"I'm tired" - Getting out of a Creative Slump

sometimes you just need to cry it out

I find creativity to be a very delicate balance of expression and problem-solving and sometimes this balance tends to go all topsy-turvy.

Every month and every year, I go through a very similar pattern, finding myself battling the same blocks, worrying about the same problems, that never seem to go away, really. It starts to spiral from a place of mental and creative exhaustion, of having made something you love, the thing you depend on to make a living from and making the very thing that is sacred to you as a creative, to be made available on demand.

Sometimes you just have to cry it out. Having a bad day? Cry it out. Having a bad week? Time to burrito yourself in bed. Having a bad month, year? All of the above BUT let’s work through it. These are things that work for me when I’m in a slump, some take longer than others, while others are more tragic than the rest but let’s discuss these.

1. I believe the first step in overcoming creative burnout or block is accepting it.
   
   I go from having the most productive and inspiring weeks to the driest desert of a brain overnight. Usually, this would have been triggered by a comment someone would have passed, or a thought about something I know I would have been working towards but is a slow-burn kind of process and on a specific day, it just becomes an issue of me not being good enough.

   
   So, if you feel yourself feeling unmotivated, uninspired and hating your work, it’s not you speaking, it’s the burnout/block - accept it, cry it out, go for a walk, go have a nap. Be patient with yourself, and don’t pressure yourself to achieve difficult goals.
   

2. What triggered it?

   
   Let’s be honest, there is a large portion of creatives who work freelance in some portion of their lives, and even more honestly, we all know creativity doesn’t come with an ON/OFF Switch, so we cannot expect ourselves to be coming up with the most inspirational ideas every single time we sit at the desk. Also, I speak as someone who was never a morning person, but also can rarely stay awake into the late hours of the night. There is a crucial window in the day during which I do my best work, and I’ve found a routine that works for me, and even though for some it might seem like I’m being lazy or not working enough and, oh! “ Do you work from home? You must be living the life!” and “Oh, you’re not up at 6 am? How do you get any work done?” No, Susan, working from home does not mean I can take a nap whenever I want; I could, but I don’t, and yes, Susan, I can choose my working hours, but they’re still w-o-r-k-i-n-g h-o-u-r-s. This is probably something that irks me the most, and it is many times where my spiral of self-doubt begins.

   

   
   There is a reason so many creatives tend to get burnt out, because what we forget is the multiple other jobs you need to learn and do as a self-employed individual. There’s accounts, bookkeeping and taxes, networking and emails (lots of them that often never get an answer or politely tell you to sod off), administrative work such as locating printers for your work, reaching out to stockists, keeping in touch with previous clients, then there’s website design and upkeep, social media marketing and content creation which very often never has the results you’d hope for. Then somewhere in the midst of all this, you have to do what you signed up to do in the first place, and that is, creating.

   
   So we can safely say that a lot of this block might come from a place of self-doubt that is triggered by words and utter exhaustion of having to do multiple little jobs in addition to the big job.
   

3. You’ve accepted it, understood where it came from, now it’s time to rest and start to work your way into it, in your own time. Sometimes we’re pressured by a deadline or having to pay the bills, so we might not always have the luxury to take our time but when this is the case, I try to detach myself from the work as much as possible. One of the main issues with us creatives is that we invest so much of ourselves, personally, into our work and not getting the results we’d hoped for is even more demoralising because all of a sudden every rejection has become very personal. So when this is the case and the work absolutely needs to be finished, I remind myself that I am not here to solve world hunger (even though, imagine being able to do so through illustrating! I’d create how much is required to do so) and I look to complete a task from more of a technical point-of-view, making sure it looks good and it’s sending the message it’s intended to.

   
   This means that I’ll go back to creating the I’m-so-inspired-I-have-to-illustrate-this work when I’m ready to do so, when it doesn’t feel like I’m trekking up a never-ending mountain by just putting pen to paper.
   

4. Find things that bring calm into your life.
   
   If the little comparison monster starts making itself more present in your life when you’re on social media, stay off it. I’ve put a timer on my apps so I’m not on them for more than 30 minutes each per day, which might seem extreme, but it’s made me feel so much better! I look to other things for entertainment and happiness, ie reading books for the sake of enjoyment and not to illustrate some part of it, playing video games and walking with my phone shoved so far in my bag that I can’t even hear it *ding*.

   

   It’s ok to take time away from your art, if that is what makes you feel better. Distance makes the heart grow fonder and all that.
   

5. Finally, let yourself catastrophise. I’ve been close to throwing in the towel on everything more often than I care to admit. It’s a constant battle, trying to get your work out there, feeling like you’re enough for people to like and ask you to illustrate something because they genuinely appreciate your work and vision. But the thing is, when you love what you do so much, you just cannot imagine yourself doing anything else. Why yes, having a (kind of) stable, predictable 9-5 sometimes seems attractive with the perks it might have but then I snap back to reality: if I don’t have time to create the work I want to create, I’ll be burning myself out in other ways - I’ve been there, and it’s not a state I’ll voluntarily get back to again.

   
   SO what I’m trying to say is, no matter how many times I go, “that’s it, I’m not good enough, this isn’t working out, I give up, I’m tired”, that’s what it is - being tired.
   
   I say this because I am getting out of a rut as we speak: about a week ago, I was exhausted, juggling work and life and worrying about so many things. I was ready to give up on all of it but this week, I’m feeling better, I’ve dedicated time to the things that make me see the beauty in life, and as passionate as I am about illustration, I need to remember that at the end of it all, it is a job and if I’m going to enjoy it when I’m not working, I need to look at it from a more detached point-of-view. This by no means solves the actual problems we face at work, but at least it gives you a stronger ship to weather the stormy waves with.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for listening to my rambling, and I hope you’ve found this helpful in some way or another. I think this is an issue so many face, but from a creative’s point-of-view, I hope that these will serve as some help to you. If you’re experiencing this right now, chin up, you’ve got this, it will pass.

To end this Gee Talk, here’s an illustration I created when I was having one of the most inspiring weeks so far, this year. (I would show you what my least inspiring weeks looks like but there’s literally nothing to show).

If you have any pointers on how you get out of creative blocks and burn-out, share them in the comments, let’s help and support each other!

As always, thankyou for supporting Gee’s Storees and my work!