The full schedule for the online ConCarolinas is now available!
Make sure you join in next weekend for some amazing online panels, discussions and fun!
Full schedule is available here.
The Quitcast and Writer Burnout
A shift from the sleep saga and into a series I have recently found and loved.
The Quitcast talks about things for writers to consider quitting. The video series on Burnout is one of the best discussions on the topic for writers that I have seen. It made me realize just how very badly I burned out in 2019....and 2018... and 2017....and...
Well you can see a pattern emerging.
I highly recommend checking out this series and learning a bit more about how to manage your energy and be aware of what burnout is, how it hits, and how to get out of it.
Episode 1 of the Quitcast’s discussion of burnout in writers.
The Sleep Saga Begins
If you follow me on social media you'll notice I've been posting about having a hard time sleeping. This has been going on for months, before lockdown even started, and I have, for the most part, been just continuing on as though everything is normal and super fine.
I've finally accepted that if I want my sleep to get better I've got to make some actual changes. So starting last night I'm starting my project, The Sleep Saga, where I will try different techniques to create the perfect bedtime routine to get a great night's sleep.
So the first strategies I am trying:
1. No screens for at least 30 minutes before bed.
2. No books. (I get sucked into novels way too easily and stay up late reading!)
3. No caffeine after 12.
4. Lavender lotion on my face and lavender spray on my bed sheets.
5. Chamomile or other soothing tea before bed.
Night one was a success with me getting over 6 hours of sleep naturally for the first time in months so whoohoo! I'm hoping that sharing my journey here will help anyone else struggling right now and also will keep accountable with actually doing it. Fingers crossed for that mythical 8 hours!
New Writing Resource
I've been using an interesting new writing resource called Campfire. It's a really robust encyclopedia feature that is super nice. You can create all kinds of detailed reports on characters, relationships, timelines, history, etc.
I've been using it to get ready for a new dnd campaign and I am super excited about its use as a story bible resource as well.
Right now you can get 15% off with the code: NANOCAMPO
JordanCon Live Game!
This coming Saturday (tomorrow, April 18th) at 5pm EST, I will be livestreaming a charity Dungeons and Dragons game with JordanCon.
This charity stream will be raising money for the Mayo Clinic, a great medical and research facility!
I'll be playing with Gerald L. Coleman, Jenn Lyons, and Mike Lyons and all of us will be playing as characters from our novels.
You can bid on items to give our characters before the game starts by going here and donating.
it should be an incredibly good time!
What Even to Say
What to even say
There's so much to write about or say or not say about how strange scary and weird things are right now. I'm having a hard time right now and I think almost everyone is. With all the uncertainity and fear in the world it's a true breeding ground for anxiety to go rampant. I'll be totally honest, last week, the anxiety consumed me totally. I didn't break down but I shut down. Most of last month, I can't even remember what I did. I bought some cat food but I have no idea what safe place I put it in. I still haven't been able to find it.
I don't know how much advice I can give to everyone going through so much right now, but I did want to share just a few tips that are helping me and maybe they can help you too.
1. Make a schedule
I have a day planner with an hour by hour breakdown. I have started making a rough schedule for the day when I get up in the morning. It helps me keep me on task and feeling like there is some structure in the otherwise shapeless blobs my days have become. It doesn't have to be super rigid but having some plans for the day help it make sense.
2. Set out for one small win.
Every day I try to give myself one little task. I mean little-bitty like drink a glass of water. Something that I know I can accomplish. I do that small task early in the day and it helps me feel like I am capable of accomplishing stuff. It begins a kind of momentum through the rest of the day towards a day where I am crossing things off the list rather than hiding from my list of tasks.
3. Listen to my body
I am trying to listen better to my body. When I'm thristy, I drink some water. When I'm hungry, I have a snack. When I'm tired and can't keep my eyes open, I plop down on the couch for a bit. Anxiety is hard on your body, being constantly on edge or worried, even if you're not always feeling it, takes a huge toll on your energy levels. By trying to listen to what my body is telling me, I'm hoping to take better care of myself and honestly show myself a bit of gentleness in the chaotic world.
Those three things have made a big difference for me already this week and I am slowly feeling like a human again. Remember that you're not alone in this, we're all here together.
Stress and Creating
The myth of the miserable creative wasting away in solitude for the name of art haunts our popular culture. It's a frustrating image that keeps a lot of creative people from getting the help they need for fear of losing that spark of imagination. For me, finding help has meant that I am back to creating instead of just wallowing.
But no matter how much help you find or how well you are, life happens and things outside of your control spiral in and threaten to throw things off balance. For me, routines and structures help build a life that I can manage but when, for example, the water heater stops working or the cat gets sick, your plans get thrown to the wind and it can be a struggle to do anything.
Right now, there is a lot of uncertainty and fear in the world. Things feel dangerous, scary and unpredictable. Part of that is life and no matter how much I want to control things and be able to 100% know what will happen, that's never happening.
I struggle sometimes to find the line between prepared and panicked. It's not an easy line to find, even for people who aren't already anxious messes. I've been working on finding some new ways to handle creating in times of stress and uncertainty and I wanted to share those with you.
1. Start small.
A five-minute writing session feels manageable when a 30-minute session feels impossible or just isn't going to happen. Doing something, even a tiny thing, can make a difference and help me feel like I am still okay.
2. Express your feelings.
I do something I call free writing. I set a timer (usually for 15 minutes but not always) and I just word vomit out what's on my mind. I freely share my fears, worries, hopes, dreams, frustrations and story ideas. It all comes out in imperfect blocks of text that don't always make sense. It helps get those thoughts out of my head and onto a page where I can be slightly more objective. This honestly has helped a lot with keeping me from getting obsessive about a thought pattern and helped a lot.
3. Do something fun.
Part of creating is about play and exploration. To keep that part of my brain active and happy, I like to do something fun every day. Sometimes that might be playing The Sims and other times it might be reading a cozy mystery in a bubble bath. I try to do something that brings me happiness to remind myself of the good and creativity in the world.
4. Remember the physical.
I am the worst at drinking water and eating healthy. I frequently live on pasta and coffee and it's not the best for me at all. In times when my stress starts to get to be too much, I take a time out and drink a glass of water or go on a walk around the block. Bringing myself back to my physical body helps me get out of my own head and remind me to take care of myself.
5. Forgive myself.
This is the one I am the worst at but I am still trying. Sometimes there is enough going on that there is no way to keep creating or do the things you hoped to do. Some days, you just need to accept that the rest of the world has gotten the better of you and that's okay. Tomorrow is another day to try again and get back on your feet. Everyone has bad days where nothing gets done and that doesn't make you a failure, it just makes you human.
I wish there were a magic wand I could wave and make worries and stress vanish but that technology just doesn't quite exist yet so for now, I'll have to keep with these tips and see if they keep making a difference in my life. I hope these tips can help you see above the noise that stress and anxiety can build in your head.
Future You is Your Friend
I’ve recently been taking on a new strategy to help me get the annoying little mundane tasks of life done. You know the things: doing laundry, going to the doctor, working out, packing a lunch for work. It’s a technique I’m trying to help with the sorts of things that help make a smoother life over all. So what am I doing?
I’ve mentioned it previously but it’s viewing the future me as someone else, as a dear friend that I want to help. Future me has had a rough day when she gets home from work tomorrow so why don’t I make dinner tonight so she leftovers? Future me needs some clean clothing to wear to work so let’s get the laundry done.
It’s been a little weird and sometimes trippy to think about myself as someone else but by doing that, it lets me see the help that this little task would accomplish.
Importance of Rest
The world around us constantly seems to be in a race to see who can do the most, be the busiest, and hustle the hardest. All around me, I hear and see people bragging about how little sleep they got or how late they were up. For people who have ‘side hustles’ this seems to be doubly the case. Almost every person I know who is working a day job and trying to create in the fringes of their time, constantly battle the pull against resting.
I have an exceptionally hard time resting. In therapy, sometimes I get asked to think about taking things easy and just enjoying a book. However, my brain doesn’t quite join in on that party. Reading a book is work, I mark the pace of the story, the rhythm of the plot. I can’t just turn off and enjoy the story.
If I sit and try to do nothing or enjoy a TV show, I instantly begin to beat myself up for being lazy. My to-do list starts repeating in my head like a mantra. Instead of relaxing or focusing on what I’m watching, my brain chases itself in masochistic circles until I’m too exhausted to even try to do any work.
For the past year or so, I have been trying to force myself to recognize that rest is important. It’s vital to enjoy other works, to take breaks from work so that you can recover and restore your own creative energy. I’ve been avoiding that and burning out spectacularly in the process.
What’s helped me probably sounds a little silly but it’s putting my rest activities on my calendar or on my to-do list so it still ‘counts’ as work or as something productive. When the mantra of all the things I should be working on starts playing on repeat in my head, I can simply take a deep breath and count ‘watching Netflix’ as something on my list.
I’ve also found habits help a lot. While I’m not the best at remembering rest is important, I am working on ways to add it into my life in more sustainable ways. Rather than going with the ‘work until I collapse from exhaustion for several months’ model, I want to build a life that has rest and recovery built into it. That means building in reading into my bed time routine. It means that I try to play a game or listen to an interesting podcast in the evenings. Something that isn’t work every day.
You’re so much more than your productivity and the number of things you’ve checked off on your to-do list. Remember that and repeat it often.
Decision Fatigue
Last post I talked about overwhelm and some of the ways I try to handle it. For me, one of the biggest contributions to that feeling of crushing overwhelm is decision fatigue.
Decision fatigue has been talked about in quite a number of articles but the general idea of it is that the human brain can only make so many decisions before it gets exhausted. I know for me this frequently shows up when I get home from work and cannot decide what I want for dinner.
For most people, you'd think that it was the big decisions: what do I want to do with my life, what job should I accept, etc. that are the biggest culprits, but it’s actually the tiny decisions that pile up the fastest. It can include things you may not even register as a decision: what should I wear today? How do I want to sign off on this email? What should I instagram today? Do I need to reply to this email? Should I answer this phone call from a number I don’t recognize? What should I blog about today?
These kinds of decisions start to pile up and bury me pretty quickly. That’s where a lot of my overwhelm comes from. I struggle to find the brain power to even make the decision on what to work on next. So instead, my to-do list piles up and makes me feel even worse.
If, like me, you deal with depression or anxiety, the energy in your brain tank is already taking a massive hit so even the simple decision of ‘When should I get out of bed?’ turns into a huge issue that involves a lot of struggling with yourself to just complete that task. By the time you’ve done that, do you have the energy to deal with the rest of the world? A lot of times, that answer may be no.
So what do you do about this?
Unfortunately, decisions are a part of life so there’s no getting rid of them. But you can help yourself make fewer decisions. Some of the more common tips are to make big decisions and important work for early in the day, but that’s not possible for every schedule.
What’s helped me the most is building habits. Once something has become a habit it doesn’t take the same amount of decision energy because it’s just something you do. So, rather than trying to think about what to have for breakfast every morning, I know that I will have a smoothie. I choose my clothing for the week all at once so I don’t have to make that decision every day.
Another strange tip that’s worked for me is to think of future me as though she’s a friend, a different person than me. Somehow turning a task into ‘helping out future me’ makes it not a decision but a favor. I’m not sure why it works but I’m willing to take advantage of my brain’s affinity for helping people to help myself.
Another option is to take the decision making away from yourself. Roll a dice, flip a coin, let chance take the wheel for a moment!