Burning Out & Other Adventures in the Forward-facing Timestream

Or How I Learned to Finally Slow Down & Maybe Not Break Myself. Maybe.

Haha, not really. If the past is any indication this is just a temporary thing and I’ll be back to my old high-pressured over-clocking demands that send me flying into the highs and sinking into the lows with the sort of whiplash that’d rip my head clean off in any other circumstance.

Allow me to explain.

There are two voices in my head that have something to say about setting goals. The one says, “Goals are meant to be attainable. You have a reasonable awareness of your capabilities, therefore it is within your power to set goals that you can attain. If you have made the goal, congratulations. If you have not, then you were lazy.” The other says, “Goals are meant to make you stretch. If you have not made the goal, that’s okay. If you have made the goal, then your goal was too low and it was thus because you wanted to be lazy and set a correspondingly low goal.”

Either of these voices might be workable, but you can see where the problems come flying in like a bat out of Hell when they decide to team up and put their power rings together.

It is one of the principle causes behind my depressive cycles and crashes, if not the sole major cause.
I think that I’m getting the first voice to win out and to shut up in those instances when I want to hear the second voice, though. So maybe I’m making progress. I think we’ll find that out over the next few months.

I worked on the first draft of a novel last month. The Girl Who Was Half-Imaginary. I was plugging along at about a chapter a day, and getting rid of some perfectionist habits because dang it, this is just the first draft.

But I would get distracted or just have a slow day and in order to keep to my schedule I would have to double or triple down. That’s really where I started to break down and get tired out. If I’d done a chapter a day constantly I don’t think I would have had issues. But I didn’t, so I did.

Sunday was the last day of the month. I wanted it to be done by Sunday. On Saturday night I knew that wasn’t going to happen, so it was just a question of how much would be undone at the end of the month.

And then I couldn’t get out of bed until eleven and I stared at the computer screen for hours and barely got down 500 words. Definitely crashed, and even after I thought I’d recovered I still wasn’t being too productive. So I looked at a list of signs that you’ve burned out and the sensible thing to do is just walk away for a little bit, and… Check check check double-check check check. 7 out of 10, easy, and the other three were arguable to varying degrees.

I set it aside. I took off the rest of the night (there were only a few hours left) and now I’m into the new month and I’m working on stuff and I’m feeling fine.

I think I’ll get this done. I think things are getting better.

We’ll find out how long it lasts.