The Secret of Hobbies in Keeping Us Sane

 This week at the SFF Seven we're talking about those hobbies that take the pressure off writing.

This is relevant for more than curiosity because hobbies are key for creatives to fend off burnout. It's interesting, because it seems like when we talk about "hobbies," we're already assigning whatever project it is a lesser status. A hobby is something you do on the side, for pleasure and no other reason. I'm going to add that a hobby usually doesn't generate income (until it does). You might not even be that good at it, because if you were good at it, people would pay you, right?

We talk about hobbies in a slightly indulgent, somewhat disparaging way:

"Oh, my spouse's hobby is woodworking, but mostly they just putter in the garage."

or

"My spouse reads countless books. It's a cute hobby, but an expensive one!"

See what I mean?

The thing about hobbies, though, is that they are critical to our wellbeing. They keep us sane. For creatives, hobbies refill the well, which is what we need to avoid burnout.

What happens for a lot of us making a living from our creative work - I'll stick with writing as my example - is that what started as a hobby becomes a job. The thing we did for fun, for pressure release, simply out of love, becomes the thing we must do to pay the mortgage and keep the lights on. We lost our hobby and frequently don't replace it. Because we're doing what we love for work! That should be enough, right?

Spoiler: it's not enough.

One of the most important things any creative can do is have a non-monetized creative outlet or two. AKA, hobbies. The non-monetized aspect is important, because it allows us to be creative without that feeling of needing to pay the bills or track sales or make business decisions. I met a US Poet Laureate who also painted - and very well - but had a solid rule never to sell his work. He only gave his paintings as gifts. I've remembered that lesson ever since.

What do I do? I confess that, in the eight years since I became a full-time, career author - as in supporting my family with my writing - I have not been super great at keeping up hobbies. I've burned out once, too, and come close to it a couple of other times. I'm trying to do better. What do I do?

1. Gardening
2. Reading
3. Interior Decorating
4. Hiking
5. Yoga

It was instructive to make this list coming at it from the lens of a "hobby" rather than "non-monetized creativity." I've been trying to implement creative things I can do, but I'm just now realizing that these other activities - even something as prosaic painting my living room (I decided to include an in-process photo), as I'm doing this weekend - also count as leisure-time, restorative activities. Theoretically, everything on my list could be monetized.

(Maybe not. Can you be paid to hike? And I will never, ever be that good at yoga! Trust me: a yoga teacher I will never be.)

Anyway, celebrate those hobbies! They aren't silly or pointless. They're what feeds us as human beings.

 

Path Out of Stuck

Take it from someone who walked face first into stuck (that was really a kind of burnout I didn't know I had) and then flailed there for a very long time: There's a difference between stuck and burnout. You need to know the difference.

Stuck is frustrating. Stuck is scary. Stuck still has hope of breaking free. Stuck usually means something is wrong with the story somewhere (and that's fixable.)

Burnout is paralyzed. Burnout is numb. Burnout says 'I can't'. Burnout usually means something is wrong in your environment or possibly in your physiology. 

Burnout needs recovery time and effort and may require professional assistance either from a coach, a therapist, or a doctor. Stuck needs a little strategic psychology to pull you free of the mire and can usually be resolved within a few weeks. Burnout can take months or even years. 

Whether you're in burnout or whether you're stuck, the antidote for the poison is the same: So long as you say 'I can't', you won't. The only way out of stuck and out of burnout (eventually) is to begin asking 'how can I?' Example: Going from 'I can't make this work.' to 'How can I make this work?' It's not magic and it's not immediate. You have to ask the question and ask the question and ask the question. Then you have to sit and listen. Free write around it with no rules. Stream of consciousness write around 'how could I make writing work?' 'What would it look like to make writing work again?' 'What do I need in order to write again?' Just keep asking and keep noodling. Initially, the answers will all be I don't know. Then, one day, you'll get an outlandish, crazy idea. Mine was to get some plywood up into the attic and laying it down across the rafters so I could get a desk and plug up there as well as a little damned peace and quiet and solitude for writing. Living in Florida where attics are regularly a bajillion degrees made the idea unusable but it did start a protracted effort to find some privacy in an overcrowded house. It's s process that's still unfolding. Recovery is a process that takes a little self awareness, honesty, and a willingness to ask for help if it's needed. 

The Way Out of the Wasteland

 

This handsome dude is looking for his forever human and home. And this totally has something to do with our topic this week. You see. I write my blog posts on Thursday evening for publication on Friday morning. But this man. He had his neuter surgery Thursday. When I picked him up and got him in the car to come home, he went into respiratory distress. Our regular vet was closing down and they'd already sent techs home. So off we hied to the local urgent care veterinary place. An insane amount of money later, we discover that Ramases has pneumonia. Initially, they diagnosed it as aspiration pneumonia, which is dreadful, awful stuff. The urgent care vet wanted the cat hospitalized, so they transferred us to an emergency hospital nearby. We go there. That vet disagrees with the treatment plan and long story short, we get out of there at half past midnight with sick cat in tow. I'm operating on three hours of sleep. 

Drama over the 4th of July holiday has upended my current living arrangement. The ripples on that are slowly building to a tidal wave that I suspect will mean everyone packs up and moves. But in the meantime, HERE have an overdose of uncertainty! 

Whether it's my brain or whether it's rational to feel this way, I'd like to say everything's on fire.

I used to think these were things that needed to be recovered from - as if writing were something that needed to be held in reserve for when conditions were just right. I still suffer from this because I know a little about how my brain works best. But I am starting to realize that 'best' is an unobtainable ideal. All of these events in my life that make me feel like I'm going to explode, pack the cats into a car, change my name, drive into the middle of nowhere, and buy a house for under $200k to live in peaceful obscurity aren't one off events. They're life. My life. There is no calmer. There is no 'when stuff settles down'. This is it. It takes an act of radical acceptance to digest that realization. Then all that remains is to ask whether writing in the midst of all that life makes everything better or worse.

For me, the answer is better. I made writing my retreat - the little hit of dessert you sneak when you think no one is watching. It gives me energy and helps keep me sane. Because it keeps me saner than I would otherwise be, most of my family are invested in leaving me alone while I write. Sometimes. But this reframe isn't necessarily enough to refill an empty well. Silence, technology fasts, sensory walks (where you walk slowly and rotate through observation - what do I hear, what do I smell, what do I taste, what do I feel on my skin, what do I feel internally, what do I see) and any thing else that generates energy for you will help. Maybe you cook the world's hottest chili. Or you build model ghost ships inside bottles. If they make you feel better for having done them, they fill the well. Rescuing gives me energy when I finally match a cat like Ramases to his forever person. So hey. Anyone in FL or neighboring states what a handsome, sweet, spotted tabby who drools when he's happy (and he's happiest when you're petting him and giving chin rubs). I'll even deliver. 

I think the important bit is to know what's important to you. Writing takes a toll. Rest and breaks are necessary. We tear up a lot of cognitive and emotional ground while writing - but it's *different* mental and emotional ground than our life dramas. Leverage that while recognizing that eventually, all those synapses need rest and that rest will not be rushed.

Burnout

Have you been staring at your blinking cursor, wondering how you’re going to fill the page? Have you been sitting down to write only to find yourself doing the dishes or scrolling your socials? Have you been experiencing burnout?

There are numerous ways burnout hits. Which also means there’s a lot of options to work through it—yay! But none of it’s easy–boo. 

I’ve been through burnout, I wrote about it here. And the most important takeaway I can share is that you have to be able to give yourself grace. If you can’t write. It’s okay. If you can’t focus and lose every writing minute you had in the day. It’s okay. If you couldn’t bring yourself to even open your WIP. It’s okay. 

Give yourself grace and avoid piling on the guilt. In my experience, guilt adds to the burnout. Refilling the well takes time, if you don’t have time and are on a deadline check out Jeffe’s post from yesterday. 

How do I take care of my writer self? Surrounding myself in nature refills my well. So does being creative in any way that isn’t writing. When burnout is really depression in disguise, it’s okay to ask for help. You’re not alone.

Self-Care and Burnout: A Writer's Cycle

 To all our US readers:

Happy Independence Day!

This Week's Topic: Self-Care & Burnout

Burnout is caused by us caving to pressures both external and internal. There is no taskmaster like our own conscience, is there?  It can make us gleefully ignore all the warning sirens of impending collapse with the intoxicating refrain of "just one more..." On occasion, we are blessed with the sweet, sweet glory of being in the Writing Zone. The words are flowing, the technology is cooperating, and there are no interruptions. We double our average word count for the day. We finish the WiP in record time. We publish the mss ahead of schedule. And then...

We can't come up with bupkiss.
Total burnout.

Whilst in the throes of burnout, the very notion of creativity causes us to wander off and drool in a corner. Our brains throb as if we were beamed with a fastball. We spend days, nay, weeks trying to recover from overachieving. Deadlines for other projects zoom past as we remain listless. We are such gluttons for punishment that we know the dire consequence awaiting us at the end of the Great Writing Jag, yet we sprint towards it, lost in our fugue, giddy at all we are accomplishing in the moment. 

We promise to pace ourselves next time. 

Another lie. We won't. We will rejoice whenever we stumble into the Writing Zone. We are willing prisoners of the cycle of overachieving and burning out. Naughty writers. We should take better care of ourselves. We should apply the lessons from all those self-care workshops. We should find the balance between creativity and healthiness. 

Bwaahaha. No. 

Not at the expense of our Beloved Story. Our fictional progeny take priority over our mental and physical well-being. Manic episodes? You betcha. Knowing better but not doing better? Ayup. Self-sabotage? Masters of it, we are. We will bitch about burnout and falsely vow to adhere to the principles of self-care, yet we will not change. There's another story crawling around our brains and we can't wait to tell it. 

That's the real reason writers are weird. 

Preventing Burnout with Non-Monetized Creativity

 If you missed it, SHADOW WIZARD is now available for preorder! It releases September 29, 2022. This is Book One in my new trilogy, Renegades of Magic, and continues the story begun in the Bonds of Magic trilogy. Preorder links below!

     

 

Our topic this week at the SFF Seven involves our non-writing hobbies.

 

In various discussions around burn-out and sustainably productive writing habits, I've discovered that many professional authors (as in, getting paid to do it) have another creative outlet that is non-monetized. Ted Kooser, a U.S. Poet Laureate (1004-1006), told me that he painted as a hobby. His paintings were apparently glorious and much-sought, but he'd made the decision to only give them away. It was important to him to have a creative outlet that wasn't connected to money. This was a startling thought to me at the time, and one I've come back to often. 

 

Other authors I've talked with in various scenarios have also discovered that approach: that having a non-monetized creative outlet not only refills the well, but prevents burnout (or allows a creator to recover from it).

 

What happens to many of us - and I'm speaking of authors, but I imagine it happens with all creatives - is that we begin with writing as the hobby. It's the passion, the special something that we do because we LOVE it. Eventually, with persistence, hard work, and luck, we make that hobby into the profession. Then it's no longer the alternative to the day job and other responsibilities. It's become work.

 

Which, let me be clear, is good and natural. I'm a big believer in treating writing like my job. That's how I support myself and my family.

 

Still, to manage the creative self, I've found I need other outlets to refill the well and take the place of that other, special, and relaxing Thing. Keeping it non-monetized is the challenge. Especially since the pandemic began, I think we've all become adept at casting about for side-gigs. In fact, the gig-culture was going strong before that. It's tempting to take that successful hobby - I imagine Ted Kooser's friends admiring a painting, offering money for it, and him turning it down with a slight smile and shake of his head - and begin to dream of taking that art viral and making an avalanche of comforting money from it. 

 

I sometimes think there's a certain magic in refusing that temptation, in enjoying creativity for its own sake. 

 

And magic is precious.

The Best Medicine

Your heart pounds so hard it hurts. Your breath rasps. Your mouth is dry. Your blood in your ears roars. Your insides feel scorched by the constant rushes of adrenaline. You might complain about the weight on your chest. 

It's either a heart attack or it's stress. In the US with its pathological worship of busyness, it's probably stress. We've built a society that's really, really good at piling it on and one pathetically bad at releasing it. Science tells us all the time that chronic stress causes and exacerbates disease. It really is in our best interests to figure out how to turn down the dial on stress. 

The funny thing is: Stress evolved to be a lifesaver. Trust humans to turn it into a killer. 

Stress isn't supposed to be a bad thing. It's supposed to help, not harm. But to help, stress needs to be a cycle - a cycle that gets completed. At the dawn of humanity, a critter charged you. Stress dumped flight or fight or freeze chemicals into your body. If you were going to survive, you either ran or you fought. Either way, living meant physical exertion. Once you either defeated or outran the critter trying to turn you into a snack-pack, you returned to your tribe, told your story, and celebrated living another day. Defeating stress in the modern world means recreating those steps. Burnout by Emily and Amanda Nagoski lays out the means of doing just that. 

I'm not going to talk about exercise, because yeah, yeah, we all know. No, I want to focus on that last bit: Celebrating.

What happens when you recount some amazing feat to your friends? Wide eyes, appreciative, empathetic, maybe sympathetic noises from your listeners. Amazement, broad smiles, and laughter when your story concludes with triumph. Or at least with you not being made a chalk outline by some saber-toothed something. 

Laughter. You know. That stuff that's supposed to be the best medicine. Because laughter signals your system that stress is over. It's at an end and the alert system can relax. 

When the stress gets to be too much, I break out the cat toys and the catnip. There's nothing like a bunch of drunk cats butt wiggling and pouncing on string (and one another). Brown paper is also a good source of feline comedy.

If laughter feels too far away, affirm life in some fashion. Our ancestors made art. They drew on cave walls, or put up hand prints - something to say 'we're still here', 'we survived another day'. Watching the last of this season's monarch caterpillars change into butterflies does the job for me. Getting to release a brand new butterfly into the world dumps cold water on stress. It's pretty tough to stay keyed up and agitated when an endangered bit of technicolor beauty takes her first flight.

Healing Burnout

Burn out is a special kind of exhaustion. It surpasses physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual exhaustion. It encompasses all of them at once and then adds in some special extra dimension that's a little like a million tiny kitten claws climbing your nerves all the time. You're so tired you could cry, except you can't cry. Nor can you sleep.

What to do?

Anything. Anything that's not in front of a screen. Get out and get your hands in the dirt - plenty of scientific articles talk about the benefits of microbes in the soil, especially for the treatment of depressive issues.

Get bored. Go on a screen fast just to sit in the sunshine and watch the clouds go by. Does anything sound like fun? Do that thing. If nothing does, do nothing.

For me, the issue is that burn out is a progressive state that creeps up on you. It isn't something most of us notice until we're so deep in the choke hold that it feels like it's going to take moving to a new country under a new name to solve. I suggest you can untangle the skein if you're willing to rest long enough to reset your central nervous system. When I managed to trip and give myself a concussion, the doctor said, "Aim for zero sensory input. It allows your brain tissues to heal." Burn out is very much the same. Turn down the input. Hibernate if you have to. Anything to remember how to relax, to sink into the grass or the floor or a chair. Anything to let the noise of your mind drain, quiet, and finally drift to silence. Is it easy? No. Especially not with the demands of families and work. But very much like airplanes. You do have to put on your mask before you can help anyone else with theirs.

It takes more than a thimble to refill the well.

Everyone’s hit it, 

though some deny it, 

and once you’ve been bit, 

you won’t care a wit.

I saw it in corporate healthcare and I see it in my fellow creatives: BURNOUT. 

Burnout became the it word a few years ago and then quickly following came self-care. I saw it in corporate healthcare and I see it in creatives. No matter who’s experiencing it, it’s a hard thing to climb out of. Even for those of us who know what we have to do.

That thimble thing I put in the title? That’s real life right there. I’ve been through burnout that was compounded by my chronic illness. And I climbed out. It took a lot longer than I wanted it to, though now I know a few things NOT to do. 

I’ve done the relaxing. Check. But as Jeffe pointed out on Sunday, you can’t relax when you’re multitasking. Uncheck. 

Google burnout and you’ll find suggestions to read. Reading! Yay, my favorite pastime! Check. But, what do you do when your body is out of whack and you’re depressed? Depression robs the joy from the even the simplest things. Uncheck. 

Then, how about unplugging? Check. 

I’m not going to uncheck that one because I’ve learned that what I need when I’m at the bottom is to seriously unplug. When my well is bone-dry, I need to walk away from all the voices and opinions floating around the social. If I’m going to have a chance at a bucket, or even a cup, rather than a thimble…I need to get out where I can breathe and the only voice I hear is in the wind. 

To my fellow chronic disease sufferers, I know there are days where getting outside in the fresh air is insurmountable. I’m blessed to have a furry companion that pushes me, but there are still days it doesn’t happen. And that’s okay. If I beat myself up over it I’m going the wrong way. But, if I let it happen and just breathe, then I’ll get out the next day.

That’s how I start, by filling a thimble. I find some snow, or sunshine, or raindrops splashing into a puddle to stare at. And before I know it I’m listening to the birds and imagining what they’d be saying if there were fae walking beneath the branches.

Maybe this is why writing fantasy, in which there are always powerful trees, seems to come from my soul whereas writing science fiction is all brain-power entertainment. 

That’s how I keep going and how my thimble amount grows into a cup and then a bucket. Nothing fancy and it’s often frustrating and humbling, but that’s how life is. So, dear reader, how do you bounce back when your emotional/mental/physical well is empty?