Freelance scribbler exploring worlds real and imagined

On Work/Life Balance as a Creative Human

If you look at the dates on the posts here, you’ll notice a bit of a gap: I took the last couple of weeks off while I was on a trip to Oaxaca, Mexico. Normally I still do things like post blogs and whatnot when I travel, and I did still do a bit of work and a few other creative career type things during the trip. Unlike my usual working-on-the-road excursions, though, I wanted this trip to feel a smidge more like an actual vacation.

I struggle to take breaks as a rule, largely because I genuinely like to work. Having literally nothing to do is not my idea of a good time—I can handle it for a day or so, but more than that and I start to get antsy. This is a good thing for a freelancer most of the time, but it also makes me prone to epic burnout if I’m not careful about keeping my life in balance.

 Everyone’s probably heard the adage “Find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” That statement, in my opinion, is deceptive. A job you love makes doing work more fulfilling, but work is work, even when you like it. People who are passionate about their profession can still work too much, and when they do they can still get burned out. It’s like eating too much of your favorite food: you can still make yourself sick, even if you love every bite as it’s going down. 

I currently have a lot of clients in the HR industry, meaning I’m weirdly tuned in to the latest trends in employment and employee management. Burnout and work/life balance have been popular topics in this space over the past couple of years, but this discussion focuses mostly on people who have traditional jobs with a boss and managers. There’s less discussion of what work/life balance means for people who are self-employed, or who side-hustle with something creative around their day job—I think, in part, because this becomes much harder to define. Since this has been front and center in my mind recently, it felt like a good time to share my thoughts on the matter. 

What even counts as work for writers and artists?

One big hurdle to maintaining a work/life balance as a creative human is that many people see things like painting, playing music, writing, acting, or other creative pursuits as relaxing, fun activities—and they are, for most people, most of the time. When it’s a hobby, though, you only do it when you want to. When it’s your passion, or a source of income, you lose the luxury of only doing it when you feel like it.

Because of this, someone who writes as a stress relief views their time spent writing, and the works they produce, differently than someone who views writing as their calling or profession. There’s a level of dedication that you need to cultivate if you’re going to be “serious” (for lack of a better term) about your creative endeavors. This is true whether you’re a Stephen King-level capital A Author or prefer having a full-time day job in an unrelated field and keeping your art as a side project.

I fall somewhere in the middle of those two categories. I write for a living, but the stories I prefer to write aren’t my main source of income. What keeps my cats in kibble, as it were, is ghostwriting and copywriting. That doesn’t mean I view my own writing as less important, though. If anything, it’s the opposite: the things I care the most about, and most want to devote my time to, are the projects that I don’t expect to get paid for (or, at least, not much yet). These include:

…and I enjoy doing all of those things, at least most of the time, but they’re not always easy or stress-free. There are still days I have to force myself to do them, or prioritize and schedule my to-do list the same way I would work assignments. Even when everything is flowing smoothly, a lot of those tasks require a good amount of brain power and focus. Honestly, that’s part of why they bring me so much joy.

That’s something that can be very frustrating, for me at least: The things I want to spend all of my time doing are the same ones I sometimes need a break from. It can also be annoyingly hard to tell when I’m just having an off day and writing through it will get me back in the flow, versus when I’ve run my creative battery down to empty and need to recharge.

And we still haven’t answered the question: what exactly makes something “work” when the same activity could be relaxing? I think it comes down to two things: Effort and expectations. If something requires a lot of physical or mental exertion, you’ll eventually need to take some kind of break from it. Expectations can be external or internal, but either way they add stakes. If you don’t finish this task, you’ll be letting someone down. Giving a situation stakes in fiction adds tension for the reader. They do the same thing in real life, and when you have tension it needs a release, or something is eventually going to snap.

Signs of creative work/life imbalance

If you look up “signs of burnout” you’ll see a pretty hefty list of symptoms: exhaustion, fatigue, body aches, headaches, stomach problems, anxiety, and moodiness, to name a few. Of course, these are symptoms of a lot of things, the general set of “I feel shitty” indicators our bodies give us when they need something we’re not giving them.

For me, a clear sign that I’m due for some kind of break or realignment is when I feel a smattering of those things above, along with one or more of the things listed below. 

1. I feel like I’m always rushing from one thing to the next (and not doing any of them as well as I could be).

When this happens, it means that you’re trying to stretch yourself beyond your capacity—you’ve overfilled your schedule, started too many projects, or exceeded your mental bandwidth. Because of that, you can’t give anything your full focus and energy.

2. I’m always in a bad mood.

There’s actually a scientific reason for this. Stress triggers the brain to release cortisol, which affects the parts of the brain that regulate emotions. Frustrations are more frustrating, annoyances more annoying, and everything seems just a little bit shittier.

3. I can’t enjoy the writing process.

Everyone has days that the muse doesn’t want to come and yes, sometimes you still need to create when it’s not fun. That said, if it’s reached the point it feels like a chore more often than not, or you can’t seem to get into the creative flow like you used to, it’s likely time to make a change.

4. Simple, everyday tasks feel overwhelming.

This could be dishes and laundry piling up, or that doctor’s visit you keep procrastinating, or bailing on social engagements because leaving the house just feels like too much work. When even the little things feel like a lot, this is a clear sign your energy levels are depleted.

5. I feel off and disconnected when I’m interacting with other people.

Overfilling your schedule with various forms of work doesn’t leave a lot of time to spend with friends—and when you do, you’re too exhausted and preoccupied to really be present. I struggle with this as an introvert because, for me, hanging out takes a bit of work, even when it’s with people I really like. That makes it an easy first thing to sacrifice from my to-do list, and if I’m not careful I can end up living that writer stereotype of the lonely weirdo holed up in a dark room all the time.

Finding (and keeping) the balance

I’m not gonna lie: I haven’t always been great at this. Especially in my first few years of freelancing I had a tendency to say yes to more projects than I should have. I still too often do this with creative projects, starting new ones when I haven’t finished the last one yet then trying to juggle both at once.

I’ve been working to improve this, though. A few of the strategies I’ve been using recently, that I feel have made a difference in my personal work/life balance:

1. Re-prioritize based on fulfillment over obligation.

I’ve learned that there will always be more tasks I could fill my time with. Much of both my creative and freelancing work is ongoing or involves long projects, and it’s up to me to decide how to allocate my time to complete it. One mistake I made in the past was always prioritizing things I saw as external obligations over my own writing. This often left me struggling to be creative at the very end of my day, when my mind was already worn-out and my focus was shot. That would make me stay up way later than I should beating my head against the story that my brain was struggling to write—and, after it all, I’d still be frustrated by what I managed to get on the page.

I now make it a point to put my creative writing first at least one day a week whenever it’s feasible. Sometimes it’s not, like when I have a pressing deadline or it’s one of those weeks that all my clients need all the words right stat now. It’s easier to deal with those weeks when I’ve been able to put in good work on my story the week before, though, and prioritizing the projects that bring me the most joy or excitement has been huge for me in finding a better balance.

2. Leave space for spontaneity.

I’ve learned I get the most inspiration when I feed my brain with new ideas and experiences. An out of whack work/life balance can get you stuck in the grind and mired in the mundane. Leaving space for things to interrupt your regular programming, even if just in small ways, can help sustain your inspiration so you can keep creating.

One way I’ve started to do this is by switching up the places I write and work. I try to get outdoors when weather permits, and otherwise bounce between a few different coffee shops, bars, and other hangouts in walking distance. I also try to stay open to small intrusions—if a friend happens to be there and swings by the table to chat, for instance, I look up from the screen and let the conversation happen (and, as a caveat, when I know I have an urgent task that requires my full focus, I stay in my home office where I can control the distractions).

3. Find a release lever.

This is especially important to do for people who are first shifting a creative thing from “hobby” to “profession” status. Once you’ve attached expectations to a craft, it turns into both a stress-reliever and a potential stress-bringer. That means you need to have something else you can turn to when the thing that used to relax you now just adds to the tension.

My go-tos are reading and video games. They’re both adjacent to my main gig in the sense that both are forms of storytelling, which is the thing I love about writing. But I get to enjoy that storytelling passively, instead of being the one doing the telling, and this lets some key parts of my brain shut off and just enjoy the ride. 

4. Learn when you need to say no (and to what).

I said before that I like to work. I can happily lose myself for hours in a research project that interests me. I’m no stranger to 50+ hour weeks and, honestly, sometimes I enjoy them. But I can’t keep up that pace all the time. In the past, I would take on all the projects that even remotely caught my interest. That would fill up my schedule to full capacity all the time, setting me up for the kind of overwork and exhaustion that made it hard to be creative.  

For me, balancing my life meant getting comfortable with saying “no”. This starts with knowing your own capacity limits, which for me is an ongoing process that I still don’t always get right. I habitually under-estimate exactly how much time and effort some things will take, and that has gotten me into some needlessly stressful situations.

Once you know those limits, the next step is acknowledging and honoring them. It won’t always be possible to seize every opportunity. Some projects will need to wait until later, or you might miss the chance to take part in them because the timing simply isn’t right, no matter how much you love the idea. And that’s okay; there will be other opportunities, at a time you are able to take advantage of them.

5. Know your big “why”.

Setting goals identifies what you want to achieve. Putting deadlines on them tells you the when. But what often gets neglected in this process is the why. What need does it fill for you when you create? What is that ultimate, big-picture vision that you want your work today to lead toward?

For me, thinking about my “why” connects the different pieces of my creative life into a whole picture. If I had to state my ultimate goal as a kind of mission statement, it would be something like “to tell entertaining and meaningful stories to as many people as possible.” That’s why I want to get my stories and books published: to expand their potential readership. I’m ambivalent on the idea of personal fame, but I would love for the characters I create to be as famous as Katniss Everdeen or Tyrion Lannister. That’s also why I’m passionate about After Happy Hour, and why I’m eager to grow Scribble House—to be a link in the chain connecting storytellers to readers.

Everyone has a why. It’s okay if that why is “to support my family doing something I don’t hate” or “to gain a form of immortality by becoming a famous writer”—your why is only yours, and this is one place you’re completely justified to be selfish. Once you understand your driving, big-picture purpose, you can curate the things you prioritize to match it. This helps you decide which projects to accept and which to say no to, and how to arrange the various pieces of your life to form the most sustainable, well-balanced whole.

  

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