After last week’s burnout fiasco, I decided I needed to take a step back from most creative endeavours for a couple of days. For this reason, I took a little time off work around the weekend, in an attempt to do something I haven’t done for quite some time.

Rest.

I dedicated those free hours to reading, gaming, watching TV, and reconnecting with some of the less cognitively-demanding hobbies that used to preoccupy my time before I decided to become a productivity obsessed workhouse.

To sit around, playing videogames and enjoying a good yarn was a peculiar experience, to say the least. But you know what? It worked an utter charm.

Now, I know there’s a chance this is all just one big, whopping placebo. I’m notoriously susceptible to self-trickery in that respect. I’m the sort of soul who swears their headache is cured the moment a paracetamol passes their lips. You tell me something will work its magic, and my brain convinces itself it’s instantly healed. There’s a strong chance the gaming and reading did just that. My friends and family told me rest was the magic bullet to revitalise my productivity, and here I am. Whether that’s a ploy of my imagination is beside the point, however. Somehow, it’s worked.

I returned to writing good and proper as of yesterday evening, and it’s like a totally different author has taken the reigns of my keyboard. Okay, so the prose are still rusty and the flow is a little wobbly, but there’s an energy behind my words now. I’m actually having proper ideas again; a lot of them, for that matter. My subplots are taking shape, characters are coming into their own, and for the first time in a while, I feel like I know where this story is heading. My chapters appear to have more purpose than they have done in quite some time. My last few attempts felt more like I was simply trying to move time forward; the lacked a tangible reason for existing beyond getting my story from Monday morning to Tuesday evening. They lacked a reason for existing. That’s no longer the case. Now, they feel like the are actively doing something.

I’m also less frustrated by the shoddiness of it all. Sure, I wish my sentences would sing a little more fluently, but that fact they are all over the shop at the moment isn’t the end of the world. I seem more conscious of the fact that I’m working with a first draft, and it’s all meant to come off rusty and weird whilst I’m in the process of getting these ideas out of my head. I’m more relaxed about that detail at the moment, which means I’m not slamming my iPad down in frustration every ten minutes because of how clunky my paragraphs feel.

The rejuvenation also appears to have sharpened my senses. In recent weeks, I found myself writing in new characters and plot details that seemed like absolute nonsense on first inspection. Why was I giving my protagonist a former best bud who now hates her? Why was Quinn fixating on seemingly unimportant details? And why did I keep outlining the occupations of Michelle’s parents every couple of chapters? Initially, I berated myself for this, accusing my mind of adding nonsense for the sake of meaningless filler.

Yet upon returning from my creative sabbatical, I’ve realised that all of these moments have heaps of potential bustling beneath them. As I move closer to the novel’s second act, I’m starting to picture how these details play into the big picture of this story. I’m beginning to recognise how they all thread together in a fancy little bow. The seemingly incomprehensible moments aren’t random details, but avenues that take my story down exciting new roads. They fuel the engine of this story, nourishing the narrative and giving my leads something interesting to work with as the tension amplifies.

All of which makes me wonder; has my brain retroactively assigned meaning to these side-characters? Or was this subconsciously part of the plan all along? After years of devouring stories, has my brain just become programmed to throw in minor details that it plans to make more important as the narrative unfolds? What came first? Was it the chicken hatching pre-plotted plan, or an egg I improvised at a later date? I have no idea, and I doubt I ever will, but the fact that my mind is pulling off this feat is something I can’t help but get excited about.

The fact remains, had I not taken a rest, I doubt I would be making any of these connections right now. Nor would I be penning chapters that actually had this much purpose behind them. I suspect I’d still be writing filler in the hope of moving my story somewhere more interesting. The quantity of my output would have remained impressive, yet the quality would be questionable. It’s wild to think that just a day days of mindless relaxation managed to knock my mind back into the right gear. It’s an important reminder that no matter how much I want to engage with my creative side, part of the process is knowing when to step back and actually have a lie down. As much as I like to fantasise about being some sort of super computer entity, I am just a fleshy human. I cannot be a productive powerhouse 100% of the time.

My desire to constantly churn out content is understandable to me. I even touched upon it briefly in my previous entity. The fact I spent so much of my twenties disengaged from this side of myself means I’ve remained in a state of constant catch-up for the best part of the last five years. Ever since I decided to go sober in September 2020, a part of me I felt as though I had wasted a huge portion of my adult life up until that point getting drunk and doing surprisingly little with my spare time. That was my life between graduation and turning thirty. Removing excessive partying (for want of a better phrase) from the equation was by far the greatest decision I ever made, but it left a vacuum in its absence. The discontent I was masking with the booze stemmed from a lack of creativity, which I largely neglected after leaving university. Sure, I dabbled in it from time-to-time, but it was fleeting and spurious. I’d given up on my dreams, it seemed, and as a result, I didn’t know what to do with myself outside of work hours. When I could no longer mask those feelings with whisky and nightclubs, I had to find something else. So, I wrote weekly essays, journaled daily, edited podcast shows, penned short stories, drafted screenplays, and now, started novel writing. This is all fantastic stuff, but my brain was frantic, telling itself that this was all it had to do in order to remain relevant in a life I felt I’d largely wasted.

In retrospect, I realise I’ve started filling the void with another harmful habit. Only instead of intoxication, it was an obsessive tendency to work, work, work. Make no mistake, being creative is the right answer to addressing the sadness lurking at my core, but excess is where I went too far. By being on the clock 24/7, I was running the risk of toxifying the very thing that had the potential to truly fulfil me. Telling stories and weaving narratives is what makes me feel happy and complete as a human. But doing it relentlessly was not the solution. I have to dial it back. It needs to be balanced with other activities. I need to take time for myself, do the dishes, chat with friends, visit family, and attend to other matters. I cannot just come home and sit behind a computer screen until it’s time to pass out. I have to be balanced.

This week has been proof of that. With just a few days of rest, I have returned with a new lease of creative life. I feel reanimated, bustling with ideas once again. My novel has meaning, my chapters have purpose, and I am excited to write for what feels like the first time in months. All I need to do now is make sure I incorporate downtime into my weekly routine. The current burnout may have been tended to for now, but I need to make sure I don’t let it fry me again.