3 Things Running a Creative Business Has Taught Me About Burnout
Before I get into this article and some of the lessons I've learned, I just want to say that this isn't an advice piece. It's more a diary of what my experience has been like, how I've dealt with things, and what I've learned. Because I think it's important that people talk about their mental health experiences, in the hopes that one day the stigma surrounding talking about it will be a vague memory.
With that out of the way, I'm going to talk about some things that I've learned about creative burnout in the 12 and a bit months since going full time with my creative business. Because whether you're a freelancer/entrepreneur like me, a self-publishing author, or an author navigating the ever-changing and always confusing path to traditional publishing, you're running a creative business.
Even if you're someone who is only just starting to explore their creativity again, perhaps after abandoning it sometime during that hazy period we post-teens like to call 'adolescence' – I hope that there is something in this article that might help you feel like you're not the only one.
Lesson 1: Just because you love it, doesn’t mean it isn’t work
I. Love. What. I. Do. Most creatives I know do, too.
When we first started TMM, I was getting up at 5 am in the morning and going straight to work until 9 am, stopping for breakfast and then working until 2 pm, sometimes 4 pm, before breaking for lunch; even then, if I hadn't gotten everything done that I wanted to for the day, I would go sit back down at the computer and work until I could barely see anymore before somehow showering and falling into bed – to get up and do it all again the next day.
When people said I should slow down, take a break or a breather, I said, ‘It’s ok, I love what I do!’
The problem was, I still wasn’t reaching any of my goals, or even getting as much done in a day as I wanted to! I couldn't understand why with all the time I was putting in.
Of course, I burnt out.
I've had two burnout episodes since we started TMM, once at about the 4-month mark, and once about a month ago. But we'll get to that later on. I allowed myself to wake up between 6 or 6.30 instead of 5 and did a life reset (I can't be the only one here who binges those videos on Youtube? My personal favourites are Rowena Tsai and Muchelleb, you should definitely check them out). During that life reset, I put this quote on my vision board:
“Don’t let the fact that you haven’t reached your goal yet keep you from rest”
And that is the first lesson in a nutshell. Just because I love what I do, it doesn't mean that it doesn't drain my energy like any normal task or give me superhuman powers to achieve amazing things without adequate sleep. This may be contradictory to popular culture. But if you've done any sort of research on creativity and sleep, you know that sleep is where it's at.
Lesson summary: I’m not a robot, you’re probably not a robot. So we need to rest in order to reach our goals and avoid burnout.
Lesson 2: If you've burnt out, you need to truly examine why
I just can't shake the feeling that burnout 2.0 happened because I didn't really learn my lesson the first time.
Following my first burnout episode, we attempted to 'take things slower'. I spread out my deadlines further, made a promise to take at least one day off a week (but try for the whole weekend if possible), and Adam and I would prioritise our health together. When the lockdown here in Queensland (Australia) lifted, that included going to Tae Kwon Do three days a week. [insert Legally Blond gif 'I have a point, your honour, I promise']
I was feeling pretty good post burnout because my body had forced me to rest and I had some renewed energy. Some new and amazing clients came along and I had made a website I was proud of for our business – all things I had never managed to achieve every other time I had attempted to take my writing and editing side hustle full time.
Then hello, I sprained my hip/lower back through a combination of pushing myself too hard at Tae Kwon Do and sitting at my desk like the true bisexual I am (if you haven't found bisexual TikTok yet, then you're missing out), instead of how the OH&S instructors tell us to. This meant that for several weeks straight, I could only sit at my desk for a couple of hours and had to spend an inordinate amount of time laying on the floor on our couch cushions, using a packet of frozen cranberries as an ice pack until it healed itself.
Being the person who does the actual product delivery in our business, i.e the writing, the editing and the coaching, while Adam takes care of the behind the scenes stuff, meant that this was really not good for our business! (There's another whole lesson just in that, but we'll save that for another day.)
Instead of resting completely during this time, as my body needed, I continued to push myself. Working from my phone on the floor and sometimes sitting at my desk far longer than I should have.
Not only did this prolong my healing and therefore my stress, but I was also feeling A LOT of shame around the fact that I knew I wasn't going to be meeting the deadlines for nearly every project I had on the go at the time. I knew it was maybe unreasonable, but I felt like I should still be able to work through all of this and deliver the amazing services I know I'm capable of.
And, you already know what happened next. I burnt out, again. Deadlines were pushed back, meetings cancelled, many tears were shed. But I did finally give my mind and body the rest they were demanding.
At first, I thought this episode was for a completely different reason than the first. I wasn't working those crazy long hours, I was taking days off. Albeit still not as many as maybe would be recommended, but how many entrepreneurs do you know who are able to take proper time off in their first year of business (I want to stress that, because the start-up phase really does require a lot more time than a regular job, but that shouldn’t last forever). I was even making time for family and friends.
Aren't those all the things they say you should do to avoid burn out?
The truth is, when I looked deeper, it wasn't about how much I was working this time.
Here's the thing, even though I should have definitely been resting while I was healing, I think I was approaching burn out again before my injury – the injury just sped up the process.
I was telling myself through the whole time leading up to the injury, and after, that I was just lazy. That I wasn’t tired, I was just not concentrating hard enough. That my injury wasn't that bad, I was just using it as an excuse to do nothing. This leads me to another quote, that isn't on my vision board but that I keep handy:
“What looks like laziness is often exhaustion”
When I examined the true cause of my burn out, I was completely emotionally and mentally exhausted, because I still refused to allow myself to rest properly or seek help. And this leads me into the third and final lesson.
Lesson 3: [Yet to be articulated]
I sat for a good 20 minutes and attempted to condense everything this lesson means into something that didn't sound cliche', or derivative, or like some mental health catchphrase that I was using just to seem 'woke'.
I wanted it to say something about self-compassion, about it being ok to ask for help, or about it being ok to not be at your best all of the time – and yet to say all of those things at once.
In the words of Kristin Neff, 'There's almost no one whom we treat as badly as ourselves.'
Kristin also said, 'It seems such a fleeting thing – feeling good – especially as we need to feel special and above average to feel worthy. Anything less seems like a failure."
Hint: If you haven't read Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself by the amazing Kristin Neff, then you're doing yourself a disservice.
I only picked it up this week after a friend with a similar upbringing to me recommended it as her new 'bible'. Haha. Let’s hope it works better for me than the last one.
All of this to say, that when I examined the true cause of my burnout, my complete and utter exhaustion of the mind and soul, it was my own mistreatment of myself that had led me to that point. My refusal to acknowledge that I needed help.
I'm still navigating the implications of that realisation since I'm only a few weeks post burn out and still riding the high of the bounce back. But I read another lovely quote recently:
“We work and learn in the ‘swampy lowlands’ by trial and error, learning from our mistakes. Everyone gets it wrong sometimes and has to live and work with the consequences.”
I think this just so beautifully expresses not just the creative journey and work that we do, which is what he was talking about here, but also what the journey of life is like.
When we're in the thick of things, in those 'swampy lowlands', we can't see beyond our little parcel of the swamp. It's only once we reach the occasional island in all the mess that we can look around, and realise there's a bunch of other people out there in the swamp, just muddling around like we are.
I was talking to one of the authors I'm working with at the moment about struggling with endings, and I'm reminded once more what an accomplishment it is to end something well as we reach this point, because I don't really know how to sign off here.
But I guess I'll just say that I hope my honesty has helped you realise you're not alone in what you're going through, and I'll see all you fellow swamp-people out there in the mess!
Hey! I'm Danikka – editor, author mentor, and writer. I'm on a constant mission to break down the myth that there is any one ‘right’ way to be an author, to be creative, and to simply exist. If you're a creative like me looking for inspiring content that bridges the gap between the world of the editor and the world of the writer, between the brain of the audience and the marketer, come hang out with me on Instagram and sign up for my newsletter to get a quarterly, sometimes semi-monthly, download of writerly thoughts and editor’s advice. There’s no pretending here, what you read is what I believe. And I love to hear what you think as well.
