Hello, old and new friends!
After a significant break from any kind of creative output, I have finally started to feel the urge to create again. And with that urge, I have decided to channel my energy into publishing a newsletter every day for an entire month. Yes… I know it’s a lot. So, let’s break down my wild and crazy decision together, shall we?
Rediscovering Creativity After Burnout
I have been slogging through burnout for the last two years. Like a freshly graduated high school student incapable of picking up a book and casually reading after exams, the thought of creating anything has been overwhelming for my brain.
Burnout is complicated, and it’s easy to brush off a sense of lethargy and demotivation, thinking it’s just a natural progression of working under capitalism. Surely everybody feels this way about their work?
Hint: They don’t.
In a nutshell, the crux of my burnout has ultimately come from a lack of boundaries between work and play, coupled with financial insecurity. It turns out that running a creative business is not a substitute for creativity itself. No amount of creative work will ever make you, the creative, feel satisfied.
All those highly successful creative people who emphasise having a dedicated creative practice outside of your paid work are actually onto something. Whether you work as an artist or not, personal creative projects can offer numerous benefits, including lowering your stress levels and promoting mental calmness, establishing deep personal relationships, and creating opportunities for meaning-making and emotional expression. I don’t know about you, but I think most of us could do with a lot more of these things in our lives.
While my journey has seen me take a step back from creative pursuits, the idea of solving creative burnout with more creative work seems a little ironic. But after a break, I am starting to see that a creative project is exactly the type of discipline-with-a-deadline activity that I’m ready to sink my teeth into.
What Can You Expect?
I’ll be writing here on ROAD RAMBLIN every day for the next month. During this time, I’ll be exploring my creative burnout, sharing photographs I have taken over the last year, experimenting with different mediums (podcasts and videos… hello!) writing travel stories, sharing inspiration, and more.
I’m excited to take up this challenge. It’s giving 2008 Google Blogger vibes, which I am SO here for. If you’d like to follow along, it would mean the world to me if you subscribed!
Next Time
Tomorrow I will be sharing some photographs from my time driving up and down the East Coast of Australia over the past two years.
See you then 👋
Caro