Hey, brandcrafter, thanks for being so patient with me the last few weeks. I appreciate you sticking around.
It’s been, in a word, chaotic.
I had another topic planned for this newsletter, and I thought I could keep my current pace and capacity while my kids were on spring break and while grieving a loved one’s death.
And, well, I learned very quickly that I cannot.
(In fact, it was the weekend before spring break when I hit a wall, and by Tuesday, I was overwhelmed, overstimulated, touched out, and completely, totally dysregulated.)
In other words: I wasn’t my best self and in no shape to show up here…so I didn’t.
(First of all, you deserve better than second-rate messages in your inbox. I’d like to think we have a bond of trust where you trust I’ll only send you quality content full of heart and soul, not just words for the sake of words. And I take that trust seriously.)
Instead, I took a break and focused on editing projects. Work I could do at 2am in silence under a weighted blanket in darkness.
And you know what? That’s okay.
If you’re facing burnout, if you’re finding a new normal, if you’re overwhelmed — it’s okay to sit down and take a breath. Or five.
There are so many people online talking about how you need to stay consistent at all costs and how you have to just push through to get to the other side, usually in the form of “suck it up” and dangling the proverbial carrot of success.
Consistency at all costs being the secret variable to success is not just a lie we’ve all been fed to keep this capitalist machine running — but it’s actively damaging our physical and mental health.
That’s not to say to give up on consistency because it is important.
The problem is consistency at all costs, especially when that cost is our mental and physical health.
Consistency can mean different things at different points in our lives too.
Sometimes, consistency can look like creating daily content and cranking out the work. It can look like doing whatever it takes to smash through your list and reach your goals.
It’s usually during these times when we have the most support and we have the capacity — mental, physical, and emotional — to do this.
But if you don’t?
Consistency looks different.
We can work behind the scenes. We can shelves some goals, knowing we’ll come back for them later. We can prioritize our mental health because we know pushing through for the sake of pushing through will actually put us behind in the long-run.
(And if you’ve been in my world a minute, you know I talk about consistency in our message. About what we stand for and how we communicate what’s most important to us and our community. That’s a critical part of consistency often left out of the conversation.)
Consistency without sustainability isn’t consistency at all.
And if I can give you any gift, it’s that.
It took me 32 years to really internalize this and let go of shame when I had to let things go because I felt like it was a personal failure, not a symptom of something deeper, like lack of support.
So, how can you keep going when you’re facing potential burnout and grief?
✨Sometimes you don’t. You pause, take a breath, and regroup later when you have the capacity and support.
✨Sometimes you do something unrelated to your work that brings you joy. (Even if you’re terrible at it.)
✨Sometimes you redefine what “keep going” and “consistency” mean to you in this season of your life and shift how you relate to your work.
✨Sometimes it’s realizing the work you’re doing isn’t the work that lights you up and you reposition what you do to what sparks you.
As neurodivergents, I’m sure we can all relate to feeling like we’re on the verge of burnout, and if you’re like me, you’ve felt the fear of slowing down or pausing because you’ve created so much momentum and don’t want to lose it.
(Momentum is hard for our neurodivergent brains, especially when inertia is looming over us.)
But pausing doesn’t mean stopping forever.
It just means we get a chance to challenge what we’ve been taught, redefine how we work, and move forward in a way that best supports our needs.
Even if that means temporarily pausing projects.
They’ll be there when you come back.
Choose you, always.
Cat
P.S. Here’s what slowing down this past week looked like for me.
The joy with this particular painting is I used both a brush and my hands. Something about feeling cold paint against the scratchy paper hit differently, and I felt more connected to this one over all the others.
In 2023, I’ve let go of the need to be good to do something, and I’ve allowed myself to paint badly, just for the joy of it. Painting doesn’t have to be your thing, but I hope you have something to help you slow down.