September 19, 2023

A wobbly recipe for reducing burnout (or at least petting cats)

Hello, friend.

This week, I've experienced something rare for me: the joy of missing out. I don't have the energy to run myself ragged now like I did five or ten years ago trying to experience all the things, but generally, if I have the option to do something, I want to do it. If time and resources allow it, why not?

I haven't worked that way this month, and I kind of love it. I'm working under the assumption that this is temporary, so it can be lovely like so many temporary things. Last year, I went to Burning Man for the first time. I've lived on the west coast for a thousand years and had wondered, and finally situation + money + time + preparation aligned, and I did it. While I was there, I realized that it would either be the thing I liked most that I never did again or the thing I hated the most that I would eagerly repeat. Knowing me, I leaned toward the latter and signed up with the camp I'd been at last year when the call went out this spring. It was well organized and full of people I really liked, so it seemed like a good bet.

And then the summer progressed, and I realized that opting into making things harder just sounded... awful. I already had enough hard stuff going on, some of it the hardest stuff I've ever done in my life, falling into a few different categories of life-derailing difficulties. How could I decide to make things like going to the bathroom and staying hydrated significantly more difficult when I was already navigating stuff like frequently doing the math of whether I should take an emergency trip east for family stuff? And being out of easy cell range raised its own issues. Across the early summer, the calculation shifted, and suddenly it just seemed so obviously not to be this year. Just fundamentally, absolutely no. No in my bones.

So I did not board a bus for nine hours on a Saturday late in August, instead sleeping in blissfully late. While it's been hot here in Oakland, I have things like shade, walls, and frozen peach bars. I need all the help I can get right now, so... I choose the peach bars. To say nothing of the showers, the fresh vegetables, my bed, and the ability to be alone easily. Even in easy times, that last one is critical for me.

(Incidentally, I wrote that before the omg Burning Man mud emergency became actual news. I didn't feel the gasping relief you might expect, that buzzing sense of a bullet dodged. It's a group of people mostly uniquely prepared to hang out for an extra few days without supplies or help, and by all accounts, it was pretty fun, and everyone took care of each other. If I'd been in the right state to roll with things, it would've been memorable in the nice way. As it was, I mostly felt a continuation of my relief at the right choice made for the time: staying the hell home.)

Though I didn't head to Nevada as planned, I kept the days I'd taken off of work for it, though, planning a staycation roughly in the shape of a long week-plus in the desert. I've been wobbling along the edge of the Burnout Volcano Cone for, I dunno, three years now? Like so many of us have. I'm trying to walk back from it as much as I can in eleven days.

I have things I have to work on, like my exciting and still-stealthy nonfiction project, but I've been trying to find joy too. I'm writing this in my second London Writers' Hour of the day, this one actually at 8 AM London time (so midnight US west coast), and after doing very serious and needed things earlier, I wanted fun. That's been one of the quiet goals of this week: listening for where the fun still is. I know I still want it, but I've gotten so in the habit of ruthless and necessary efficiency in recent weeks that I'm having to retrain myself not to do everything I can during the little bursts of energy and ability I get. I think it's doing good things. Earlier tonight, realizing I'd done everything I meant to today, I spontaneously tackled a large task I've put off forever and pulled a bunch of iffy clothes out of my closet. I tried about half of them on, sending a dozen dresses, skirts, and sweaters to the outgoing pile by my front door. I don't particularly enjoy wardrobe weeding, but having the energy to do something like that would've been unthinkable a week ago. Had been unthinkable for a long time. I didn't do it because I had to, but because I suddenly had the capacity, and that's very hard for me to resist.

Here are the ingredients to healing burnout, as I know them right now:

1. Sleep enough. I have a very hard time with this normally and have prioritized it this week. It helps.

2. Have time to do nothing. I've made time most days to sit on the couch by my cat and deliberately do nothing practical. I've had to fight myself on this sometimes, but just sitting and thinking without being "productive" is proving very important. I remind myself that I can just be and don't need to earn my place here all the time with labors.

3. Some exercise, which can take a lot of forms. Walks are good, and so is dancing. Be in your body somehow, whatever that means to you. Yoga, orgasms, little runs, whatever brings you joy. I do some HIIT because I like lifting heavy things in short bursts, but I also danced around the living room earlier in bare feet. Both work.

4. Experience joy regularly. It doesn't have to be some big endeavor, but regularly prioritizing actually enjoying yourself is a good antidote to being in survival mode.

5. Be easy on yourself. I know me, and I realized before I got to these days that I could budget it all out to endless projects that would no doubt be very useful, but they aren't what this week is for. I'm trying to soothe an overworked muscle. My motto has been "do less."

6. Do things you don't have time for normally. I've been trying to do my daily yoga during daylight instead of at midnight. I've had cafe time during the day, read for an hour or two during the afternoon, and otherwise reminded myself that all time is my own. I got weekday brunch at La Note in Berkeley with my partner, which is where that latte picture above was taken. Normally I must use my time differently, but the reminder that it still belongs to me is useful nonetheless.

This is me staying out later than I usually ever can on a Monday and reveling in it. Bless you, Death Guild.

Burnout is an enormous subject that lots of experts weigh in on, so consider that guidance extremely anecdotal and unavoidably partial. I haven't healed myself in six days, but I feel a little different inside, and that was my goal.

Oh, this works for me too:

7. Pet animals.

Tomorrow will bring more stained glass work, a particular pleasure as the local shop's open studio time is optimized for retirees and artists, or at least people with that kind of schedule. This weekend will have dancing and a friend's celebration, more movies, and a general thrust toward not just being in my house. Breanne's House of Senior Cats continues apace, and I continue to realize that as much as I enjoy being around my buddies a lot, I benefit all of us when I get outside sometimes and remember I'm a person too.

In addition to my large nonfiction project work this week, I've done some nice indulging dives into editing old projects, which means half being pleased with what I did before and half having useful thoughts about how to make it better. It's nice to come back and see things from another angle that I know will allow me to do a better job of it in the next revision. That too tells me that my brain is getting a useful break.

How's your brain? What have you done for it lately? May I recommend yoga, goats, or both?

Here are some things I've written or liked.

• A talk I did in May got released on YouTube, and (surprise) it's all about communication, but in a security context. This is a version I recorded in my living room to fix some live sound issues. Includes bonus yowls from the new cat I'd gotten a couple weeks before. Hi, Vincent Valentine!
• Moby Dyke: An Obsessive Quest To Track Down The Last Remaining Lesbian Bars In America by Krista Burton is such a beautiful mix of history, travel, and memoir. I loved her blog Effing Dykes a bunch of years ago, and she brings the same effervescence and cleverness to the book, with bonus digressions on sexuality vs. perception, inclusion and exclusion, and the particular role lesbians and their gathering places have served in queer culture. Just fantastic.
• Just As You Are by Camille Kellogg is a queer Pride and Prejudice retelling that entrances both through the original beats and the parts you see coming. A loving and clever adaptation I keep recommending to people.
• I told my therapist that Cassiel's Servant is the most inessential book I've ever needed to put directly into my veins. The author chose the correct POV for Kushiel's Dart and the books that followed, and yet damned if I didn't stay up late watching a story I know very well unfold, just witnessed from a few feet across the room.
• The Problem with Being Edited by Daniel Lavery spoke to something in me that I would not call my better aspects. Being edited is a gift; I say that as both a former editor and someone who's been edited. And also being edited is the most excruciating thing that I absolutely must endure to meet my goals. I wish it were easier for us all, but I appreciate this exploration of this peculiar kind of deeply necessary hurt.

A passage I’ve written that I liked: "It feels terrible. Like grief, except the person is still alive, and somehow that’s worse, I think. And the effects from it hang around, and they can make you feel like you don’t know how to do things you used to know how to do. Or that you at least did, even if maybe you weren’t actually good at them. It’s weird feeling clumsy about things we’re told are basic and innate. But knowing people, it’s not really basic. We probably shouldn't act like it is.”

And here's my vacation stained glass project. It's a small version of one I finished earlier this summer, which I'd cut enough rectangles of glass for to have enough for a little sequel. I think this is a good antidote to burnout too, because so many of my labors live inside the computer and are intangible unless I print them out. There's a useful satisfaction to making an object and holding it, knowing it only exists because you willed it into being (and, in my case, bought a pattern, some glass, and studio time). We can't change everything, but usually we can do something. I do better when I remember that. Maybe you do too.