Episode 13: Burnout Revisited
Our journey of recovering from severe professional (and personal) burnout continues. We talked about this subject a few episodes ago, but our views on burnout continue to evolve -- and we have a lot to say about this topic -- so here is another episode! Tracy also talks about pottery, and how working with clay has helped her mental state.
Hello and welcome to another episode of As the Dinoson's Turn. And here we want to talk a little more about burnout. We talked about that a couple of episodes ago and how we were coping with that. And you know, since we recorded that, it's been a month already. It has. And so I I think that our burnout journey, recovery journey from burnout, is getting better every day, it feels like.
SPEAKER_01Well, there are a few things. I mean, like I said last time, I was like, I think I'm ready to go back to therapy. And I've been back to therapy, and I am so grateful that I can do therapy online and from the lovely portion of my backyard and and deal with my same therapist, which is fantastic. Um, but you know, we've found that we really needed more of a spiritual way in order to deal with some of these things in ways that we were really looking, and I am looking particularly to be creative again. And I find when I'm burned out or stressed out, that's one of the very first things to go, is any form of creativity, which actually is detrimental because that's how I deal with stress, um, and that's how I kind of process things. So we've been working on making art and and making sure that we are purposefully putting creativity back on the table. Right? And I made you do this with me. Like a lot of things.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's nothing new.
SPEAKER_01That's nothing new. He's along for the ride. He's like, sure. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So we're working on, well, what do we want to talk about first? The clay or the book?
SPEAKER_01So I think that we have to start with the the workbook and process. We're doing a 12-week process. We are on week three now, like it starts today. Better do some reading. Um, but we're doing the artist's way, which is a classic way. My therapist said, you know, um, I was like, I just wish I could figure out creatively, you know, where where my soul is, what I want to do, what kind of sparks creativity. And so, as part of that, she said, You need to get this book. And I said, Look, I have this. I've read it, I was prepared to do it all alone. And then I looked up and I said, Here, read this because you need to do it too. Because it's a lot of the same kinds of things that we both enjoy, right? To help you work through the process. So we start our morning the same. Um, we drink our coffee, right? But now we also write free write by hand, three pages, and it's a brain dump. Nobody looks at it, nobody needs to anything, but I've been able to process a lot of things and get a lot of the things off the top of my head, and I constantly have a to-do list, and so that to-do list blocks everything, so that helps me get some of those things down and be able to deal with it all. And you have to take yourself on an artist date every week. Um, I am taking art classes because I love this and I'm very excited about it. But you've been reading a lot um about writing, yeah? And we I think we're at the point where we're like, okay, we can start being productive artists, being creative again in our own ways. And so you have some great ideas, but but where are you headed with this? What are you learning through this process?
SPEAKER_00I guess I don't know yet. I still have the block of fear of starting, I guess, is my biggest thing and always has been the fear of starting, and I'm not sure why.
SPEAKER_01I think it makes it real, you know, and I think that that's the other piece of it, you know, um, that starting something makes it real instead of just sitting down and writing, because you want to write, you know, that's your area, right? Right, right.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So um I think it's getting started and doing something that is creative is a risk. Um, but again, you could treat it like your morning pages where you just write and it you just do it for a period of time and nobody has to read it.
SPEAKER_00Well, and allowing yourself to do something that's not necessarily your job, I think is a big thing in the guilt factor almost that comes into play of I'm doing something that's not productive. Right. That's it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's productive in a different way, right? So it's productive in feeding who you are and creating something, but we're all fine, all of us in society are completely fine in spending time avoiding things that are productive, like sticking our head into technology. I mean, you were saying this morning you wish you could just chuck the phone sometimes and just get rid of it because you waste so much time there. And I think that it's it's an avoidance tactic, right?
SPEAKER_00It totally is.
SPEAKER_01Even if we are learning things like I'm using it to listen to books, and I'm learning about clay, and I'm watching what other people are doing with it, and all this other stuff, you're learning about sound quality and mixing, and it we're it's still an avoidance of doing something else.
SPEAKER_00I think that we all all four of us do that. We do. We all have ideas and of different things, and I th I look at the that soccer ball. You can't see it, I don't think, on the camera if you're watching the video. That soccer ball has been there since I think Easter Sunday, when it was kicked for about 10 seconds around the yard, and it's sat there since then. And that I can't criticize the children too much because I think that you and I are a lot the same way. It's like it's like most of our time is just spent like this staring at our phone.
SPEAKER_01Or dreaming and r and thinking about ideas, but not making those ideas come to fruition. You and I we we do that a lot. Like we live in the fantasy realm or the future or the planning area instead of making things happen. So we're in that point now where we have to start making things happen. And I think that that's one of those next steps for us to do is to just to go with it.
SPEAKER_00I think the burnout and recovery portion is being more aware of those things. Um I don't know, just being aware that that's what we need to change and that things like sitting and staring at the phone are not productive. We've always known that. I think we've said it a few times in the past, but it's I think now it's more like this really is something that we need to do. We need to take action on this as opposed to just talking about it.
SPEAKER_01Well, in addition to that, we have the energy and the mental bandwidth to take action on it and deal with it. Whereas when you're so fried and tired and burnt out on something, you don't even care. You're like, I just I know I should, but I just don't care. Um, at least I got to that point. Yeah. And I would have to say that, you know, I mean, even you're reading Stephen King's on writing. You know, and even he says, just write. The more you write, the better it'll be. And the more you write, it the more you actually have, right? I mean, it makes sense.
SPEAKER_00Yep. Stephen King says don't he doesn't like doing the whole plotting and planning that a lot of authors do. Yeah, it's different when you're kind of a prodigy like he is. It's easy to say, oh, just write, and don't do all the plotting and the planning and the note cards and all that. Just write, and then you'll go back and edit it and you'll clean things up and you'll change it and you'll add to it, but just do it. Get the ideas out.
SPEAKER_01At the same time, though, I mean, we have ideas written down, I've seen it, right? And then you can plot and storyboard it all you want to, except that it's not gonna make the world real.
SPEAKER_00No, at some point you do have to just do it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So, and I think that he might be a prodigy now, but I don't know. We've I haven't read all of his early stuff that he wouldn't even be publishable. True. So I think that's also important for us to remember, you know. And you know, I too am writing um and want to write more, and will be doing nano rhymos um in November, and I vowed that this will be the year that I will do it and be successful because I'm not worried about getting other people through it, and I'm making the time. Um, and so National Novel Writing Month of November is definitely a piece of that. Um, it's part of my creative soul.
SPEAKER_00You say on your Facebook profile, explore and burnout recovery working on nurturing my creativity. So, what in your explorations of burnout, what are some I we talked about this a few episodes ago, which was recorded about a month ago. What else is there to say that maybe you did? I felt like in that episode there's more to say because we're still processing it. Oh, wait. So after another four weeks have passed, what else have you discovered on your burnout recovery voyage?
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, these are things that I think I knew intellectually anyway, but you know, the process and the beginning of the recover of burnout happened way before the actual feeling it. And it was, and it is, part of being that overachiever perfectionist or being the person who um wants to and shows care to other people first and then feels guilty of putting myself on a list at all. Um, and so seeing that um I love my mother more than life itself, but my mom did the same thing, you know, seeing that she puts all of us first. Um, and I did that with my students, but I did that with the institution, I did that like institution first, and at one point I took myself off the list because I I couldn't, I didn't have enough time, I thought, to leave myself on. I was being pulled in too many directions, and a lot of that is I felt like I had too many responsibilities to other people. Um, and I did that, and I did have responsibilities. Is was there anything absolutely keeping me from drawing a line other than myself? No.
SPEAKER_00I remember when Tyler was born uh in August of 2011. Yes. You didn't even take your maternity leave, you took literally like two or three days off, and then we're we're back at it because that I remember your quote that the students and the school need me.
SPEAKER_01Well, my colleague was on sabbatical, they wouldn't pay my other colleague to cover my classes for six weeks, um, and so I didn't want anyone else to be taken advantage of. And I was the tenured of the other tenured member of the program, and so I went back. Um yeah, I went back the Tuesday after Labor Day. Would I do it again? No. But I also was at the place where I hadn't been disillusioned yet to the point that I thought I really thought the institution cared more about us and our students and our program than they did. And so was I disillusioned, was I put out? Yes. But I, you know, had other things, I had conferences and things like that. I was traveling when Tyler was, you know, five weeks old because I had a conference to go to and present at and all of these things, and that I was never going to miss because it was the author, the author I specialized in was the guest host, and I helped recruit and all of those things. And so um there are things that I was doing for myself as well, but I it was not a healthy environment um in any way, shape, or form, but I also was not healthy or strong enough to see anything differently. I truly believed that that's what we were supposed to do. I'm not saying how insane it was.
SPEAKER_00I know for me one of the things that's b affected the burnout and caused it, I suppose, is the idea that hard work in and of itself will make everything better. And of course you have to work hard. I mean, that's just kind of the prerequisite, but I mean, driving yourself into the ground is going to when I worked in radio, I would work 80-hour work weeks because I was building a career. And someday all of this that I'm doing is gonna result in me making a whole bunch more money and and all this other stuff, and it never happened. And then I changed careers, and you know, working all these hours is gonna result in big payoff down the road, and all that's it has I've built something that could pay a salary to me that's actually reasonable now, but it also was a lot of work without corresponding reward.
SPEAKER_01There's also a lot of work with the assumed purpose, and so so like the assumed gratification is coming later on. Like there is a purpose, but it's gonna come later, it will pay off. Well, I mean, we were raised that way. You work hard and eventually your time will come. And you know, w to be fair, when when Tyler was born, I was that was the year I was up for tenure. It was all kinds of additional things on top of that, and so you just do it because now is the time, you know, and and I think that that's a large piece of it.
SPEAKER_00I like to say people our age in particular, we were always told a ship, a ship would come in for us, just keep working hard, it's okay, the ship is coming, and it will pay off. And it seems like the ship has sunk somewhere out in the ocean.
SPEAKER_01That's the Titanic. Right. No, I have to say, like, I I think that we we bought it, and and honestly, I I think everything happens for a purpose, you know. Uh I know I'll be raising our I we raise our children differently to think about those things. Like, okay, so I mean, even my mom tried. Like, what are the consequences? There are consequences of every decision and every action. You know, the consequence of me going back, you know, early was that I was going to be exhausted and not fully healed, and I might push myself too hard, but there is a good consequence of that too, that I am moving forward in my career. I'm there in some type of routine, which I desperately need as a person in order to kind of set some boundaries and help with some of those things, and that um I was going to be doing the work that I loved and all of those other pieces, right? Um, I think that it I was blind to when the work no longer became worth it. And I don't know when that happened, really. But the I think it's when the work and disillusionment reach a certain crisis. River beach visitors have arrived. Come on, Max. Come. Come. Good boys. Lay down. Oh yeah. I I don't know when when the work and the disillusionment um where the disillusionment really took like took off. I think that it started in 2008 with a financial crisis. Um, I know that it really like I never recovered, um, and I'm am now working on processing, recovering the um ending of my department as I knew it. Um and those things come out as fear, and I process those things through dreams and talking with my therapist. You know, I have this recurrent dream that everything is gonna come to a point where I feel lonely and then I'm working hard again, and that I'm just kind of like, what do I pour myself into if I need something? I don't know. And that that scares me. And but really, it's the idea of being vulnerable and the idea that from the time I was little, my mother said to me, never become financially dependent on a man. And in her world, that was right. Make sure you have your education because you absolutely need can fall back on it. Nobody can take that away from you, and that is all still true. But at the same time, I am now more financially dependent on you than I have ever been, right? But there was a long time where you were completely financially dependent on me. It's true, and I think that that's that's part of it, like that's part of the the relationship and the growth that we're realizing, that this gives us opportunities to build something more and something different, and having any option of the world was overwhelming, and that what I realized was I need things to become more organic and let them go through their time and their process rather than trying to make things happen because making things happen has never worked, right? I mean, I can I can make all kinds of things happen, but it's never been the reward or the satisfaction that I want, and so pottery classes are just feeding my soul left and right right now. I was something I've always wanted to do. I was gonna take a pottery class and audit it, and and when we taught pottery at the college, and I was like, I'm gonna do this, I've wanted to do it forever, and now I am, and I am like I found a community that's great. Like we're talking, you know, between eight and twelve other people there working on pottery in different ways, and we're all working on different projects, and some are there just for studio time, but and then there's an expert in the room to help guide you and work with on those things with you. I think that being in that spot has been fantastic, you know. Um, could I have done this and gone to the art center downtown? Absolutely, I could have. There was something I I needed to be in this spot to make it happen though. And I'm practicing my Portuguese and they're practicing their English and and it's just a good spot.
SPEAKER_00I think on things like that for us, it f it's like we needed permission to be able to do those things. So yeah, you could have done it where we were, but yet I don't know, we never gave ourselves permission to do it.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely, because I've always wanted to be an artist and a writer, and I have quite a bit of a hippie soul that I joke about, but I really do. But I've never given myself permission to actually be those things because you can't make money at it necessarily, or it's not a guaranteed, there's not a lot of security, there's not a lot of stability, and that's what I was working for, and letting all of that go, realizing that there was no security and stability, it was a whole bunch of lies and bunk that people fed you, um, is cathartic in a lot of ways. It really is. And I've gone back to projects that you know I did things in graduate school, I was constantly doing art and those kinds of things when I was in graduate school and doing my PhD because I needed something and I was by myself and I had cats. It was me and my cats, art and my work and some friends that we'd go out and have beer every you know week or so. But um, I I picked up my cross-stitching again, you know. I used to do that a lot. Like we'd sit on the couch and you know, we'd watch a game or whatever, and I'd cross-stitch, but I quit doing that when we had kids because it requires so much concentration that I couldn't concentrate enough what was going on because I'm afraid somebody was gonna kill themselves or something like that. I'd lose track because we're not talking easy, we're talking like full-fledged art cross-stitching, like where you're mixing threads and you're mixing colors and you're doing all these things to create effects, and it's one stitch here and one stitch there, and and it was just like okay, I I have the bandwidth to do that now, and I am gonna finish your stocking. I'm impressed. Oh my god, um, 16 years late, but you're gonna have it, babe. Right? So I think it's all of those things. You know, I didn't give myself permission to do those things.
SPEAKER_00So this has been building for years. I I knew a number of years ago for both of us that we were headed down the wrong path. Sometimes it's hard to know what the solution is, though. And I guess the re you know, a lot of people listening to this, if they're burned out or disillusioned or whatever, you don't have to move to to another country. You're welcome to join us.
SPEAKER_01We would love to have you here.
SPEAKER_00You can, but I it's not a prerequisite to move to another country. I just felt like for us, we needed something drastic. I said that in the the burnout podcast that we did that we needed a drastic change that like shook us out of the world that we were in and put us in a different set of circumstances.
SPEAKER_01But I think more than that, we needed to be like, screw it, we're doing the bucket list. Now this is a bucket list item, and we're putting it first and we're doing it, we're not waiting for. Someday anymore because someday might not ever come, and I think that's the big thing. Like we were working for one day and for someday, and we had these ideas of like maybe one day this will happen, and instead we're like, Well, one day is now, and I think that even if it's just making the decision of I've always wanted to take this class, and so I am making sure that I do this and that I take that time, then great. If it's the I'm going to get up and I'm gonna write for 10 minutes every day and see if anything comes out of it, then great. You know, like what do you need and where are you on that spectrum? I was at the I need to I'm like I probably need to be sent away for detox and therapy, and maybe I needed to go to rehab types of burnout. Like it was really bad for a while. Um, and I I I have to say that being where we are now, um, and being now five months into this process, I'm now starting to come out of a fog that I think I've been in for years. So this was not gonna be an easy thing for me. This was not gonna be a summer vacation, you're not teaching, it's not gonna be a you've got your semester sabbatical. If I had the full year sabbatical and could take half pay and all of those things, maybe that would have worked for me, but we could never in the US take a half pay because our costs of living were too high, and and so we needed to have made other financial decisions for that to happen.
SPEAKER_00So you're gonna be recording some little videos on clay. I am.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna share some of my processes with you. So I've started pulling things together. I found a fantastic place that I feel very much at home. Um, for those of you who, you know, have been my my dream crew and we've had conversations on like I really want to open like a collective type of thing. It's where everybody works together, it's a cooperative, everybody owns a piece, you work on your own specialty kind of thing. And it's just a home for people to express themselves and all of that. I'm like, someday I'm gonna have something like this. Like, we're gonna have land, we're gonna have a bunch of tiny houses, people are gonna come out and do their yoga, and we're gonna be self-sustaining, and all yeah, I know. So, as far hippie as you can make it, I'm gonna build my own commune. Um, but I found a place that is very much in line with who I am and what I want. It's owned by a group of friends. There are four artists that own it, and during the day they sell their art in the front, and in the back, they have a workshop for themselves, and they have their kiln that they all share. Um, some of them you do digital art, they don't all do pottery. Um, but then they teach classes like two nights a week and on Saturdays until noon or one, and and that's how they pay the bills, and so everybody there is exploring some creative side of things and working on projects. Um, but it's just like you create your own community, and and I've loved that. Um, so and I still like the day workshop things, but I realized that wasn't gonna be that wasn't enough of what I was looking for. I was looking for lots of techniques, and so I've been working on techniques. I have learned that the old coil bowl that everybody makes in elementary school, I still suck at it and need to practice it. It's not good. Slab pottery, I'm very good at. Pinch pots, mmm, still not fantastic.
SPEAKER_00I went with you to one. You did. It wasn't one of your it was a different thing, but it was a pottery class.
SPEAKER_01I know we can go pick up our stuff this next week. I'll go pick it up.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01But we did pinch pot um cups, right? And so that wasn't always easy. Jason's became a pasta bowl.
SPEAKER_00A bowl.
SPEAKER_01It's a bowl, it'll be coffee filled. Right. But yeah, so we promised that we'd take video of that. But I have to say, like now I'm doing sculpture. So I'm doing clay sculpture, and then I have to go and I worked on a whole sculpture and pulled it all together and free-formed and put all this stuff in, and you know, now I have to go back, you know, after our vacation, everything's closed for the next two weeks for fit yesh vacations. And so when I go back, then I have to cut the thing in half and hollow it out. Like I spent all this time carving it and making it pretty, and now I've got to hack it in half and cut out its guts and stick it all back together and see how it goes. Um, but I'm I'm good at that part. Like the sculpture part is a lot of fun, and I am good at that. I'm good at slab pottery and putting those things together, and it's really coming together nicely, and so I can hardly wait to take time with painting and glazing and all of those things. So I'm excited. I'm gonna learn how to throw pottery, that's one of the next ones. I'm gonna take every class they have, so just be prepared.
SPEAKER_00All right. Well, we'll keep you posted on our burnout recovery periodically and pottery and all that. So catch us again next time on another episode.