How to deal with burnout
Oof, I am tired.
Header illustration by Ludi Leiva.
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Keep scrolling for 20+ opportunities for creatives, and this month’s letter.
🌻 March Deadlines
✍🏼 Due 3/15: VONA Summer 2024 Virtual Workshops
🎨 Due 3/15: Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program
✍🏼 Due 3/15: Indiana Review Poetry and Creative Nonfiction Prizes
✍🏼 Due 3/15: Bellingham Review Literary Awards (fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry)
✍🏼 Due 3/17: 2024 Irene Yamamoto Arts Writers Fellowship
🎨 Due 3/20: Perenchio Operating Support Grant (for arts organizations)
🎨 Due 3/22: The Susannah Kelly Art Award 2024 (drawing, painting and sculpture)
✍🏼 Due 3/24: Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award
✍🏼 Due 3/27: Linda J. Albertano Poetry Fellowship
🎨 Due 3/29: New York Public Library Picture Collection Artist Fellowship
🎨 Due 3/31: Blue Mesa Review literary magazine art submissions
🎨 Opens 3/11: WESTAF BIPOC Artist Fund
🌦 April Deadlines
🎨 Due 4/1: Blood Orange Review submissions (art, nonfiction, fiction, poetry)
✍🏼 Due 4/1: Nimrod Journal Literary Awards (Fiction and Poetry)
🎨 Due 4/1: 2024 Light Work Grants in Photography (Central New York artists)
🎨 Due 4/2: The Clay Studio of Missoula Artist Residency
🎨 Due 4/4: Creative Capital Awards – 25th Anniversary (visual arts, film, tech, performing arts, literature)
🎨 Due 4/5: SUNY Oswego Outdoor Sculpture Initiative Request for Proposals
✍🏼 Due 4/8: Poetry Foundation Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships
🎨 Due 4/16: Anonymous Was A Woman Environmental Art Grants
🎨 Due 4/26: The City of Burbank Call for Artists: Artistic Shade Structure
(Johnny Carson Park)
✍🏼 Due 4/30: Inlandia Institute Hillary Gravendyk Poetry Book Prize
✍🏼 Due 4/30: F(r)iction Short Story, Flash Fiction, Poetry Contests
🌷 May Deadlines
This Month’s Note: How to Deal with Burnout
Hello from month #3 of full-time freelancing. My last contract gig ended in December, and I have been thinking about my next career step. I’ve been applying and pitching stories. I’ve been lurking on LinkedIn. I’ve been texting friends…
And, on the other side of the coin, I’ve been negotiating my itch to create with my feeling of burnout. The burnout applies to both ends: work burnout AND creative burnout. We love it here!! (No, we don’t).
Oftentimes, I ask myself: are you REALLY burned out? Did you REALLY do that much to warrant feeling tired and not having ideas and not being able to CRAFT ONE EMAIL? That, my friends, is my inner critic. Some days, I need her. Or, at least, I need a version of her: I need encouragement to not just stay home and spiral. I need that little spark to write something fun. I need a push to send out a pitch.
But I’m also trying to approach the idea of burnout differently. What fills my cup? What gets me energized?
Ever since I graduated, I’ve been working at jobs that, in some capacity or another, benefit from my love of writing. Even my social media experience, when you get to the nuts and bolts of it, was about using my writing muscle. Then, I’d go home and write articles as a freelancer. Then, I’d go home and work on my manuscript. Then, I’d open yet another rejection email from a literary magazine.
So, yes, there’s a possibility that I was burned out on using the same muscle, over and over. And there’s a chance that getting excited about a writing opportunity or an award or a new gig—only to be met with a “no”—got to me.
I don’t need to tell you that the last few years have also been chaotic in the world. We all know that. So, here I am, telling you that if you feel burned out, or tired, or whatever we want to call it, you’re certainly not alone.
I don’t have all the answers, but I love to turn to others to see what their experience has been like with issues such as these.
I really liked this interview with painter Yuri Yuan, who talks about her idea of wearing three hats in her day-to-day process. Hat #1 is her artist hat, #2 is her business one and #3 is the philosopher hat. Yuan says:
When I’m wearing my artist hat, I’m never thinking about career, shows, gallery. I’m just focusing on, is this shape the right shape? Is this the right color? … But when I’m wearing the business hat, I understand I’m doing this as a career. I can’t deny that part of this. So when I work with a gallery, I have a professional hat. I know that’s what I’m supposed to do. I’m supposed to be at the opening. I’m supposed to talk to people about the work. (ellipses mine)
There’s another part that really resonated with me:
If you go into the [art] opening wearing the artist hat, you’re going to get hurt. When people say crazy stuff, you may get hurt. Because the artist’s persona is way too vulnerable to talk to the rest of the world. But the business person will be okay. (brackets mine)
Some days I’ve let the rejections slide off me. Other days, I wonder if what I’m writing even matters, and the rejections go straight to my core and fill me with self-doubt. Some days, at my day jobs, I’ve felt like an accomplished ADULT. Other days, I’ve felt like I’m not smart enough, or not experienced enough.
There’s no one solution to dealing with burnout, but I think one way might be acknowledging it and talking to others about it. I’m grateful to friends who have been encouraging me to keep going, but also emphasizing that I’ve done a lot, and that the media and publishing industries are tough for ANYONE trying to create things.
In the meantime, I’m trying to re-fill my cup. In between doing what I need to do so my bills get paid, I’m taking time to play a cozy game and talk to friends. I’m taking walks and making sure I’m listening to my body because, well, I can’t work well if my back is in pain!
What’s keeping your cup full? Hit that REPLY button and let me know.
Keep scrolling for 20+ opportunities for creatives.