Anne Truitt Zelenka

Everyone suffers from burnout at some time or another. You know what it feels like: everything irritates you; everyone bothers you; every task requires too much energy. You can’t imagine ever feeling motivated by your work again. What do you do? Here are a few ideas… though they didn’t totally work for me. I greeted this week more burned out than ever.

Sitting at the computer each day I was able to push out some blog posts and some draft manuscript, but I didn’t feel like me. I didn’t find any inspiring ideas. I didn’t write any sentences that made me laugh inside. I didn’t feel connected to my online social network.

The artist’s date

I did, however, remember an idea from creativity guru Julia Cameron: go on an artist’s date. This is a few hour expedition where you go somewhere that fills you up with inspiration and ideas. When I was a software developer living in Palo Alto, I went to Fry’s Electronics. Now that I am a writer, I considered going to a bookstore. But I feel poor. So I went to the library instead. I wanted to get the book Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace by Joseph Williams, because one of my commenters had recommended it, but it wasn’t available.

Serendipitously leads to the I Ching

Instead I found The I Ching for Writers: Finding the Page Inside You by Sarah Jane Sloane. I almost didn’t check it out, thinking it was too cheesy for me, pseudo-Buddhist tendencies notwithstanding. But I grabbed it anyway, and I was glad, because I spent the entire afternoon throwing pennies and looking up my “fortunes” in Sarah Jane’s hexagrams. Among them:

• Begin again: “The advice is to start afresh. You must begin a new project, take a fresh perspective on an old one, or begin to write a piece again.”
• Writer’s block overcome: “Difficulties like writer’s block are a matter of forgetting one’s talents… The best way to overcome your writer’s block is to emphasize all the ways in which you are already a fluent writer.”
• Face your limitations: “Setting limits on yourself — how you use your time, what you write, how often you write — is valuable… Take your work and proceed as though you are a lake, not the ocean.”

The I Ching is like a horoscope; you can twist the predictions and the resulting advice into whatever solution you need. But finding the answer outside yourself even when it was already yours can make you see its value.

What works about Sarah Jane’s book (I can’t call her anything but Sarah Jane, it sounds so lovely) is that her advice is good, no matter how you get to it. You could as easily turn to a random page when you need guidance. Throwing three pennies six times makes you feel there’s some real magic involved, but the magic is in her words and not the way you get to them.

So I ask myself: how do I begin again? How can I use the confidence I’ve had in the past to propel me through the end of a hot and dreary summer? And how can my limitations of time and energy be beneficial for my writing instead of harmful?

Serendipity + new ideas = refreshment

Both the artist’s date and the I Ching introduce an element of chance and serendipity into your work, giving you a nudge to look at whatever you’re experiencing from a different perspective and with a fresh injection of ideas. If you feel burned out at all, you might want to try an artist’s date or Sarah Jane’s book or both. Even if you’re not a writer, the I Ching could inspire you. Who doesn’t need to “face their limitations” or “begin again”?