Student Blog: Burnout - Headaches, No Appetite, Vomiting, and Writer's Block

If you want to be a writer, you need to be writing. If you want to be a filmmaker, you need to be making films. You should be reading the classics, you should be watching the classics. These are all pieces of "advice" that I've had thrown at me. Things I need to add to my to-do list. Yet, the advice-givers forget that there are only 24 hours in a day.

I am nineteen years old. Equivalent to 6,935 days old or 166,440 hours old- and about 83,220 of those hours I'd spent sleeping. There is only so much time and only so much I can do. This is where my burnout occurs.

My creative burnout hits whenever it comes down to trying to balance what I need to do, what I want to do, and what I think I should do. I need to write, I need to read, and I need to study as much media and art as I can. Simultaneously, I want to work on personal projects, projects that take time and development and are not instantaneous. And of course, there is what I think I should do. As addressed in my last blog, with social media it is so easy to compare my achievements to others and bombard myself with questions and accusations: "Why didn't you do that?" "Why haven't you written a book?" "How come you haven't made an op-doc for the New York Times?"

With all this self-imposed pressure, I get stressed and often stumped on what I should actually do. When it comes down to what I need to do and what I think I should do, I try to write. I try to write something that is moving, something bigger than myself, and something I hope to bring readers to tears with. Yet, whenever I want to write something nothing ever comes out. I'll be sitting at my computer with a blank Word document in front of me, digging my fingers down my throat hoping that I'll vomit up an essay of emotions, but nothing will come out. And when writing doesn't work, I try reading to hopefully find some source of inspiration. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't. I'll get stuck in a pickle jar with nothing to write and no desire to read. I think this is a part of my burnout process. For example, last week on Thursday I woke up to a text from my dad informing me that it was my dog's time and asking if I'd like to see him before he goes. With finals around the corner, I had initially had everything laid out and planned for my weekend of productivity, but with this news, I knew I had to go home. That weekend I ended up sleeping a lot in an attempt to escape a raging headache that eventually turned into a migraine. Then sleeping meant not eating and not eating and then finally eating eventually ended with vomiting in my dad's car (sorry Dad). After this stress attack, I tried jumping back into my routine and setting things back to how I had them listed in my agenda. But, no matter how hard I try, I haven't been able to write anything- well, anything that I like. Plan B is also scrapped since every time I try to pick up a book, my mind escapes to somewhere else and reading turns into scanning words line by line. This sleep/no appetite/vomit stress attack has happened before, but this time it's also brought writer's block.

To face these feelings of burnout, instead of forcing myself to try to be productive, I've acknowledged that writer's block or burnout is just your body telling you to rest and to take it easy. Even geniuses don't make masterpieces daily- at least I don't think they do. But every process, creative endeavor, and work of art takes time, and remembering to slow down is part of that time. Nothing is immediate. I mean even Jesus had to wait, he didn't complete his final miracle till he was 30.

To post a comment, you must register and login.