In Which I Rage-Write About Writer’s Block Being a Real Thing

Please stop saying it doesn’t exist!

Special note: This was written after hearing a well-known and successful public creative say writer’s block doesn’t exist. I had an angry reaction to that opinion, and this essay was what came out. It’s full of strong feeling, and I’m publishing it as I wrote it because I think it makes an important statement. It is not meant to be some kind of hot take, nor is it meant to impugn on a personal level that specific person or other people who say stuff like this (that’s why I don’t name them). Ultimately I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, that they are simply trying to help people when they say writer’s block isn’t real. And I’m sure that does help some people. But not me, and in this essay I tell you why. For an extended and more benevolent version of this essay, listen to my podcast episode on dealing with writer’s block.

Over the years I’ve heard a number of writers and other creatives deny the existence of writer’s block. I think it’s wild people would do this. It’s demonstrably false, or put another way, there’s a preponderance of evidence that it does exist: most writers have at one time or another experienced a block, even if it’s for a short period of time. So why do we still have people going on record saying shit like this? Let’s break it down.

First, a definition of writer’s block, because it’s widely misunderstood. A mistake people make is that it means you can’t write a word. More likely it manifests as a feeling of having to force the writing, feeling uninspired and finding no joy in it, and dreading having to do it. Eventually this will lead to being unable to write. I’ve experienced this in both short and longer bursts. If you learn to identify it early, you can manage your block so that its duration is shorter. The causes are usually our own fears and insecurities about our writing, but sometimes other factors are involved: mental or physical illness, exhaustion or burnout, time-management challenges. And sometimes it’s a sign that writing just isn’t your thing, or that you’re writing novels when you should be doing screenplays.

I’ve heard people say writer’s block isn’t real because its origins are often psychological: “Writer’s block doesn’t exist, it’s just your fears and insecurities getting in the way.” This is akin to saying mental health challenges don’t actually exist because they’re psychological. Writer’s block is often a mental health challenge (mine is of this type). And this kind of statement is also offensive to people who struggle with brain chemistry-related depression who are blocked. To the people saying this kind of thing: stop right now. Your mental health privilege needs to be checked.

You’ll also hear people who deny writer’s block say stuff like, “I don’t allow myself to get writer’s block.” Okay, good for you. Again, check your mental health (or other) privilege. Choose your words more wisely, have some compassion for those who struggle. Your personal reality doesn’t elide the truth of other people’s lived experiences.

I get it that many people who say writer’s block is a myth are trying to help. And it may help a minority. But mostly it sounds shockingly misguided and patronizing. And I think many people who say this kind of thing are actually getting a dopamine hit from it: it reminds them how well they’re doing with their own writing, how they’ve “conquered” their own fears and insecurities and “mastered” self-discipline. In a culture that sees hard work as a moral virtue (and writing regularly is hard work), they get to feel very good about themselves, even hold themselves up generously as an example of what “anyone” can do if they put their mind to it and simply refuse to allow writer’s block to happen.

If you are one of the majority of writers who struggles with blocks, please understand that it’s totally normal and it’s real. There’s no need to deny the existence of writer’s block in order to deal with it. In fact, accepting that it happens, that it isn’t an implication of moral weakness or inherent laziness, will help you move through these periods faster. It’s okay to feel insecure about your writing, to fear failure. If you are struggling with mental health issues that hold you back, you have my compassion and understanding: me too. Sometimes we just need a break, that’s the honest truth. I find that taking short periods away from writing every month or so helps me maintain my enthusiasm over time.

If you are experiencing a longer period of writer’s block, my deepest sympathies. After I finished my PhD, my burnout was so severe I couldn’t write much of anything for two years. I endeavored, I made strides, but I couldn’t write. To those of you who maintain writer’s block isn’t real or crow about how you don’t “allow” it to happen to you, here’s what that sounds like to me: an invalidation of those heartbreaking two years of my life, of the struggle I encountered finding my way back to writing, and of the challenges I still face in managing my mental health while pursuing my creative dreams. Do you really want to imply that I am delusional when I have writer’s block, that I’m experiencing some kind of hysteria, or that I am simply lazy, that I lack the character necessary to be a “real” writer? Please attempt some kindness and compassion. The world certainly needs more of it, and you sound like an asshole.

Why I Gave Up on Ambition

The question to ask is, does ambition make us unhappy?

“So what are your long-term goals?” she asked me. “Where do you see yourself in two years, in five?”

I was interviewing for a position at a DC-based think tank. I answered, “I don’t really think about the future. I don’t care that much.”

“Well, I guess that’s…refreshing,” she said after a pause. I could tell from her expression that she did not actually find it refreshing at all, but flippant. Who was this lazy-ass person wasting her time, was what she was thinking.

Okay, the truth is I didn’t have the guts to say anything like that. I don’t remember my answer, but I’m sure I said something along the lines of “I have exciting ideas about contributions I want to make and a progressive career path blah blah blah.” After all, I used to believe that’s how I was supposed to think. Plans, goals, up and at ‘em. I used to have an ego about these things: I was going to make something of my life. I pursued an important career because I thought that’s what smart and talented people who have the privilege of opportunity do. I worked hard, too hard. I burned out.

When you live in a culture that worships ambition and the attendant hard work it requires, it can feel so wrong to say “I’m not ambitious.” But I’ve been thinking that maybe, just maybe, ambition can be damaging. During the years I had ambition, I was unhappy. I never felt like I was achieving enough. There was always something more I needed before I could finally feel like I’d arrived. I always felt like I wasn’t getting enough appreciation or recognition for my contributions. I worked so hard all the time, exhausting myself, and the rewards that accrued to me weren’t satisfying or fulfilling.

What an awful way to live. Now, I do think many ambitious people find satisfaction going that route. They must, because they keep doing things that way. They like the chase, the big dreams, the thrill of expectation that there’s always more to be had. But I found that kind of life hollow and exhausting. Happiness and fulfillment were always out there on the horizon, never right here right now.

The problem with ambition, see, is that it can make us believe that more is needed to feel satisfied, and it draws our focus away from the small moments in the here-and-now that are the true measure of happiness. Gratitude and mindfulness practices are popular because they draw us back to these present moments. But what if you lived in those moments permanently? What if in each moment you felt like you had what you needed, you felt whole, settled, and at ease? What would a life comprised of many such moments look like? Would you cease to achieve anything? Would life lose its luster when you aren’t feeling excited about all the things the future will give you?

Does giving up on ambition mean you’ll become a lazy couch potato whose biggest achievement today is putting on some pants?

Not at all. In fact, you may end up achieving even more. You’ll be focused on expending your time and energy on the things that fulfill you in the moment, which will have the effect of creating momentum in your life, and that can lead to big things. You’ll probably find that these big things begin to almost happen on their own, with comparatively little effort on your part, because you’ll be excited about the stuff you’re doing right now and that will give you the right kind of energy to tackle the challenges that come your way.

Here are some of thing things I’ve accomplished since I started living my life for the small here-and-now moments: I finished a novel (after 15 years of failing to do so); started a weekly podcast; been consistent with writing a weekly blog post. During the ambitious phase of my life I got a PhD, but here’s what I was actually doing: waking up dreading the day; doing all the things I “should” be doing, often to the bare minimum of acceptable standards; climbing back into bed exhausted and mourning the loss of another day that wasn’t satisfying or happy. Oh, and drinking to anesthetize myself, let’s not forget that part.

As soon as I gave up on big ambitions and began to focus on enjoying the moment, that’s when stuff started happening for me. I felt momentum, excitement, fulfillment. And yes, happiness. I’m not without dreams for myself, but I practice detaching from outcome. The future can, and will, take care of itself. The power to effect change in our lives lies in acting in the current moment, and leaving the future open to possibility.

Get Friendly With Your Ultradian Rhythm

Learning to trust our intuitive preferences is essential.

Back in the olden days when I thought that being a “real” writer meant developing certain specific writing habits and hitting explicit targets like word count, an author I admired did an interview about her work routine. She said that when she finally decided to get serious about writing, she committed herself to writing four hours a day. For a long time, much longer than I like to admit, I thought that four hours a day was what you had to put in to be a real writer. But now I understand that’s bullshit.

I think that four hours is too much time to dedicate to writing. To any single task. And while it may work for that particular author, in general trying to remain focused that long is not only difficult but can actually be harmful. This is because humans operate in accordance with an ultradian rhythm. You have no doubt heard of the circadian rhythm that governs each 24-hour day. The ultradian rhythm governs our biological functions throughout the day in 90-minute increments. For example, when we sleep we cycle in and out of REM sleep on an ultradian rhythm. Our ultradian rhythm also governs how long we can focus deeply on any particular task before our brains give out.

Before I learned about ultradian rhythms, I thought something was wrong with me that I only seem to be able to sit down and write for about an hour, hour and a half max. The thought of writing for four hours straight seems nuts to me. I suppose in rare cases I could power through such a session if I had to (I’ve never had to, even when writing my dissertation), and I don’t doubt that some people like working in longer sessions. But most of us will only be able to do around 90 minutes of focused work before we fade (and that’s an average—my ultradian intervals seem to be around 60 minutes; some people’s may be closer to two hours).

If you pay attention, you’ll be able to pinpoint the exact moment that brain fade happens. Your brain basically says, “Yep, I’ve had enough now.”

Learning to stop when that happens is essential to developing a sustainable writing habit (or any other kind of habit), because it allows you to rest and regenerate before you’re entirely depleted. As I’ve talked about recently on my podcast, it can take a lot longer to recover from burnout than it would have taken for you to rest and regenerate in order to avoid it. While it’s possible to power through in the short term, you’re harming your chances of being able to sustain your motivation over the long term.

Many people can only do one ultradian period of highly focused work in a day. But I find it’s possible to do two or more periods of around 60+ minutes as long as I make sure to rest during (learning how to strategically use procrastination and distraction can help) and between. I use these periods for creative work. Other activities in my life, such as admin work and household chores, don’t require that kind of focused energy, so I intersperse that stuff in between my creative sessions. And of course I also schedule copious amounts of rest and rejuvenation periods, which include taking walks, watching TV, or journaling.

I find that chunking my daily life according to a loose ultradian rhythm feels natural and relaxing. It just makes sense in some deep way—because it makes biological, physiological sense. Throughout the night I usually wake up around every 90 minutes (particularly in the first half), and I no longer view that as indicating I’m doing sleep wrong. I’m just cycling out of an ultradian interval.

Learning about the ultradian rhythm made me realize just how important trusting my intuitive preferences is. I’ve always naturally found myself doing writing sessions of 60 to 90 minutes; it’s what feels good to me. I could have saved myself years of angst if I’d just accepted that as how much I need to work. Instead, I felt bad about myself, tried to force more. How many other intuitive behaviors do we have that we don’t accept and learn to work with because culture tells us they’re wrong? If we paid attention to what feels good to us and let that guide us, we’d probably find that life starts to feel a whole lot better. And we may even end up getting more done, because we’re working with our energy cycles, not against them.  

August Prospective 2021: Thoughts on Burnout and Breaks

I’m taking an August holiday - see you back here in September!

Hello Readers! I want to thank you for visiting my blog and reading my essays. I’ve been posting weekly here for a year and a half, and it has been a joy. I plan to continue my regular posts here well into the future. Writing is how I think and learn and have fun.

I’ve decided to institute an annual August holiday from blogging. Mostly this is due to a question that has been on my mind lately: “Can I really continue to post every single week…forever?” And while I have not encountered any serious impediments thus far to doing so (my inspiration has not failed me yet!), this question just won’t leave me be. Surely at some point this will become onerous. Right? I mean, posting every single week can’t be sustainable forever. Right?

I don’t know the answer to that question. But I do know that creative work is my lifeblood, and if it ever stops being fun, that will be a very bad day. And I also know that burnout doesn’t just happen overnight. It’s a cumulative process where we push ourselves a little, then a little more, then a little more… Like a frog in a pot of water being slowly heated to boil (what a horrible metaphor, I hate it, but it aptly describes the circumstances that lead to burnout, I think). By the time we realize we are on our way to burnout, it’s often too late to forestall it.

I don’t ever want that to happen when it comes to my creative work. And lately I’ve been feeling a little tired. Traffic is down on all my platforms - here, my podcast, social media - probably because people are either on their summer holidays (Europe) or getting ready for the school year to start (US). August feels like a good time to take a break, give myself a breather, take my own staycation holiday.

And to begin to prepare myself for the next phase of creative entrepreneurship. Over the next six to eight months, I will be working on turning my creative business into an actual business. That is, launching my first major product and upping my game in market research, networking, and promotion. In addition, I’ll be readying my novel for querying or possible self-publication. It will be a thrilling but nerve-wracking time, and I want to be ready. Because I want to be able to enjoy it. I want it to be a time I remember as life-giving and full of creative joy.

So I will see you all back here in September!

Why Burnout May Be an Inevitable (and Positive) Developmental Stage for HSPs

If you are experiencing a dark night of the soul, keep going.

This blog post is now a podcast episode!

Once I was far enough into my recovery from severe burnout, a strange thought began occurring to me. What if my dark night of the soul, as I like to refer to it, was somehow a necessary experience for me to reach my fullest potential as a human being? It’s common for people to feel gratitude for challenging circumstances once they’re well enough in the rearview mirror, but this was different. I actually started thinking that my burnout was inevitable, and in particular the kind I experienced, which I term “existential burnout” (more on this below). I began working on a theory that not only was this burnout necessary for my own personal development, but that it would have occurred at one point or another regardless of what life path I’d chosen…and that it was a very good thing.

And then I discovered I was right. Or, in the parlance of academia, I found evidence to support my theory. A doctor, psychologist, and poet named Kazimierz Dąbrowski (Ka-ZHI-meerz Dom-BROF-ski) developed a theory in the 1960s called Positive Disintegration, which details a process that highly sensitive people (HSPs) are very likely to go through during their lives that is very similar to what I experienced as existential burnout. Unlike mainstream psychological and medical approaches that pathologize the anxiety and depression people experience when going through one of these “disintegrations,” Dąbrowski saw such emotions as an inevitable and necessary part of HSPs’ personality development. He believed that HSPs have a particular developmental path and that they quite possibly have a special purpose in society.  

Before I explain the theory of Positive Disintegration and its implications for HSPs experiencing burnout, let me briefly define what I mean by existential burnout. Some burnout is situational, like being burned out in a job or relationship, and you can deal with it through taking a break or exiting the situation. Existential burnout is a whole-life phenomenon, when you begin to question the very foundations of your life and beliefs. It is the state of emotional, psychological, and spiritual confusion and exhaustion that results from years or decades of trying to follow conventional paths and not finding satisfaction or happiness through them. This is essentially what positive disintegration is: a conflict between an individual and society’s norms, driven by a desire for greater autonomy and a feeling that there’s “more” out there, that results in many ostensibly negative emotions, a dark night of the soul.

Positive Disintegration is a complex theory, and I will only touch on the portions here that are relevant for HSPs and burnout. Dąbrowski did not use the term HSP (it was coined by Elaine Aron in the 1990s); rather, he referred to the constellation of traits comprising high sensitivity as overexcitability, or OE, which originates in an extrasensitive nervous system. If you are an HSP, you will recognize yourself in multiple types of OEs as detailed by Dąbrowski:

• Psychomotor: An excess of physical or mental energy. Can manifest as racing thoughts, jitteriness, and feeling an actual need to either think obsessively or for physical movement.

• Sensual: An extra sensitivity of the five senses. Super-tasters, sound sensitivity, sensitivity to light, etc. are all manifestations of this.

• Intellectual: An extreme desire for understanding, greater knowledge, truth, enlightenment. These are people who are driven to observe, collect data, research, analyze, and theorize. They usually love reading and are highly curious.

• Imaginational: Characterized by a highly active imagination and propensity to lose oneself in fantasy. These people can have very vivid dreams, see less of a stark distinction between truth and fiction or see truth as paradoxical, often find more pleasure living in their head than the real world, and are highly creative.

• Emotional: Experiencing intense and complex emotional responses, often accompanied by physical sensations. These people are often highly empathic, often attracted to or experience the melancholy or the “dark” side of life, and form unusually strong attachments.

I have all five of these OEs. The last three especially are associated with positive disintegration. So basically I was always on a path to existential burnout. It was required for me to reach a higher level of personal development, according to Dąbrowski’s theory. So why do HSPs experience this type of thing, and what purpose does it serve?

A simple explanation for why HSPs often experience burnout is that their sensitivities make them more prone to it. But disintegration is more than just crisis. It is a rejection of the status quo, coupled with a desire for an individual and autonomous path forward. HSPs enter their dark night of the soul because of the particular way that they experience this kind of crisis: as a disquietude with the self; the feeling of being inferior, not just when compared to others but in terms of what they wish for themselves. HSPs are highly self-aware and self-critical, and have a keen sense of themselves as being “different” and misunderstood. The path through disintegration for most HSPs involves self-education and what Dąbrowski terms “autopsychotherapy.” In other words, the path toward greater autonomy is individual and self-directed. Each person must find their own untrodden path – and this, in essence, is both the reason for and result of existential burnout. The outcome is syntony, a state of being in harmony and resonating with one’s environment: integration.

Dąbrowski believed that HSPs play a special role in society, that through their own personal experience of disintegration they could then use their learnings to help raise the level of society. But it is the implications of his theory for individual HSPs experiencing burnout that I find most compelling. I know that for me, I only began to heal when I stopped believing something was wrong with me, i.e. when I stopped pathologizing my experience of burnout (or letting others do that). How different would my experience of my dark night of the soul have felt if someone had said to me, “You’re an HSP, and what you are going through is a normal, necessary, and even positive part of your development. It’s going to hurt like hell, but you will find your way through it and emerge as a more highly functioning individual with something important to contribute to the world.” I wonder.

Reconsidering Burnout Using the Third Option

The reason changing your life is so hard is because it always involves a loss of some kind.

Have you ever tried to empty a full dryer in one go, and every time you lean over to pick up a dropped sock or washcloth, you lose another? Not only are you trying to hold everything together, but you’re struggling to scoop up all the items falling to the wayside as well. That’s what life feels like when you have burnout. Like all your energy is used up just trying to scrape through the day, cleaning up messes. You have nothing left over for the things that feed your soul – and worse, activities that used to bring you joy no longer do. They become chores just like everything else. That’s no way to live.

When burnout becomes extreme, it’s marked by a feeling of being trapped by the circumstances that are causing the burnout. The emotional exhaustion constricts your perception of options. It’s like being in a deep hole. Your world becomes black and white, either/or, with choices whittled down to their starkest binary: stay in that hole, or get out (somehow). But “get out” is rarely a feasible option, because it involves blowing up life as you know it. This is what burnout is: feeling totally, hopelessly stuck, your brain stumbling back and forth between two equally unworkable options. Yes or no, stay or go. And here’s the worst part about burnout: you don’t even know which option you want.

The good news is that this is a false set of options created by your burnout brain. Both are the same thing, two sides of a coin: reactions to being stuck. Both live inside that hole with you. What you need is a third option, one that exists outside of this hole that will crack open the mental constructs keeping you stuck in that either/or existence. The third option lives beyond the boundaries of your current perception.

At this point I know you’re thinking, so get on with telling me how to find the third option already! I’m not going to pretend that there’s some kind of life hack for this. One of the most challenging aspects of being stuck in burnout is that we usually have subconscious reasons for wanting to stay stuck. Changing our lives involves confronting difficult emotions: grief, failure, fear. The reason there’s a perennial market for life advice is that while it gives the illusion of being useful, it mostly fails. The only thing that works is changing your perception of your own reality, and this is no easy task. We cling to our way of seeing things because letting go feels like launching ourselves into chaos and insanity. To our subconscious, it feels like death. But it’s the only way to truly change your life.

Here’s the secret to the third option: it’s not actually a singular choice, but a way of seeing. You can begin to broaden your field of options by opening yourself to the idea of other options. They are real, they are out there, you will find them, and it can happen quickly, seemingly overnight – if you are ready. Wanting to change your life and being ready to change it are two different stages. We all start with wanting to change, but many mistakenly believe wanting it is enough. It’s not.

So how do you prepare yourself for change? Amazingly, it’s pretty simple – not easy, but simple. You have to consider that what’s holding you back isn’t a lack of options but rather your inability to accept other possibilities for yourself. The third option always involves a loss of some part of the vision you have of yourself and your life. That’s why it’s not easy. In order to be ready for change, you must ready yourself for loss. But you will ultimately end up gaining so much more. I say this as someone who has come out on the other side of burnout. Getting through it sucked, there are no two ways about it. But the rewards are well worth it.

Solving the Paradox of Pursuing Our Desires While Detaching From Them

This is a reader question. Let me know if you have one!

Letting desire be your compass while detaching from outcomes.

One of the major areas I work on with clients who are struggling with burnout and trying to reconnect with their creative center is how to differentiate between what they truly desire and what they only think they do. The latter consists of things they feel they need or should have, but that do not bring the happiness we associate with getting what we want. This failure of expected results brings with it an enormous burden of anxiety, confusion, and despair. Eventually this can turn into burnout, a dislocation or dissociation of the self from its true desires: the experience of living a life that does not fit.

A reader recently asked me about the seeming contradiction between what I recommend to clients, that they pursue their deepest desires (once they’ve identified them), and what many great teachings from around the world advise, which is to detach from desires. She struggles, she wrote, with letting her desires be her compass while detaching from outcomes. What she is hitting on is the essential challenge of desire: often we want something because of what we hope we’ll get from it, and it can be difficult to differentiate between this kind of desire and a genuine desire (what I would perhaps call a desire-need of the soul). Additionally, few people are free from all attachment to outcome. How do we sort through the seeming paradox of following our desires while detaching from them? To put this another way, how do we figure out what we really desire versus what we desire for the (expected; hoped-for) results?

First, is it wrong want something because of hoped-for outcomes? Not at all. Many people live this way and do just fine. But some can find that eventually they reach a point of disillusionment with life, where their disappointment in the results of their efforts becomes despair. Certain types of people are prone to this kind of burnout. Those whose life path must inevitably diverge from conventional or “correct” routes generally reach an existential crisis point in what could be termed the “faux results” phase of life. This is a time that comes after the “preparation” phase, which is full of maturation activities like studying, starting careers, planning families. The faux results phase is one of presumed arrival. Presumed, because it is not yet the time of real arrival. It is an in-between phase where many of us, perhaps all of us to some extent, grapple with the hard truth of desire: wanting something and working hard for it doesn’t guarantee any certain outcome, particularly happiness. The universe does not calculate rewards by any mathematics of merit.

If your reaction to this is anything but helpless rage, you are a better person than I. You should be enraged, because what we’ve been taught about the linear causality of effort = reward is wrong. It is at once too simple and too abstract. The imprecision of this formula is on par with flipping a coin. Yes, sometimes effort does reap expected rewards, but someone somewhere decided that this meant that it usually does, or that it always does when you make the right kind of effort, and turned that into one of our deepest-held cultural doctrines. In the Western world we tend to believe not just that effort leads to reward, but that right effort = just reward. The obvious problem here is that there is no way to morally or objectively fix the meanings of right effort or just reward. They exist only as conceptual leaky buckets into which we pour our prayers and wishes.

As my reader pointed out, there are other philosophical systems that have an entirely different reckoning of the relationship between effort and result. Notice that here I use the term result rather than reward. And therein lies the solution to the paradox of how to pursue your desires while detaching from them. When we personalize outcome, when we make certain outcomes a referendum on the value of our efforts, and by extension our worthiness, we will eventually and inevitably be personally devastated by results. The brittle kind of desire, where your desire is a prayer that says, "Please let this happen," is different from the supple kind that stretches and yields, or desire-in-the-moment for something that feels good or right, brings peace or joy or comfort. It is these latter two in combination that can help you find a balance in your desire. You can want certain outcomes, but a desire is always more comprehensive and abundant than this. It contains within itself its own realization: it is, at its core, an embodiment and manifestation of living from your own creative center. Your needs are met in the accommodation of what could be with what is.

None of this is easy. It certainly does not lend itself to a “five easy steps to achieve your best life” approach. If you’re anything like me, you’ve tried those five steps, therapy, and perhaps some medical approaches as well, and still struggle to figure out what you truly desire. The answers often exist in the place where truth breaks the bounds of logic, a place we find very frightening indeed. But nothing you’ll find there is worse than the feeling of living a life that isn’t right for you.

A Thought Exercise to Help You Break Free from Overwhelm

Censorious Cow definitely thinks we need to stop doing things we don't want to do.

During the years that I was suffering from severe burnout, I didn’t have to worry about cutting things out of my life that were causing me stress – my depression took care of that for me. I functioned, or rather, I didn’t function, at the bare minimum, doing only what I absolutely had to. It wasn’t much of a life, but one good thing came out of that time: I learned how to be ruthless about saying no. After I recovered, avoiding relapse became my priority. I knew I had to avoid overwhelm at all costs, but I also wanted to avoid those difficult feelings that arise when you say no and downsize your life (Am I missing out? Am I lazy? What will people think?). So I developed a formula to help me do just that. What makes this formula effective is that it doesn’t require you to give anything up you don’t want to, or say no to something you really want to do. Because here’s what I think: if the goal is to feel better, then this has to feel like it’s adding value to your life, not subtracting it, right?

This formula relies on a thought exercise, so in the beginning you don’t have to do anything except think things through. You only take action when you feel ready. There is no pushing or forcing involved, because that’s how stress comes into your life. It may seem counterintuitive to make changes in your life by doing nothing, but it’s an incredibly powerful method. The underlying mechanism is this: when your mind is changed, action naturally follows. You will do something if you feel enthusiastic about it. The key is getting your brain there. 

Here’s the thought exercise:

Mentally identify something you hate doing but feel you have to. The more you think about this, the more things you’ll come up with. Anything that makes you tense up and gives you a sense of dread belongs on the list.

Ask yourself if doing this thing will get you what you want, expect, or hope for. This is the difficult part of the thought exercise, and you’ll need to dig deep to figure out your real reasons for doing it. Sometimes we do things we don’t want to because it’s a clear case of A leads to B and we want B. But these cases are actually rare. Usually when we do things we don’t want to it’s because we’re hoping for results that are unlikely to happen, because they are either:

• too abstract (maybe if I do this it will make people like me), 

• illogical (if I stay in this job I hate maybe it will get better eventually), or 

• too complex or distant to work (if I post on Twitter every day maybe I’ll get more followers and maybe then when I finally publish my novel it will translate into more sales).

Now, these may all be good reasons to do something, if you are enjoying doing that thing. If you love posting on Twitter every day, have at it! But if it’s draining joy from your life for the sake of an unlikely outcome, that means it it has a very low ROI (return on investment). That’s all you need to know for now. Practice analyzing and evaluating things this way for awhile.

The next step is to apply this process to situations you feel powerless in. Say your job is making you miserable. When you ask yourself if doing your job gets you the results you hope for, you’re probably tempted to say that it does: it makes you money. But this answer doesn’t explain why you are doing that particular job. The answer to that question is probably something more like you hope it will get better somehow or you’ll somehow start to like it. Neither are likely. You may be thinking, well I can’t just up and quit. Agreed. Remember, this is only a thought exercise!

At this point, broaden your field of inquiry. Are there aspects of your job you do derive enjoyment from? Is it the actual tasks you have to do that make you miserable, or the context you have to do them in? Is the environment toxic? The point is to move yourself from “I hate my job but if I quit everything will fall apart,” to “I hate this part of my job,” to “But I like doing this,” to “How can I do more of that, or find a different job that has more of that?” Or something along those lines. The point here isn’t to make some grand decision about your job and your life, it’s to shift your perspective enough that your resourceful, creative brain starts working on possible solutions.

The final step of the thought experiment is both the easiest and hardest. Once you understand that something you don’t want to do won’t likely lead to the results you hope for anyway, the obvious solution is to cut that thing out. But actually doing that can feel impossible, especially if it’s a big thing, like a job. That’s why this is just a thought exercise! You don’t have to actually do it! Just think about doing it. What would your life look like if you cut this thing out? What does your life look like going forward if you continue to do it, knowing it’s not taking you where you want to go? What are your other options? Is there something you do want to do that could get you a positive result, even if it’s just that you like doing it and your life is happier overall when you do more things you like doing? Wait – that’s actually a major result! Because isn’t that what we’re talking about? Feeling better about our lives?

The truth is, feeling overwhelmed isn’t really about having too much to do. It’s caused by doing too much of what we don’t want to do. It’s a self-imposed condition. Sure, we’re at the mercy of many constraining factors in life, but we absolutely can develop the power to stop the overwhelm. We push ourselves to do so many things we don’t want to do, that harm us in the long term, because we hope they’ll result in certain outcomes that won’t happen. There have been studies that show that about 85% of the things we worry about won’t ever happen. It’s logical to assume the numbers are similar for things we wish will happen. If you can learn to identify where and how you are draining your emotional energy on low-ROI activities, you can refocus it on activities you actually enjoy that still lead you in the general direction you want to go. Which for most of us, when it comes down to it, is greater life satisfaction – which often really is just a matter of doing more of what we like, and less of what we don’t.

Life Lessons I Learned From Bungy Jumping

And now I never have to do it again!

It was the first morning of my post-graduation celebratory New Zealand group tour, and we were gathered around the breakfast table getting to know each other. Bungy jumping, first commercialized in New Zealand, was on everyone’s list of must-do activities. Except mine. Never in my life had I ever wanted to bungy jump. Sky diving, yes, sign me up! But something about throwing myself off a bridge, as opposed to a plane, was scarier. Maybe because the ground is so much closer, or because I had this idea that bungy is for adrenaline-junky types, which I am decidedly not. Nope, not interested in bungy, I told everyone. Not my type of thing. A day later I found myself standing on the jumping platform of Kawarau Bridge, the original bungy jump. I peered down at the turquoise water rushing by 43 meters below, trying to convince myself to take a swan dive while the guy behind me counted down from three.

Just two weeks before, I’d walked at my PhD graduation, and I had two panic attacks during the ceremony. What should have been a celebration was one of the worst experiences of my life. Later that evening I couldn’t even keep food down, all while trying to entertain my family and dissertation advisor. Awful doesn’t even begin to describe it. Here I had finally accomplished what was, without question, the hardest thing I’d ever had to do. I finished my dissertation and defended it successfully while operating with what felt like the rubble of a nuclear explosion in my brain. I’d done it. The problem was, I didn’t want to continue on in academia. I didn’t want to do anything. All ambition, enthusiasm, and motivation I’d ever had for, well, anything was gone. My life felt like it was already over, all my chances used up. So I went to New Zealand.

I’d actually won the trip – on a whim I’d entered a drawing a travel blogger was doing to advertise her group tours, and what do you know. It felt providential, like the universe was awarding me for all my hard work. Hell yes I was going! But no bungy jumping, definitely not. Maybe some kayaking and hiking. That stuff’s peaceful, and what I needed was some calming time for rumination about my future. Nope. Wrong. I didn’t know it then, but what I actually needed was something big. Something scary to push me out of my comfort zone. As I boarded that plane in Orlando and settled in for a long haul, little did I know that within 36 hours I’d be standing on that Kawarau Bridge platform with bathroom towels and a huge rubber band strapped to my ankles. Bathroom towels, you guys. They use plain old bathroom towels to pad your ankles. Somehow I just couldn’t get over it. What do they do when they need new ones? Head to the local Target?

So there I was, looking down at that turquoise water, and the guy behind me was shouting out the countdown. It was one of those defining moments when you make the decision to do it…or not. And in that moment I realized that I didn’t just need to find a new direction – I needed to change everything about my life. I had to take that leap into the unknown. That moment contained the seeds of what would come after: reconnecting with my creative spark and starting to write fiction again, my coaching business, and a feeling that maybe I haven’t used up all of my chances yet after all. Here are some of the lessons I learned that day and in the intervening days that have helped me move my life forward.

Trust your instincts, but listen to your intuition.

Bungy jumping goes against every natural instinct. It’s just not an evolutionary advantage to want to dive head first off very high things. I didn’t even want to do bungy! That is, until I did. I was suddenly possessed by the idea that I had to do it. What my instincts were against, my intuition was pushing hard. Instincts are fear-based. They’re what tell you to avoid walking through a dark park at night. Instincts are important, but their mechanism of action is negative. Intuition has a positive mechanism of action: it will tell you what’s right for you specifically. It’s what encourages you to forge ahead even when nothing is sure.

What makes us feel alive is challenging ourselves in BIG ways.

During my darkest days I got used to doing the bare minimum to get by. I didn’t have the energy or motivation for any extras. I spent years living that way, thinking I was protecting myself for further trauma that challenging myself could cause. And I don’t think I was totally wrong. I really wasn’t in any shape to handle the kinds of things that happen when you put yourself out there. But if we remain in our comfort zone, life becomes rote and uninspiring. And for creative people like myself that causes death of the spirit. Sometimes we need something really big to shake ourselves out of it. Bungy jumping didn’t solve my problems, but it showed me I was capable of responding positively to hard things.

Distraction cures worry. Really. 

In the hours running up to my bungy jump, my fear was almost surreal. I could not imagine how I would be able to do it. But when my attention shifted to something interesting (there was a lot of interesting stuff in New Zealand!) I completely forgot about what I was about to attempt. In those moments of distraction I felt calm, engaged, and content. My brain kept trying to make me feel like I had to worry about the bungy jump because my brain thinks it can control outcomes by worrying constantly about them. But the brain is like a young child who gets distracted by shiny objects. I fed my brain some interesting stuff, and soon enough it forgot all about bungy jumping…until it remembered again.

Sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and get through it.

I didn’t want to do bungy. Not before the jump, and certainly not in the long minutes of waiting in line to do it. I definitely did not want to do it when I was standing on that platform – check out my “I don’t want to be here!” smile and my death grip on that handle. You guys, that was one of the scariest moments of my life. But you know what was worse? Having to defend my dissertation. So when the guy counting down behind me got to one, I put my arms up over my head and dove.

You better believe I screamed as I went down.

The One Thing I Got Wrong About "Follow Your Bliss"

Figuring this one thing out changed everything for me.

This post is now a podcast episode!

Let’s be real: after enough living it’s easy to come to the conclusion that directives like “follow your bliss” are bullshit. The simple equation of do what you love = successful and happy life seems to only work out for a vaunted few. The rest of us mere mortals are just trying to survive each day with our sanity intact. We’re lucky if we have any energy left over to follow our bliss – if we even know what our bliss is. I used to think I knew. For me, it’s writing. But somewhere along the way it stopped being my bliss. After years of struggling to make something of my writing, my joy in it had evaporated. All meaning I’d found in it was gone; I no longer knew why I was bothering to do it at all. Eventually my burnout became so extreme I was unable to write. But I’m stubborn, and I still believed that I was meant to be a writer. That’s when I realized I had a fundamental misunderstanding of “follow your bliss.” It’s not bullshit after all – I’d just been doing it wrong.

The one thing I’d failed to understand about “follow your bliss” is that my bliss is incompatible with success and happiness as those are defined within our capitalist system. I know what you’re thinking. Sure, some people do succeed within that system by following their passion. A friend of mine built a lucrative party catering business from one hotdog cart. So what’s his secret? Nothing more than this: his bliss already fit the system. He’s an extraverted natural salesman. Me? I’m an introverted creative. Creative work by its very nature does not fit the system: it’s generative rather than productive, emerges on a slower schedule than what is profitable, and creative products don’t have a large market. It’s rare for creatives to make a living from their work – not impossible, but very, very difficult. And in order to do so, it often involves a sacrifice that kills their creative capacities.

The incommensurability between creative work and conventional work may seem obvious, but for creatives who are struggling to fit both in, or better yet find paying work that allows for at least some creativity, things get muddied. The problem is that creative work gets relegated to the leftover time and spaces, after the productive, money-earning work is done. And this never ends well for creatives, because it means that who they are is diminished and confined to the leftovers. When I finally understood that this two-track life would never lead to anywhere but burnout for me, everything changed. I realized I needed to shift the lens through which I experienced life. I will always have to earn money somehow, but I wanted to find a way to live from my creative center in everything I did, because that’s the only way my spirit could regenerate and thrive. I call this whole-life creativity, and it showed me what “follow your bliss” really means.

It should be called “living your bliss,” because that’s what it is, and I believe that’s how Joseph Campbell, the originator of the saying, meant it. He saw it as a state of being in which you have fully committed to manifesting an expression of your true self in the world. This is similar to what Brené Brown terms “wholehearted living,” but Campbell, a scholar of world mythologies, saw it as having an esoteric and spiritual dimension. He conceptualized the experience of following your bliss as being on your destined track, where your life is harmonized with what the universe wants for you. He alternatively called this state of being “refreshment” or “rapture,” that feeling of being truly alive. So following your bliss isn’t really about doing what you love – it’s about experiencing the act of living from that creative well of life itself, the place where wonder, astonishment, and joy come from. We can access that place through doing what we love, that is, doing the thing that allows us to speak the language of our soul into the world.

I used to think that following your bliss was hard, something only a lucky few got to do, but that was because I was forcing myself to accept and pursue the values of the conventional capitalist system while simultaneously attempting to keep the flame of my creative spirit alive – and I failed at both. But it was only when my creative flame finally burned out that I became truly capable of following my bliss, because I had nothing else to lose at that point. I committed myself fully to living from my creative center. This involves a tremendous amount of trust, both in myself and the universe, because it’s risky in every way: financially, emotionally, relationally, reputationally. Full commitment means entering a territory of total and uncharted uncertainty. You know that scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when Indy steps off the cliff? That’s what it feels like. It’s petrifying. But I still find it easier than splitting myself between my creative soul and my false conventional self. It took descending into that dark place of being confronted with my own failures and despair to gain the perspective I needed to start living my bliss.

We all have our own journeys and no one’s individual path looks like anyone else’s. But creatives come across similar obstacles on their way, and the biggest is trying to live their bliss in a society undergirded by a system that does not support the creative life. It’s an obstacle that reappears again and again, but we can diminish its power to block and divert us by claiming, and committing to, our identities as creatives. It’s okay if this happens in stages – in fact the daily devotional act of living from your creative center is, in large part, what it means to be a creative. Simply making the decision to try that today and the next day and onward is how you can begin to follow your bliss.

Fall Into Your Flourishing

How to find your natural flourish points.

The other day a friend told me to lean into my flourishing, and my immediate thought was no, I want to fall into it like it’s marshmallow fluff, I want it to envelope me. This sums up my approach to life over the last year or so, since I’ve recovered from burnout. I don’t want things to be hard. Instead of fighting with life, I want to allow it to happen. I’m ready for a gentler experience. Leaning into something, as originally used by Sheryl Sandberg, meant to be assertive and take the lead. This is not my style. But even the softer way the phrase is often used, to indicate embracing something wholeheartedly, can seem like too much of a struggle sometimes. Right now, I want to flourish effortlessly.

Is such a thing possible? Aren’t we supposed to work hard for what we want? In fact, flourishing should be especially hard to achieve, right? Someone who is flourishing has really made it, they’re living their best life. It’s a decadent, indulgent state of being. Many of us have a deep-seated conviction that we don’t deserve to flourish. Or that we haven’t earned it yet. Or that it would be wrong to flourish when there is so much suffering and injustice in the world. Flourishing, it seems, is a condition that is conditional. Adding to its mysterious nature, it is often unachievable no matter how much effort we expend.

And therein lies the contradiction, this idea that we have to work hard to flourish. Flourishing actually implies effortlessness: it’s a condition that naturally arises when we are in our element. Maybe flourishing isn’t something we have to work toward, but something we already have available to us. Maybe it’s as simple as closing our eyes, opening up our arms, and falling backward into its enveloping.

In fact, we can look backward into our past to discover how we can flourish. Think about what brought you joy and comfort as a child. Before all the “shoulds” entered your life, what activities did you gravitate toward without thought, simply because you loved doing them? These are your natural flourish points. Chances are, these same activities have resurfaced in your life over and over as you matured, but in different forms. Here’s an example of what I mean. After school every day when the weather was good, I’d plunge into the large wooded property owned by my neighbors, two elderly sisters who were very kind about allowing me to play there. I loved spending time in nature; I had a special grove with a fallen tree I’d sit on for hours, lost in dreams, just enjoying being myself. When I was older I gravitated toward activities such as camping and hiking. Now, even older, I am learning how to care for a vegetable garden. Being in nature is one of my flourish points.

Here’s another. My hobby as a child was reading. But it was more like an obsession than a hobby. I spent nearly every free moment reading. I would have read at the dinner table had it been allowed. I also noticed early on that I am a mental narrator – I have a habit of putting my experiences and thoughts into words in my head, full sentences and paragraphs, throughout the day. I have full-on conversations with myself in there. When I grew up I became a writer and a scholar. I still spend most of my free hours reading everything I can on all kinds of topics. Over the years I’ve written fiction, policy articles, and scholarly works. Now I’m blogging. Reading, thinking, and writing are my flourish points.

Recognizing your flourish points can help you gain a sense of self. There may be some that you haven’t developed throughout your life that you can pick up again, and you may find additional ways to express those you have kept up with. This is how we flourish, but doing more of the things that come naturally to us and make us feel good. It seems obvious, yet it’s not, because we are used to judging flourishing by outside markers of achievement, such as career and family. But if we switch our evaluation to internal markers, how we feel about things, we gain clarity. What makes you feel joy, comfort, excitement? Understanding this will lead you to your natural flourish points.

We Should All Waste More Time

Wasting time is a radical rebellion.

This post is now a podcast episode!

What was your gut reaction when you read the title of this post? Did you feel unaccountably uncomfortable? Did the judgy part of you clear her throat? In our culture we are given two ideological choices of how to use time: wisely, or wastefully. One good, one bad. When I first started wasting time as an intentional personal practice (yes, you read that right), I felt like a bad person. I felt lazy, ungrateful, spoiled…all the negative things we’re taught to think about people who don’t diligently apply themselves to getting it all done. The indoctrination runs deep. See if you can complete any of the following: 

• Early to bed, early to rise…

• Strike while the…

• Pull yourself up by your…

• Idle hands are… 

You probably know at least one – we memorize such sayings in childhood. There are hundreds more, proliferating everywhere from your Facebook feed to the walls of your workplace or gym. They glorify our cultural approbation of hard work, getting ahead, and keeping busy, and structure our understanding of how we should conduct our lives. Industrious activity is seen as the way to succeed, but it’s more than that. It’s ingrained in us as a moral virtue. People who work hard are good people; we admire them. We believe they should be rewarded because they deserve to be. 

Think about how we talk about not getting things done. It always carries a stigma. It was an unproductive day. I lazed about. I did nothing. Is it even possible to communicate this in an unequivocally positive way? The best we can do is something like, It was a restful day. But even then, we’re doing something of value – we’re resting so we can be ready for more work. Wasting time feels bad because we’re supposed to feel bad about it. 

This is why we have a cult of busy. Creating busyness in our lives makes us feel like we are one of the good people, and it allows us to signal our worthiness to others. Busyness is a social status symbol and a way of self-medicating difficult feelings regarding our own value. How much busy is ideal? Being a little too busy. The kind of busy that you can show off with that tone of light exasperation everyone instantly recognizes: I’m just so busy, I barely have a moment to myself! Feeling that overwhelm – or giving the impression of it – is how we know we are part of the cool kids’ club (cult) of busy.

That’s bullshit. Being too busy isn’t a badge of honor. It just means you overscheduled yourself. Of course some of the ways our time gets used are out of our control, but we all can make choices about how busy we want to be. Sometimes those choices are hard, and you have to make sacrifices. People who say they wish they weren’t so busy are really saying that they’re too scared to make those changes. They don’t know how to exist without busy.

I started a personal practice of wasting time because I wanted to stop feeling that overwhelm of having to get all the things done. I wanted to cure my burnout. But I realized the practice had a larger value than just changing my own life. Intentionally wasting time is a radical rebellion in the face of our cultural indoctrination. It’s a rejection of the societal moralizing (laziness is a sin) and the capitalist valuation of human activity (time is money) that keep many of us from living our best lives. We all know the world is changing, that we’re entering a new era politically, economically, and culturally. It’s time to examine and subvert our limiting indoctrinated beliefs.

So how do you intentionally waste time? Here’s how I start. Whenever that anxiety comes on that I should be getting all the things done, I sit. I do nothing. I don’t try to use the time to meditate or “rest.” I sit and stare at a wall or out a window and let my mind wander, and sometimes I switch on a tv show as background static. I sit through that urgent feeling that there are all these things I need to do and the accompanying discomfort of leaving them undone. I tell myself that the urgency isn’t real, and that most of these things don’t actually need to get done at all. Eventually my mind always comes to rest on something I want to do. And I do that thing.

This practice helps fill my life with spirit-sustaining activities to the detriment of soul-destroying busywork. Like any mindful practice it can be challenging, but you will begin to see changes in your approach to life if you stick with it.

Why You Don't Have to Learn How to Deal With Uncertainty Better

You already know how to handle uncertainty fine, but may not recognize it.

For many of us these are the most uncertain, frightening times we’ve ever experienced. Not only are we going through a historic sociopolitical shift, but there’s the pandemic in the short term and climate change in the long term…and we have no idea how any of it will turn out. It’s normal to find this uncertainty overwhelming. Desiring certainty in our lives is an evolutionary tactic, after all: certainty ups our chances of survival. But I think most of the advice out there about how to deal emotionally with uncertainty takes the wrong approach. Trying to “get better” at handling it is a waste of energy because you’re fighting against your own nature. We are hardwired to hate uncertainty.  

What can help is understanding the role your personality plays in your experience of uncertainty, and recognizing the coping mechanisms you already have in your toolkit. Below I detail four personality archetypes and how they react to uncertainty. These are archetypes, which means real people can span several or all categories. I explore each archetype through its relationship to the following: 

Time. Our conceptualization of uncertainty is based on how we experience time, because time is how change occurs. We spend an enormous amount of energy either living in the past, trying to influence the present, or predicting the future. Understanding our particular relationship with time can help us understand our fundamental reactions to uncertainty.   

Traditional institutions of society. These include, inter alia, the structure of our politics, the public institutions charged with protecting our wellbeing, and the organizations we work for. People have differing reactions when our institutions begin to misfunction, as we are seeing now. Our attitudes toward these institutions and our reactions to their breakdown can be taken as a proxy for how we tend to deal with uncertainty.

Point of overwhelm. Everyone has that limit where they are exhausted in their effort to handle uncertainty. The ways people behave when they reach this point can be considered the extreme manifestation of the coping tendencies of their personality. Being in a place of overwhelm, therefore, can actually help you understand how you can develop your native coping skills.

The Stockpiler

The Stockpiler highly values security, and they spend much of their energy ensuring security for themselves and their families. Their focus is on the circumstances of the immediate present, such as money, home, and relationships, and their actions are guided by their imagining of the future. In times of great uncertainty, this imagining becomes fear based; they turn inward, becoming more protective of their home and family. When they feel they can no longer trust the word to provide them with security, they look for ways to increase self-sufficiency.

This type of person (remember, these are archetypes) generally does well in traditional institutions because of the security and protection they provide. They are attracted to organized systems where there is a clear and competent leadership structure. When institutions shows signs of breaking down, they are prone to see an acute and all-encompassing catastrophe looming.

At their point of overwhelm, the Stockpiler may resort to forms of hoarding as a hedge against the coming catastrophe. Preppers are an extreme example of this. It’s important to realize that the imagined future driving this kind of anxiety is just that: it’s imagination. Most societal catastrophes actually unfold over long periods of time and their impacts are variable across society. The key to a healthy coping mechanism for the Stockpiler is therefore focus: concentrating on activities that involve creating both order and useful resources (i.e. veggie gardening).   

The Spark Plug

Do you know someone who is determinedly positive, who almost refuses to acknowledge any darkness? This is the Spark Plug. When met with challenges they dig in and glare those challenges right in the eye. They are likely to say things like, “I don’t have time for unhappiness or worry.” Their focus is on generating positive energy, and they spend this energy on transforming their present circumstances in positive ways. They are the type who make a special meal from leftovers.

The Spark Plug is focused solely on the present, but their instinct, rather than being protective like the Stockpiler, is for improvement. Something can always be done to make things more pleasant, fun, and beautiful. This type of person also does well in traditional institutions, and during normal times they are a combination of both driven and adaptable. During times of uncertainty they double down on these qualities.

The Spark Plug’s point of overwhelm can manifest in martyr behavior. Like the Stockpiler, their need for control over circumstances is strong, and when pushed to extremes they meet this need through frenetic action that may not actually accomplish anything other than keeping them busy until they burn out. They key to a healthy coping mechanism for the Spark Plug is therefore grounding: filling their days with activities that contribute to the betterment of their environment or the people around them and involve some aspect of self-care (i.e. a meditation circle).

The Troubadour

The Troubadour is an observer of the world, and so they always sit apart. Their energy is used primarily internally, in forming understandings of human nature and what they might call “the way of things.” They share this knowledge through functioning as a mirror to society, filling the roles of artist, scholar, counselor, or similar. But their priority is their relationship with their own mind, and so they rarely become wholly invested in the here and now. The Troubadour’s focus is understanding the links between past, present, and future, but they tend to live in the past, as history informs this understanding.

The Troubadour does not generally fit well into societal institutions because they must always maintain a separation between themselves and the world in order to accomplish their purpose, the generation of knowledge. The Troubadour can react to eras of turbulence almost complacently, because they see change both as the constant condition of life and as cyclical: the world has been through many times of great upheaval and uncertainty and will again in the future. While the Troubadour cares deeply for humanity, they tend to feel that they are separate from it. They may suffer from a dissociative sense that they themselves are not quite as “real” as other people.

Their point of overwhelm is found in this contradiction: the deep concern for the human condition and their desire and need to remain apart. The Troubadour who immerses themselves in the troubles of humanity is quickly exhausted, but the Troubadour who always holds themselves apart can become lonely and bitter. The key to a healthy coping mechanism for the Troubadour is therefore balance: carving out strict boundaries between people time and self time, and enforcing these without guilt.  

The Renegade  

The Renegade expends their energy in active rejection of conventional mores, and focus on making life meaningful rather than the acquisition of resources. In this they share the inquiring vagabond spirit of the Troubadour. The Renegade functions somewhat out of time, as they are the type that is the least likely to get bogged down by the past or obsess over an imagined future. They skip through the present lightly, as they are never satisfied with the status quo. The Renegade is often an activist, and works to transform the present into a better future.

Because of their rebel spirit, the Renegade not only does not function well within traditional institutions, but is usually wholly uninterested in trying. Unlike the Spark Plug, who seeks to improve institutions from within, the Renegade wants to tear them down and build better ones. During times of uncertainty the Renegade sees opportunity to remake the world, and may actually thrive on the chaos. Alternatively, they may be so anti-institution they peace out altogether.

Their point of overwhelm is exactly this: their tendency to throw themselves into the whirlpool and lose sight of the possible in their pursuit of a beautiful but improbable dream. They either get addicted to the high of constant agitation and make change that is counterproductive, or they can recede into their own heads, absenting themselves from reality entirely. The key to a healthy coping mechanism for the Renegade is therefore perspective: learning to live with their own limitations and those of others, and to pick their battles.      

Do you see yourself in one of these, several, or all of them? Hopefully they can help you recognize your instinctual reactions to uncertainty and how to develop them in positive ways. Remember, none of us is doing uncertainty wrong! We sometimes just take what are healthy coping mechanisms a little too far under the mistaken and usually unconscious assumption that more is better. Sometimes all we need is to dial it back. This may feel like you’re losing control, but it is actually you gaining control. So you can stop exhausting yourself by trying to learn how deal with uncertainty “better” – you already have all the skills you need.

Are You Still Searching for a Job That’s the Right Fit?

Maybe trying to find the “right” job is the wrong approach.

I’m one of the many creatives who decided early on that I would pursue “regular” jobs rather than attempt a creative career. As a writer of fiction, I was realistic about my chances of ever making a living off of it. So I tried to find jobs that were “parallel” to my writing, jobs that involved writing and that would allow me to be a novelist in my spare time. This failed on two fronts. I didn’t end up writing many novels, let alone publishing any, and I found myself severely burned out by the time I was in my mid-thirties. I’d always believed that there was a “right” job out there for me, but I never found it. I tried one thing and then another, and failed to capitalize on my experiences and build a career of note. 

I never could get the hang of the linear, progressive career trajectory, and this made me feel that something was wrong with me. What I realize now is that my story is typical for creatives. The problem isn’t us. It’s that we are part of a system that tries to assimilate those who would live by a different set of values. Creatives just aren’t that good for the economy. We want to do what we want to do, and when a job ceases to inspire us, we cannot stay in it and remain sane. On top of this, we have very limited reserves for dealing with bullshit. So our work histories often look patchy, and we get questions about why we haven’t made anything of ourselves, given our talents.

This perspective is built on faulty assumptions about what we should want or pursue in our working lives. Let’s tear some of those assumptions down.  

Career trajectory is a lie

The idea of a career trajectory is just that: an idea. It’s an idealized model of what a “successful” career looks like that has emerged from a system that values the productive capacity of workers. A successful worker is someone who is consistently productive up to the point of no longer being able to contribute, i.e. retirement. The problem is that fulfilling work and a successful career are usually at odds, because they operate on opposing tracks. A traditional career trajectory is meant to benefit the organization you work for, and through that the larger economy. People who stay in one industry and move up the promotion ladder are efficient cogs in a smoothly running machine. A fulfilling career, on the other hand, is for the benefit of the worker. It may sometimes happily coincide with the ideal career trajectory, but mostly not. It may have starts and stops, an industry switch, retraining, or any number of inefficient moves. The system, while paying lip service to the idea of a fulfilling career, will punish you in numerous ways for trying to have one. Anything like a spotty work history or one that seems to lack focus will be a detriment in job hunting. And thus the truth is revealed: the system does not actually want you to be fulfilled by your work, unless it is a side effect of your productive capacity.

Creatives are particularly disadvantaged in this system. It’s not because we cannot find fulfilling work. It’s that in order to continue to be fulfilled, we need to feel inspired – and generally working in the same career for our whole lives isn’t going to do it. What feels like the right path can quickly become the wrong one once we have reaped all the inspiration we can from it. Our system likes to frame this experience as that job not having been the right one to begin with. This puts the responsibility squarely on the worker to find the job that will be “the one,” in which they can finally fulfill the capitalist requirement of sustained productivity. But creatives are not linear people, nor do we function well within rationalized systems that constrain creativity. We usually end up blaming ourselves for being “unfocused,” “lazy,” “selfish,” or any other negative character trait the system likes to assign to people who fail at traditional career trajectory. In this environment, creatives can often begin to distrust their instincts.

No. Trust your instincts. In a system designed around precepts that are fundamentally at odds with how you need to live your life, your choices will inevitably look bad or wrong, or perhaps even like failures. They’re not. 

Career trajectories don’t exist anymore, anyway

In high school I can remember being told that kids in my generation were the first who could not expect to do as well as their parents. I imagine this is even more true for youth today. I came up during the era of bankrupt pension funds and a loss of trust in big companies. Now we are transitioning to a gig economy in which long-term, secure jobs with good benefits are increasingly scarce. It’s a painful time to be alive – but some of this is actually good news for creatives. Why? Because we are built for times such as these. We understand job insecurity because we’ve always dealt with being unable to settle down. Many of us already have the experience of patching together a living that allows us to continue our art. And we have a head start on dealing with the feelings of inadequacy that come from not being able to build a traditional career. So keep on doing your thing, creatives! 

You will never “figure things out” (hopefully)

The other day I was listening to a podcast by a woman about a decade younger than me who was talking about how it took her a long time to figure out what she wanted to do with her life, and that she’d finally done it. I remember feeling exactly that way at her age. And I couldn’t help but smile at her confidence and enthusiasm. It’s likely she’ll need to reinvent herself a few more times before her allotted life is over.

Make no mistake: there is no such thing as figuring it out, at least not for all time. You may find something that works now, and it may feel like it’s The Thing, but I can promise you that you will grow to a point where you’ll need something new. This is a good thing! Follow those instincts. Life is long (well, hopefully), so don’t fall for the lie that it should look like education/preparation → marriage/kids → career/savings → retirement/“fun” → decline/death. Instead of feeling inadequate if your life veers around and seems to fold back on itself, be proud of it. “You have to live spherically, in many different directions,” as Federico Fellini said. “Never lose your childish enthusiasm, and things will come your way.” Words to live by for creatives!

I Thought I Had Depression, But It Was Something Else

My depression was a symptom of a bigger problem.

This blog post is now a podcast episode!

I once spent three weeks straight in bed. I’d get up to shower occasionally, but mostly my biggest daily expenditure of energy was reaching over to the bedside table to get more Benadryl to make me sleep again. Being awake was hell on earth. I wasn’t bad enough to want to die, but I certainly didn’t want to be alive. I thought I was depressed. I was wrong. What I actually had was burnout.

Let me explain. I tried for many years to treat my depression. Medication after medication. Cognitive-behavioral therapy. Wine. Endless rounds of falling into the abyss, dragging myself out and to the doctor yet again, only to come out feeling that there was no hope and nothing would ever get any better for me. “Treatment-resistant depression,” is what it’s generally called.

I don’t know exactly when I realized my depression was actually a symptom of something else. I suppose eventually I became so frustrated by the inability of medical approaches to help me that I started looking for other answers. I just couldn’t believe that I was doomed to feel like shit for the rest of my life because of some inherent biochemical or psychological flaw. But if the problem wasn’t me, what was it? The answer was obvious once I took brain chemistry and mental illness out of the equation: it was the circumstances of my life. I was suffering from the effects of years of anxiety that came from trying to survive and thrive as an intuitive feeler, a gentle soul, in a world that is not made for such as us. I was burned out from it.

In 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) recognized burnout as a legitimate condition (a “syndrome”). Which is great, right? Not exactly. There is this major caveat: it is considered an “occupational phenomenon,” related only to the workplace context. Burnout comes from being overwhelmed and exhausted in one’s job. The standard treatment advice is to take a vacation, maybe change jobs. 

I think this is bullshit. Burnout is a whole-life condition, caused not just by a particular job but by the system that supports our work institutions. A system that prioritizes an individual’s productive and economic value for the organization they work for over their humanity. Take a look at the WHO’s list of burnout indicators:   

·     feelings of energy depletion and exhaustion;

·     increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job; and

·     reduced professional efficacy

Let that last one sink in. Reduced professional efficacy.

According to this, the true cost of your burnout is that you cease to be an efficacious member of your organization. You cost them money because your productivity decreases.

The irony is that this system of valuation is a root cause of burnout. Even when your job is ostensibly for something other than profit, like my previous work in academia, it still always comes down to what is good for the organization, not you. Any institution seeks first and foremost to survive, and your worth to it is based on whether or not you contribute to that. 

You’re probably thinking, well duh. That’s just the way our system works. And anyway, everyone’s got to earn a living. True and true. But for gentle souls, this system is particularly spirit-crushing. We are not primed for the competitive, impersonal nature of it. But it’s more than that. Many intuitive feelers find that the institutional/organizational context just doesn’t make sense. It is so fundamentally contrary to our own personal value system that we often can’t function within it anywhere near a level of competence that expresses our true talents and skills, even as we exhaust ourselves trying to fit in. And this is devastating. It can lead to feelings of futility and hopelessness.

What really turned things around for me was when I realized that my real problem was that I was allowing the societal values of productivity and money-seeking to lead my decisions. All along I was chasing things I don’t personally value. I began to reassess my life from my own perspective, rather than society’s. This is an incredibly difficult thing to do – it requires a real commitment to examining and throwing away some beliefs that are so ingrained it feels wrong to reject them. Like deciding to not pursue certain career opportunities you’ve spent years qualifying for, even when it impacts your personal bottom line in life-altering ways. Or deciding that you are going to start “wasting” more time – see, we don’t even have positive ways to talk about being unproductive in our language!

Clearing my own mind – working to eliminate the cultural brainwashing – was the first and honestly only really difficult step I needed to take to heal from burnout. Once I gained confidence in living my personal values, and in a way that prioritizes my own mental health at all times, everything else began to fall into place. I’m not saying this is the way for everyone. But for me, trusting myself and trusting my values made all the difference. 

When You Have a Gentle Soul, the World Hurts You

You are not the problem, and it is not your fault.

This post is now a podcast episode!

You know who you are, you gentle-souled people. You are the ones that life hurts regardless of how strong you try to be. You are sensitive, intuitive, empathic. You feel things all the time, all day, in every moment. All your life, you’ve noticed that there’s something different about you. You’ve been called too sensitive and made to feel that this is bad. Other people often seem like they just don’t want to deal with your shit. You’ve learned to keep quiet and process it all inside. Or, because no one has taught you how to be who you are in this sharp-edged world, your emotions overload and come spilling out in torrents, creating a huge mess that feels like it’s all your fault.

I know you, I hear you.

You feel like there is no barrier between your soft, raw underbelly and the slashing parries of the everyday world. Some days are like sandpaper against your soul. Maybe you avoid going out into the world, because you know it will hurt. It’s not your imagination – you know that inevitably, you will hurt. Some days you can manage your shit and you feel almost normal. But mostly it seems like the world is just waiting out there to rough you up.

I know you, and I hear you.

There are many of us like you out there, more than you realize. But because we live in a society that denigrates our personalities – our gentleness, our introversion, even our tendency toward sincerity and kindness (you’re too soft, gullible, naïve!) – we have grown adept at hiding ourselves and do not recognize each other. Often we do not even understand ourselves. And often – usually – we feel that what’s wrong is within us, not out there in the world. 

That’s bullshit.

The truth is this world was not made by, or for, the gentle souls. That doesn’t mean there’s no place for us! But it does mean we have to struggle harder to find our roles. We have tried so hard to fit conventional ones, and it has been uncomfortable at best, traumatizing at worst. Many of us are very strong (although we feel weak!), and can go years trying to mold ourselves to a world that is not suited to our particular skills and characteristics. Eventually, though, we will find ourselves experiencing serious burnout.

Understanding this cycle of burnout we undergo – attempting to contort ourselves to fit into conventional roles to the point of trauma to ourselves – is essential to breaking out of it. Complicating things is that we are often actually good at these roles. Our intuitive, creative natures give us special skills that allow us to excel. But the cost is too great. We are ultimately being harmed by the world we are trying so desperately to compete in. What we need to do is stop competing. We are the ones who forge new paths, not follow the well-trodden ways. 

Is this challenging? Yes! Is it scary? Hell yes. But if you are one of the gentle souls, you will eventually arrive at a point where it is essential you break out. It may feel like your only choice, if you are to survive emotionally.

What this process looks like is different for each individual. But you will find that many of the ingredients you need are already a part of your life. Shifting your perspective will help you understand what is life-giving, and what is soul-sucking. It may take time – it took me years! – but it is never too late to begin. Take heart! Having a gentle soul makes you special. The first step is recognizing this and learning to accept and value who you are. This requires you go against a lifetime of socialization that taught you that it’s you, not the world, that is flawed. So start here: Repeat after me: That’s bullshit! Say it again. Keep saying it until you know deep inside that it is true.