5 Lessons I Learned From Creative Burnout

Happy October! Well, as it’s 2020, I hope it’ll be a happy month… but nevertheless, October is here, and I am back, baby! I have spent the past three months resting, playing, surviving, and sometimes thriving. It has not been an easy year for anyone, but a quick recap of the past three months since I last posted (read that here)…

My state, Victoria, very quickly went from stage 3 lockdown (which included home learning) to stage 4 lockdown which included: mandatory masks; a 5km radius limit on travel except for permitted work, care or health; an 8pm – 5am curfew; only allowed outside for 1 hour a day for exercise (no gatherings, no playgrounds); only one person per household allowed out once per day for essential shopping; all shops closed except for those providing food or health services (click and collect for other shops).

On a personal level, we have thoroughly enjoyed our new home. The new environment for our second bout of lockdown and home learning definitely helped us mentally to get through it! We also have more space to spread out in such a way that a) I have my own sewing room with a door I can shut to keep out noise, and b) a second living room so that the kids play Minecraft while my husband and I are watching a show at the other end of the house. Two things that have been invaluable! And I’m happy to report that Home Learning 2.0 went much more smoothly than the first time around.

Only in the past couple of weeks have restrictions started to ease with the curfew lifted, playgrounds reopening in time for school holidays, childcare reopened this week, and school starting to return from next week. For those who like numbers as a point of reference, Victoria’s daily cases reached 686 on August 4, and as of September 30, we are back down to 13 cases. We now have our hopes set on a normal(ish) Christmas, and state borders reopening so that we can visit our sisters during the holidays.

I also want to say a massive thank you to you all for your kind words and messages of support. It’s scary being vulnerable and admitting that you are struggling, but you lovely folks gave me a virtual hug and reassured me that I was doing the right thing. Thank you.

Things have gotten very low this year, and I know that I’m not completely “over” events this year. Heck, we ain’t even properly out of lockdown yet! But the dark clouds are lifting, and I’m certainly at the point where I’ve recovered from the worst of it, having learned some valuable lessons to keep in mind moving forward.

1. It’s ok to ask for help

Do you know of the Enneagram? It’s a system of personality typing that I have found incredibly helpful in understanding how I operate and interact with people and also with myself. I am a Type 2 wing 1, which means that my primary motivation is to help others, with a healthy dose of perfectionism added in for fun (that’s my wing 1).

How that plays out for each Type 2w1 out there in the world is different, but for me, that means that I find it extraordinarily hard to ask for help when it comes to anything more serious than, “Can you please fetch me a glass of water?”.

It’s no wonder that I burned out hard trying to do it all myself.

The first step I had to make in taking time off was to ask for help – I hired a virtual assistant to help manage a couple of things that I couldn’t just ignore for 3 months, such as moderating my Facebook group. And moving ahead in the future, I will continue to delegate tasks like that because I can’t actually do it all. Who knew!

The other big step was to use this time to really encourage the kids to take on more (age-appropriate) responsibility around the house so that I didn’t have to feel like I was having to do everything for everyone all the time (as my husband was only working from home 1-2 days per week on average). Yep, as a Type 2, I both tend to enjoy looking after my family, but can also grow resentful when I feel like I’m doing it all when I’m not operating at optimal levels of capacity. Add in the wing 1 and I also can be quite the perfectionist in how certain jobs get done, hence it’s also usually just easier for me to do it so that it’s done right. Yikes!

2. The importance of rest

As a business owner, a mother, and a wife, I frequently fill up my days. I jam pack in all the to-dos I could possibly squeeze in, only to reach the end of the day exhausted and unavailable emotionally for my family.

Being in Stage 4 lockdown here in Melbourne certainly helped make me slow down. For most of the past three months, we’ve been stuck at home. During this time, I have stopped. I have reset and regrouped. I have learned to build in rhythms of rest into my day and into my week.

I even went off coffee. I know. Who even is this person?! I have since slowly returned to the very occasional cup that I usually can’t even finish because woah caffeine.

With only the simple home pleasures at hand to choose from, I have found such joy in sitting outside in the winter sun and reading the afternoon away. I fully embraced the Tea Life, making a pot of tea to keep me company while I read, or write, or play computer games. I realised that there was a strange kind of beauty in this time, where the forced pause and the gift of having taken leave from my work provided ample amounts of time to take this time needed to rest and I genuinely cherished the opportunity.

As a family, we have even made some decisions moving forward that allow and encourage us to continue to these rhythms of rest in our life, such as buying a better computer to better enable family gaming. Yep, we’re a little geeky and proud of it! #sidmeierfansforlife Plus I’ve made some business decisions that will better enable rest too!

3. Plans and routines make life easier.

I used to internally rebel against making plans for things in my life – go with the flow! Be spontaneous! And sure, there’s absolutely a time and a place for that in life. However, I don’t know about you, but I have had quite enough of the unexpected this year, thankyouverymuch.

As an aforementioned Type 2w1, I do need plans and structures and routines to feel calm so that this reforming perfectionist knows what is happening and when. It’s also a way of having some kind of control when everything else feels out of control.

It can be as simple as having regular family movie nights on Saturdays. Or more formal like meal planning on the weekend and grocery shopping accordingly so that I don’t have to think about what to make every day – decision fatigue is REAL, yo! Especially when I’m preparing two meals a day with the kids at home. It’s not just my business that thrives when I have a plan! Does that mean I stick to it perfectly? No. But the structure is there to lean on when I need to know what to do next and don’t have the mental strength to make a decision.

4. Make time to play

One thing that is hard when your hobby becomes your job is that it is extremely challenging to make time for that hobby to just be a hobby. Sewing for fun? Making quilts that aren’t for work? What? Why? How?!

Turns out that when I start my sewing session with even just half an hour on a “for fun” project, it’s incredibly motivating. And you actually make progress on WIPs! Who knew?!

During this break, I finished off the remaining blocks and pieced the quilt top for a very old WIP (well, old for me!). I made a block or two each day, and as I drew closer to the end, knocked out the final four in one go. Same went for piecing the top together – I pieced a row a day, and then a final push to sew the rows together over two days.

The day I finished the top was rather windy, which made for a fun little boomerang of the quilt – really shows off the metallic background too!

After having spent several weeks in the routine of spending a couple of hours sewing each morning, starting with a “for fun” personal project before pottering about at work sewing (just because it’s for work, doesn’t mean it’s not still fun!), this is definitely a habit I will continue on with beyond my break.

I even signed up for an online course on free motion quilting to motivate me to do so. Turns out that Free Motion Quilting Academy was the magic spark I needed to fall back in love with FMQ. I had forgotten how fun it is to doodle on fabric with my machine! I blame my dislike for basting for being the barrier…

And yet, one of our main tasks for the course is to create a sampler wholecloth quilt showcasing the motifs taught throughout the class. I decided that rather than drawing in the blocks to quilt within the lines, I’d piece the quilt top from solid fabrics so that I could quilt each “block”. I’m so excited to get stuck into quilting that I can’t wait to baste it so I can started. Just look at that rainbow beauty! It’s a little brighter than it appears, but that’s what gloomy weather does to your design wall…

5. Make time for passion projects

Last December, my kids and I listened to an Advent podcast for children on the way to school each morning. It was based on the Jesse Tree, and it sparked an idea for a project and quilt pattern. But one that I thought I would never have the time to develop on top of doing everything else in life and work. Turns out, I was wrong. Turns out, three months of no errands, no school runs, no church, no social gatherings and no work was the perfect time to work on a passion project.

Once I had made ample time for rest and play so that I could recover from burnout, I was getting a little antsy and needing a project to work on. Something to potter about on, and whittle away at while I was obligation-free. It would seem that the Venn diagram of the Make Time For Play bubble and the Make Time For Work bubble overlaps in the middle to create a third little space called Make Time For Passion Projects.

This passion project is the Women of Advent quilt – a quilt pattern and Advent devotional series on the women that’s similar to the Jesse Tree, but instead looks at 24 women in both Jesus’ ancestry, and also the wider Bible narrative leading up to the cross. For each woman, I designed a quilt block to represent their story, and have written a short devotional to help us imagine ourselves in their shoes, and to ponder the lessons their lives can teach us today.

I’ve shared a bit on Instagram over the past couple of weeks about the quilt as I’ve been putting it together, and I’ll share more about it all soon, but the Women of Advent program will be running throughout November, and registration will open in a couple of weeks. You can sign up here for the waitlist to be notified when it opens!

Finally, I want to share a couple of articles that I read during my break that really helped me realise I was not alone in what I was going through:

• Creative Burnout is Not a Myth
• Your Surge Capacity is Depleted – It’s Why You Feel Awful
• Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue

This year has been. a. year. And there’s still three months to go. Go gently, dear friends, go gently.