Here’s your mantra for the week! This week’s card is from my Cards for Creative Courage oracle deck. You can get it here or here.
The card I drew for this week – Breathe in… out… Now try again – always makes me think of that Banksy quote: ‘If you get tired, learn to rest, not to quit.’
As someone who’s intimately familiar with burnout, this quote has always resonated with me. One of the reasons I am this familiar with burnout is because, when I am really passionate about something, I just go for it. I’ll burn the candle at so many ends, it cannot but end with me collapsing and having to give in and give up.
Where the card I drew reminded me of the Banksy quote, the Banksy quote brought me back to a video I recorded in November 2018 about this very topic.
2018 me did not know how to rest. At all
2018 me was even more familiar with burnout than 2024 me. When shooting the video, she was also in the middle of a divorce and about to quit her academic day job and move to Cyprus while trying to turn her part-time editing and coaching business into a full-time one.
I had to remind myself of that as I rewatched the video, in which I shared some things I had recently started doing to create more time for rest in my life, because my initial reaction was: ‘Girl! What are you doing to yourself? You need a break!’
2018 me worked seven days a week and most evenings. Before separating from her partner, she could be guilted into spending time on the couch watching Netflix together, but now? Who was going to stop her, especially now she had her mind set on becoming financially independent and stable?
Me. That person was me. And that’s where I was in November 2018, acknowledging that the way I had been living my life and doing my career wasn’t healthy, that I didn’t know how to rest, and that I needed to learn pronto.
This far into the video, I became restless. After all these years, I still haven’t learned how to properly rest. With bated breath, and bracing myself for being confronted with the fact that I hadn’t changed a bit since recording my own personal intervention, I watched as the 2018 version of myself explained what she’d realised and how she was going to tackle it in the future.
2018 me versus 2024 me
And tackling it I did. To my own surprise.
Having watched the video, I vividly remember the way I was back in 2018, but I’ve changed so much since then that I both remember what that was like and can’t imagine living a life like that at the same time.
Here are the intentions 2018 me set for her future:
To quit when something no longer feels right
To say ‘No’ more often, even if something excites me
To no longer accept more client work than I could fit in a normal workday
To stop wearing ‘I’m busy’ as a badge of honour
Quitting when something no longer feels right
In 2018, I had a tendency to hold on to projects or collaborations even when I should have pulled the plug on them eons ago. I wasn’t raised to be a quitter, and I was never taught to distinguish between things you should be sticking with and what you should always be allowed to run away from, whether that be toxic relationships, hobbies, classes I took, or clubs I’ve joined.
At one point, it made me stop writing, because if I couldn’t finish this one story I’d been working on, then I shouldn’t allow myself to start on the next. I was fourteen, maybe fifteen, at the time.
I can’t remember actively reminding myself of this intention – that I was allowed to quit when something no long felt right for me – after the video was recorded, but it did its magic nevertheless: it’s been ages since I stuck with something, including creative projects, long after I should have moved on from it.
Saying ‘No’, even if something excites me
I also struggled with saying ‘No’. Part of that was due to 2018 me not yet realising that people pleasing is detrimental to your everything. Another part of it was that I simply have many different interests and can get excited about something easily. Often, when someone suggested something, I would just scream ‘Yes!’ before checking whether that something aligned with the path I was on and whether I’d have time for it.
All those burnouts did teach me a thing or two, one being that, no matter how excited I get, I first allow someone’s idea to fully sink in and check my schedule. I’m much more organised these days – 2018 me had only just started working with the technique that would become the 52 Weeks of Writing Author Journal and Planner – and I’m thus much more conscious of how much time I actually have available now.
Working with this technique also keeps me focused on where I want to be going, which helps with determining whether or not something is right for me when someone throws an idea my way.
Accepting more client work than fits a normal workday
I know now that this particular unconscious strategy harmed me in more ways than one, but looking back at 2018 me, I can’t fault myself for it either.
At the time, I was trying to turn my part-time business into a full-time one while still teaching my university classes. Being in the middle of a divorce, I was also dealing with having to provide for myself for the first time in my life.
While I’d been making more money than my partner for the last couple of years, one of those jobs was about to fall away, and I had quite a bit of fear around not having anyone to fall back on. Yes, I’d been earning more than my partner for a while now, but that wasn’t the only income we relied on. Me venturing out on my own, with only my income to pay for everything, an income that very soon would no longer be supplemented by pay checks from the university…
I honestly can’t blame 2018 me for saying ‘Yes, please!’ to every editing and coaching job that came her way, despite it making her work long hours until she could no longer see straight.
Five years after that video, I hardly ever work on the weekends. That doesn’t mean I use weekends for proper resting – that’s still a work in progress – but it’s definitely something. I do still work the occasional evenings, although I’m working hard right now to get better at that, too. I so often find myself thinking ‘Let’s look at this for a second!’ after dinner, and then it’s suddenly 11 p.m. and I should have been in bed an hour ago.
A year ago, that happened practically every night. These days, it happens maybe once a week, depending on what’s going on in my work life at the time. Like one night last week, when I suddenly found myself creating a bunch of discounted charity bundles to make some extra money for the stray cat colony that lives next door (you can learn more about what’s been going on with them here). That entire idea didn’t strike me until right before dinner and it sucked me in until long after my bedtime.
I’ve recently started underbooking my weeks as well. Initially, I made this commitment to myself because I wanted to intentionally create spaces during the week where my creativity was given room to breathe and do its thing. This, too, is something I have to keep working at, because I often find that, instead of the nothing I’d set on doing during that time, those spaces are often filled with the little things, like administrative work, I’d forgotten about and hadn’t put in my calendar yet.
It doesn’t help that, as a freelancer, there’s always more that could be done. There’s also so much about my work that I love doing, so actually using those blank spaces in my calendar to hold space for my muse to run free has turned out far harder than I thought it would be. With so many things I love working on, it can feel counterintuitive to not pick them up and get cracking when there’s time. I’m trying, though. And I am getting better at it.
Wearing ‘I’m busy’ as a badge of honour
I’ve known for years now that ‘I’m busy’ is not how I want to be feeling and not how I’d like to be perceived. In November 2018, I only just had that ‘aha!’ moment, that realisation that being busy, keeping myself busy, was not as good as I was brought up to believe. In fact, it was bad. For my physical health, my sanity, my relationships, my everything.
Back in 2018, before my ‘aha!’ moment, I wore ‘I’m busy’ as a shield. I was busy, but I also needed other people to know I was. I wanted them to acknowledge how hard I was working, how much I was sacrificing (even though it didn’t feel like a sacrifice to me in the slightest) because them believing that I was working my arse off meant that they’d think I deserved the rewards coming my way.
The idea that you cannot have success without hard work and major sacrifices is a limiting belief that still pops up in my head from time to time, no matter how often I’ve tried to pull it out by its root and replace it with something I actually believe in. I might not have been able to completely release that idea yet, but what I have stopped doing since November 2018 is using ‘Busy’ as my go-to answer to ‘How are you?’ or ‘How’s life?’
I’ve also stopped using the word ‘busy’ when asked about my work specifically, even when I actually am. Instead, I might mention what I’m working on, what I like (or not) about the project, or when I’m planning to finish or take a break from it. I’m also honest when I’m not busy at all, for example, when client work has been slow, something I wouldn’t be caught dead admitting five years ago.
I’m still learning
When I started watching that November 2018 video, I was terrified to learn that I hadn’t made any steps in the right direction when it came to learning how to rest. Having watched it now, I’m so glad I did, because it showed that I have come far since then, even if I would very much like to go much further.
How about you? Do you know how to rest? If you do, are you any good at it?
Happy creating, happy breathing, and happy resting <3
Mariëlle
Join me tonight for a live Akashic Records reading!
Tonight at 7 p.m. GMT/UTC, I’ll be visiting the Akashic Records of Sheena Cundy, also known as the Treehouse Witch and author of The Witch Wavelength and Riches for Witches, to unearth the origins of some of Sheena’s most pressing creative challenges.
During the live event, I’ll be sharing my findings with Sheena and, hopefully, provide her with some answers as to why these challenges are showing up in her life right now and what she can do to overcome them.
You can join us on different channels, including YouTube and Facebook. I’m also going to try to stream it to my Instagram account, emphasis on try ;)
Hope to you see there!
Work smarter, not harder, is definitely a lifelong lesson for me and many others on the planet. It was a struggle for me to let go of my tribe in Sacred U recently, but I’m at a different place than I was six months ago. I just don’t have the time for it with all the positive things happening in my life. Giggle, the good thing about being owned by cats is they enforce breaks and let me know it’s time to stop working.
All this. The Calvinist undercurrent in American culture is strong: "idle hands are the devil's playthings" and resting is evil and slothful and so on. I even had a Calvinist-leaning roommate in college who would wake me up from naps because she was afraid I would go to hell for sleeping during the day! And being not just busy but overworked is fashionable now. It's awful. And we've infected the rest of the world with it, sadly. My solution involves holding myself to a different kind of standard, not how much did I get done, but how did I feel? Did I enjoy the day? Was I able to appreciate the beauty of the world? I've been working on connecting with my ancient ancestors, the ones whose foraging culture involved so much less work than we have now and who valued, above all, joy and connection. If I can't find joy and connection, I'm doing it wrong. Those are my waymarkers now.