Burnout Recovery

And finding the faith that you will write again

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Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash — I picked this image because of what Becca Syme teaches about “energy pennies.” I HIGHLY recommend her series on Burnout! Link below!

@Jacqui asked:

Hi Sooz, I know you've written about burnout in the past, and my question is, how do you recover and start writing again?

I had a couple of difficult professional years that made it challenging to write, and ultimately led to me burning out in 2022. For the past year, I've been in a much better professional situation and felt like I was recovering until circumstances led to the decision to end my marriage, and now I often feel like I'm teetering on the edge of the burnout precipice again.

On one hand, I'm trying not to put pressure on myself to write when I'm so exhausted, but on the other, I'm starting to worry I'll never write again.

I am sorry this took me so long to respond to! I have been grappling with my own serious burnout while also trying to still meet my contractual obligations. The last six months have been especially ugly, and I can see the damage the stress has written across my face. New wrinkles! Weight loss I don’t want! Perma-red eyes!¹

Fortunately, because I shut out all the noise outside of my personal life and my books, I have able to get through this period without falling into a total pit of burnout.

But as you know, I’ve been in that pit before. I have stewed in the creative abyss where I could not write for...months and months and months. I didn’t want to write, and that absence of desire frightened me.

But having now also pulled through that pit three times in my career, what I’ve learned is that I always do get back to the words.

Which leads me to my first point.

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You Will Write Again

Perhaps it seems easy for me to say this, but I’ve seen this cycle play out so many times. With myself, as mentioned, yet also with heaps of friends. Sometimes it takes months to rediscover the writing urge; sometimes it takes full years to recover and get back to it. But you were compelled to write; that motivation didn’t simply vanish. It got buried beneath exhaustion is all.

If you haven’t seen my post on taking the time to heal, I urge you to read it. (Or read it again, even if you’ve seen it before!) We all lose sight of how hard life can be—and our impatience to Do The Thing Now frequently makes us feel like we’re failing. But we’re not.