Burn Out Rant

Today I want to have a chat about something and nothing. Mostly I’m just looking to get my thoughts down on electric paper, it helps me think straight and make decisions.

Today, and for a little while prior to today, I have been feeling burned out… again.

And this got me thinking about a few things, the main thing is how our flaws can creep up on us. How easy it can be to backslide into bad habits and before you know what’s happened, you’re in trouble.

I am very aware of my flaw of trying to do everything, all the time, very fast. I always do this, ever since I left university. It’s not a new thing, and every time it happens, I say the same thing, “Oh shit, I’m doing it again. How did that happen?” It always happens and it always happens without my noticing it.

Take writing as an example, I want to write long-form fiction, short fiction, original fiction and fiction set in pre-established worlds. I want to talk about my stuff on this website, I want to talk about it on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube. I want to increase my viewership while also putting out good quality content.

And I want to do this all the time, quickly. Good quality content every day forever.

That would probably already overflow my plate, but I want to do these things while also managing (and being good at) the usual life responsibilities of:

• Having a full-time job that pays the bills (and putting the time in to succeed in that job)
• Trying to improve things for those with Diverse Abilities (I’m a co-chair of a Diverse Abilities network (aka getting work rights/fair treatment at work for people with learning difficulties, long-term health conditions, disabilities etc))
• The day-to-day running of our home and all the little jobs involved there (why do I keep finding DIY projects?)
• Maintaining close friendships
• Maintaining good family relationships
• Trying to grow as a person by trying new things such as going to art films, attending live comedy nights, going to local performance pieces etc
• oh and all the work involved in trying to get on a PhD course.

I’m sure you’re guessing where this is going.

I’ve listened to a lot of people talk about setting boundaries, usually, this is in the context of setting boundaries for other people, I struggle to set boundaries with myself.

And the worst thing is that I KNOW that when I take on too much stuff, I do a bad job of it. Instead of doing one or two things well, I do a lot of stuff poorly.

And that’s what has been happening lately.

I’m putting out three blogs a week, TikTok’s daily, and YouTube videos weekly, while trying to put out two new short stories every month, a chapter of the current WIP per week and work on the potential PhD and the quality of what I’m putting out is starting to drop. I’m so busy trying to get things out quickly that stuff is coming out wrong and I don’t have time to fix it.

Which makes me sad, which kills my motivation.

Anyway, that’s the problem part of my rant done, now onto the solution.

Once again, I’m doing a re-evaluation, trying to figure out a way of keeping all the things I’m doing but maybe doing them a bit less and hopefully seeing an increase in quality.

So, I will cut my YouTube and TikTok stuff in half. This means videos will come out every other week and blog posts linking to them will also be every other week. It gives me more time to work on them and hopefully increase the quality.

Anyway, rant over, until I do this again in about six/nine months 😊