at older episodes of this show, I found an interview with Ezra Klein (Why We’re Polarized), whose podcast just featured Jenny Odell on May 8th: On Nature, Art, and Burnout in Quarantine. https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2020/5/8/21252074/jenny-odell-the-ezra-klein-show-how-to-do-nothing-coronavirus-covid-19 This inspired me to purchase her new book, with its page 9 quote of none-other-than Solnit, again, this time from her book, Paradise Built in Hell. Back down the Solnit rabbit hole, I found another Frankl reference in this book, now from Man’s Search for Meaning. And so, the perfect circle was complete.

May 26, 2020

Unproductivity

Labyrinth project by Emily Carr university mentor, Kitty Bland, and student, Mary Rusk - https://www.ecuad.ca/news/2020/kitty-blandy-and-mary-rusak-find-focus-during-pandemic-with-meditation-pathway

Circular time makes me think of labyrinths. Mandalas of pathways that lead to nowhere, whose hypnotic ellipses draw our single-pointed focus towards the simple act of walking. I have always loved these places of reflection. And I find it erroneous that the term labyrinthian has come to refer to complicated places where we get lost. Because I feel that I actually find myself in such places. The only thing lost is a false sense of destination as the purpose in life.

Odell subscribes to a similar viewpoint in How to Do Nothing. Rather than a plea to escape reality, quit our jobs, or shrug our responsibilities, her book is an invitation to question what we perceive as productive. I think our current reality has many of us doing this. My morning walk has me literally “stopping and smelling the roses” each day, as I’ve seen so many others do during this altered time.

So, while it has encouraged me to see normally overprogrammed-teens watching sunsets and families chilling for endless hours on front lawns, I have also observed a pattern of apology amongst my peers, when they acknowledge having been “less-productive than usual”, during this period. So, I’ve taken to meet this only with permission. This is something I’ve increasingly given myself ever since my excessive drive, as a flutist, left me with a chronic overuse injury that was a wake-up call I’ve only recently been able to truly appreciate.

After this major uninvited “halting” of my career, I became acutely aware of how often people answer “How are you?” with “Busy.” Particularly artists, who have perhaps been undercompensated, underemployed and underappreciated for so long, it feels like being “busy” is a badge of honor that implies their work is in-demand. So, I get it. But still, I have made a point, since this realization, never to answer that question as such. Busy is not an emotion. The truth behind the word - feelings of anxiety, overwhelm and fear - are perhaps too telling to reveal. Because admitting them might mean we have to shift something. They might force us to slow down and stop busying ourselves, which is maybe the scariest thing of all. Because then, we have to face who we truly are when we are not “doing”.

To track my own “doing” during quarantine, I’ve been particularly careful about limiting my screen time. So, I check it weekly. But it was only this week that I finally went to the second page of the iPhone screen time data, where I found a strange categorization of time. It breaks it down into Productive, Creative, Social, Entertainment, Reading and Educational use. However, what they place in each category runs quite counter to what happens to be true for me now. Photos are listed as a Creative pursuit, however many of my hours have been frittered away deleting unnecessary shots (attempts to capture moments that might have been more mindfully spent camera-free). So, this endeavor doesn’t feel that creative to me. Whats App is marked as Social but, of course, it’s now become the arena for some of my most my productive work, since I’m using it as a teaching tool. And Notes is in the Productive category, even though, as a self-admitted list-addict, my worst time-waster is making and remaking these itemized scrolls intended to render me more efficient, when I can’t even imagine how much “productive” time I must have lost just writing them.

So, we all have something to learn from this clever street artist, whose balloon art gives us an important reminder.

May 27, 2020

Covid Art Museum

So far my “efforts” to do nothing more (as ironic as that sounds) have gone swimmingly. I deliberately cancelled one of my Zoom calls this week, two other meetings conveniently got cancelled for me, and I was left with many more hours to spend spontaneously. Some of these involved lying in the grass eating gelato. Others watching passerbys from my front stoop. And one I spent biking the new “slow street” circuit in Vancouver, which has been designated a car-free zone to create more safe, physically-distant space for cyclists and pedestrains to roam. That even our roadways are now on a diet from their usual busyness, seems to me a beautiful metaphor.

Of course, some of this time also involved digital daydreaming, as I prefer to romantically call surfing the web. But using the intentional lens of seeking artistic responses to share on this blog makes even this indulgence feel more guilt-free. So, this week, it landed me on a very cool Instagram page, full of visual reflections about this time (digital illustrations, photographs, sketches, watercolors and more). In fact, it’s where I stumbled upon the balloon art, above, which evolved into my entire week of blog entries. Quite a few pieces reference circular time in some way (above). And a remarkable number of them depict doing nothing (below). Jenny Odell is clearly on to something...

https://www.instagram.com/covidartmuseum/?hl=en

May 28, 2020

Hidden Symphonies

Udo Noll, a Berlin-based media artist and founder of Radio Aporee, a digital global sound map, documented before and during the pandemic

The music of my environment has always captivated me. In fact, I dedicate almost an entire chapter of my novel to birdsong. I love the voice memo feature on my phone, which I use like an auditory camera, as I travel. I’ve learned that this is not a habit many people share. Until recently, that is. Because it seems that suddenly, we are all beginning to listen more. Now, with less traffic, quieter commercial corridors, and other colluding factors, there is left an amazing amplification of the soundscapes which always existed behind the din.

Before Covid, a long tradition of deep listening has been cultivated by various sound artists. American composer, Pauline Oliveros founded the Deep Listening Institute in 1985 (originally called the Pauline Olveros Foundation). Here, she invited musicians to improvise and record, in particularly resonant and reverberant spaces like caves, to inspire extra-sensitive responsiveness.

In the 70’s, Canadian composers, Hildegard Westercamp and Murray Shafer, started the World Soundscape Project (https://www.sfu.ca/~truax/wsp.html), which recorded Vancouver’s sonic landscape to illustrate the negative effects of noise pollution, ultimately resulting in more positive guidelines for urban acoustical design.

Acoustic ecologist, Gordon Hempton says that silence is not the absence of sound, but rather the presence of everything. In the short documentary, Sanctuaries of Silence, he offers tools for seeking silence amidst noisy urban life.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUxMdYhipvQ

But his suggestions probably never could have predicted Covid, which has achieved this result with alarming swiftness. British sound artist and field recordist, Stuart Fowkes has been tracking the soundscapes of this disquieting time on his website, Cities and Memory. https://citiesandmemory.com/covid19-sounds/

Here, you can click on one of 3,000+ global coordinates and listen to everything from empty flagpoles, and ticking radiators, to kites flying. Anyone is welcome to contribute, using #stayhomesounds. And this is my own addition to the catalogue:

Bullfrogs mating: https://youtu.be/ZoKT-RlDfs8

The New York Times, has tracked the music of the pandemic in another interesting way. Measuring by decibels (below), they compare the soundscape of a normally busy Manhattan street, before and during quarantine. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/22/upshot/coronavirus-quiet-city-noise.html

Pre-covid nights sound more like quarantine days, averaging around 64 decibels.

Another bi-product of the pandemic is a trend towards birdwatching. The world’s attention was brought to birding this week, due to an unfortunate racist incident that occurred in New York’s Central Park. Christian Cooper was drawn to the park because of the orioles and yellow warblers he could find there. While birding, he politely asked a woman if she would kindly put her dog on a leash. When she refused, he insited and she proceeded to call the cops. Cooper was armed with little more than binoculars and a camera. But apparently, his crime was being black. The woman was white. Luckily, he caught her ridiculous cry for help (“I’m being threatened by an African-American man.”) on camera. The video immediately went viral and resulted in her being fired from her job. Graciously, he remarked today in the Times, that this punishment did not fit her crime, and while he wants to hold her to account for her racist behavior, he doesn’t believe that “her life needs to be torn apart.”

Whatever her fate, if this time inspires deeper listening for you, let’s hope your soundscape walks are far less eventful than his was.

May 29, 2020

Covid Shuffle

Brooklyn’s usually bustling Fort Greene Park, during the pandemic

From the beginning of social distancing, I have been quite fascinated by the complicated choreography we are collectively participating in. I would give anything to be an eagle, looking down from above, just to witness the maze of interwoven patterns that our sidewalk dances create. And I am not the only person interested in this do-si-do.

If you search “six feet apart” on YouTube, you can’t imagine how many musicians, famous or otherwise, have composed new songs with this exact title (IE. country singer, Luke Combs, teen pop star, Alec Benjamin). It’s just one of many things that illustrate the uncanny global resonance that is happening right now, even while there are still vast differences between the ways people experience this pandemic.

Personally, I’m partial to this rap, written as a PSA for UNC Health, by The Holderness Family, a modern-day Al Yankovich-style parody band comprised of former FOX sportscaster, Penn Holderness with his wife and kids. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XjfCeY4D2QI

Deeper into this search, I found another music video, by a different family band in LA, called Haim. These three Grammy-nominated sisters have written the song, I Know Alone to express how quarantine living has felt for them. Meanwhile, they appropriately dance to their lyrics six feet apart.

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.vulture.com/amp/2020/04/haim-i-know-alone-video-album-release-date.html

In the dance world, old colleagues of mine, from Flagstaff, Arizona, will host a virtual Festival that starts this Friday, May 29th, featuring original socially-distant choreography from movers all over the Southwest. Fittingly, it’s called the Six Feet Apart Dance Festival.

https://canyonmovementcompany.org/cmc/upcoming-events/

Documenting the Covid shuffle in a very different way, Toronto geographer, Daniel Rotszdain created a “social distancing machine” to demonstrate just how difficult a genuine 6-foot radius is to maintain in public space.

And finally, this hip hop dance compilation, made in 2019, could be the anthem for our times.

MC Hammer’s Can’t Touch This - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJskIJGEsd8

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type2diabetestreatments-blog · 7 years

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The 411 on Depression + Diabetes

New Post has been published on http://type2diabetestreatment.net/diabetes-mellitus/the-411-on-depression-diabetes/

The 411 on Depression + Diabetes

Last week we talked about Celiac Awareness Month. Turns out May is also National Mental Health Awareness Month, so for our ongoing 411 series on diabetes complications, today we're tackling something that you might not even realize is a complication: depression.

Although not typically listed as a diabetes complication, it is well-documented that depression affects people with diabetes in large numbers. No surprise to us PWDs, considering all the crap we have to deal with: from guilt over blood sugars, to frustrating insurance battles, to the day-in and day-out weight of managing every tiny detail in our lives. We know full well that the hardest part of having diabetes may be the psychological side.

It's no wonder that the Centers for Disease Control reports that people with diabetes are twice as likely to suffer from depression.

Now, just to clarify: clinical depression is quite different than the "blues" or "diabetes burnout," in that it is a chemical imbalance in the brain. It does not simply fade away and it's not just the occasional "I hate diabetes!" outburst. But diabetes burn-out and other mental health issues are just as important to take care of, and burn-out can often be a trigger to more serious distress.

And the connection works both ways.

Some of the common signs of depression are:

Persistent sad, anxious, or "empty" mood

Feelings of hopelessness, pessimism

Feelings of guilt, worthlessness, helplessness

Loss of interest or pleasure in hobbies and activities that were once enjoyed, including sex

Decreased energy, fatigue, being "slowed down"

Difficulty concentrating, remembering, making decisions

Insomnia, early-morning awakening, or oversleeping

Appetite and/or weight changes

Thoughts of death or suicide, or suicide attempts

Restlessness, irritability

Whether you think have clinical depression or just going through a rough patch in dealing with the emotions of diabetes (which is as much a roller coaster as our blood sugars!), it is important to seek help as soon as possible. Depression, burn-out, and mental fatigue can have unwanted effects on your health and diabetes management. For example, a study in the Archives of General Psychiatry shows that women with diabetes and depression are at increased risk for cardiovascular disease, which is already one of the most common diabetes complications.

Treatment

Clinical depression is quite treatable if you get the proper help. Although it may be difficult to find a psychiatrist or psychologist who understands diabetes the way you do, it's still important to get your depression symptoms treated.

Medications, such as tricyclic antidepressants, have been shown to be helpful in treating depression in people with diabetes. But they often have side effects, such as weight gain and nausea, which are clearly undesirable and may impact your diabetes management. Once you start taking an antidepressant, you'll want to work with both your psychiatrist and your endocrinologist, and not suddenly go off the drug without direction from your doctor, as quitting cold turkey can be very ugly!

Another route that can be effective even without the use of medication is psychotherapy or "talk therapy." This can often help work out issues regarding stress and guilt that build up over years of dealing with diabetes. It is well-recognized that psychotherapy is an important component of mental health treatment.

Korey Hood, a clinical psychiatrist and type 1 diabetic, tells us that even if you're unable to find someone who knows about diabetes specifically, you can play educator to your therapist about how diabetes effects your mental state.

"In the process, you're able to teach [the therapist] about diabetes, and have them increase their appreciation and understanding — and then in turn, they can counsel you on coping strategies for stress and anger or help build your communication skills with your family members," Korey explains.

Lee Ann Thill, a PWD with type 1, fellow D-blogger, and board certified art therapist in New Jersey, says that therapy has had a profound impact for her in coping with diabetes. "Personally, I value being able to share my feelings about diabetes with the people in my life, but since diabetes is already a burden on them, I try to be careful about how much and when I share. One of the things that I've most appreciated about being in therapy is the opportunity to unload the fear and anger I have about diabetes without feeling like I'm upsetting someone I love. Before getting therapy for myself, I underestimated how my feelings about diabetes were contributing to my depression, and I underestimated the value of having a safe, confidential place to share those feelings."

How to Find a Therapist

The main option for finding a therapist, just like with finding a physician, is to look up those covered under your insurance (assuming you have mental health benefits). Psychology Today and the American Psychological Association both have locator tools to find someone in your area, and you can specify your search to include people who deal with chronic illness, and then cross-check to be sure they're listed in your network.

Your local diabetes clinic may also have a list of nearby health professionals with whom they have a referral relationship. If you have an open relationship with your endocrinologist (which we hope you do!), talk to him or her about anything you're struggling with. Depression almost always impacts your diabetes management, and it's your physician's duty (and best interest) to help you get the help you need.

If you don't have insurance coverage for therapy, or if you don't like anyone in your network, don't be afraid to expand your search. Many professionals will work within your financial restraints to get you the help you need. Lee Ann recommends just picking up the phone and calling around. It can be difficult to determine areas of specialties from listings, so it's often easier to determine over the phone whether or not someone is experienced with diabetes. Ask questions about their experience, their credentials, and how they work.

"Having a therapist you like who understands your issues should be a priority when seeking treatment," Lee Ann says. "Anyone who can't take the time to help you understand what they do probably isn't someone you want to see."

Lee Ann also suggests looking "outside the box" when it comes to mental health professionals: "Family therapists are a great option, especially because diabetes is a family disease. I'm an art therapist, so I encourage people to investigate art, dance/movement or music therapy. In creative arts therapy, you'll be able to talk about your problems, but you'll also get to use the arts medium to express your feelings which can facilitate therapeutic progress."

We also hope you've heard of the Behavioral Diabetes Institute, a San Diego-based practice that's well-known for its team of specialists in diabetes. Although they're limited in geographic scope, director Dr. Bill Polonsky is a frequent speaker at diabetes events and has written a seminal book on the topic, Diabetes Burn-out: What To Do When You Can't Take It Anymore.