D. Paul Harrison - Experienced Points - 11/22/2021
Hello
Things have been weird! Weirder than usual, even. It feels like I’m at an inflection point of my life, and I have to decide between comfort and possibly doing something more significant with what I am attempting to do professionally. It is hard to bust out of something comfortable for something new - but I do sometimes worry that the allure of the new is more than enough, for me. I worry about what this says about me as a person.
Writing has been slow, Ive felt more burnt out recently than I probably ever have before in my entire life. Burnout is a hard thing to complain about, for me. It is an end-state and a beginning-state, a constant flux of feelings that cause you to feel empty creatively and motivationally. Attempts to break it can be significant challenges; maybe you think changing your circumstances will fix it, maybe you think changing your physical position will do it, maybe drink less, maybe drink more. In the end though, it’s a combination of internal and external factors that cause you to be burnt out. Sometimes you can’t do anything about it, and sometimes you can, and it’s important to try to figure out which is which.
This isn’t to say that I have, I definitely haven’t. Even just for me personally. I hope one day I’ll figure it out. That magical thing that will get me motivated creatively again, force me to output something I find meaningful, but I haven’t found it yet. I’m unsure it even exists.
Writing
That said, I’ve been doing at least exercises every day. Or, most days. Some days? There’s some stuff I’m proud of, and I am still going to get something out to places to get rejected by the end of the year. This may reduce the darkness a bit - knowing I found an end to something. Knowing that at least I finished a thing and was happy with it, is something I deeply crave.
Goodbye
Anyway, next one of these, if I can get them out regularly, will start being tweeted out so I can actually use this as a replacement for social media. If you are reading this through RSS or newsletter, hi! Thanks for doing that. Hope this experiment continues, if inconsistently.