Burnout barometers
Do you know yours?
The weather has finally shifted here in north Texas and it actually feels like November outside today. I generally enjoy this time of year. Holidays can be stressful, but I like the reflective nature of the last few months of the year. I like looking back over the year and evaluating what’s gone well, what needs to change, and what I’d like to turn my attention toward next year.
As I was going through that process over the last few days, I found myself thinking about my reading life again. I’d shared in August that my reading hasn’t been what I’d hoped for this year.
I’d not been reading as much and was reading mainly non-fiction. I wanted to find my way back to fiction and had set some goals for myself around daily reading. The goal hasn’t gone all that well. I’ve read about five novels since then. Part of it is that our schedule in September/October is bananas with the kiddo’s competitive marching band stuff, but really, it’s just a continuing issue.
So, I wanted to dig a little deeper. I went into my Goodreads to see the overview of my reading over the years.
For reference, I think I joined Goodreads in 2009. I got my first book deal toward the end of 2010. My debut novel was published in January of 2012. So, just at a glance, it looks great. I got published AND started reading more. But when I clicked into the actual books, I found an interesting pattern.
For those who don’t know, my debut novel was an erotic romance. That will be important in a moment.
Here’s a screenshot of the books I read the year I debuted.
Sense a theme? But that’s good. I’m reading in my genre, clearly still enjoying it and also doing market research.
Fast forward a few years, here’s 2015. A little more mixed but still heavily steamy romance. But there are a few interesting ones popping up: The Artist’s Way, The Creative Habit, Organizing Solutions, The War of Art.
In my writing life at that time, I now have 8 books and a number of novellas published with Penguin in the Loving on the Edge series. I’ve been writing two 100k+ word books and one 30k novella a year for 5ish years.
Then we move to 2016. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Better Than Before, 10% Happier, How Not to Die (!), Essentialism, Deep Work, Big Magic. A few romances are mixed in. (Side note for those who read my books, you can see where the idea for The Ones Who Got Away came out of this reading list with This Is Where It Ends and Columbine. ←also shows why when writers stop reading they get stuck in their writing. Ideas have come directly from my reading.)
Then we move to 2017. Deep Work (again), a pile of books on what the interest and social media do to our brains, books on simplifying and minimalism, Still Writing, The Power of Off, Around the Writer’s Block, Rest, The Four Tendencies. Where’s the fiction? There are a few historical romances here and there but that’s it. You can even see how the color palette has changed from black and red in 2015 to now white and blue.
Okay, so what’s my point? Why did this strike me when I looked at it year by year yesterday?
Well, because I’ve talked about going through burnout. I talked about hitting burnout and having to take a 6-month sabbatical in February…of 2022. But looking at these reading lists, it’s pretty obvious that red flags were popping up all over the place for me as far back as 2016—six years before I declared that I was actually in burnout.
So that’s why I’m sharing this very navel-gazey, nerdy post with you today. My reading is something I could’ve used as a barometer for my mental/emotional/creative health. My subconscious clearly knew something was up before I acknowledged it. That’s why I kept getting drawn to self-help type books. And maybe if I had realized it sooner, I wouldn’t have hit burnout so hard, because by the time I realized—oh wow, I’m on absolute empty—I was deep in the pit of the burnout. Like need-to-take-half-a-year-off kind of burnout.
And to be honest, I’ve never been the same since that burnout. I feel good now. I love coaching other writers. I love doing these newsletters. I feel a lot more in balance in my life now, but I’ve written one book since the burnout. I lost something in that process that still has not fully recovered even almost three years down the line.
So, use me as a cautionary tale if you need to, and look for your own barometers. It may not be reading. It may be that you don’t go out with friends anymore. It may be that you don’t watch movies or TV shows. It may be that you rarely take a weekend off. What have you stopped doing that used to bring you joy or inspiration?
Don’t ignore those signals.
As for me, don’t worry, I’m working on it. I think 2025 is going to be the year of reading for me. I’ve been spending time putting together some really fun readerly things and plan to launch a paid version of my newsletter (with my reader-focused newsletter, Happy for Now, not on this one) at the start of the year. I’m looking forward to reclaiming reader me. It’s been a while.
If you’re in the U.S., I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. I’m thankful for you being here!
So, do you think you have a barometer in your life that gives you information about your mental/emotional/creative state? I’d love to hear your insight. (If you don’t want to share publicly, you can also just hit reply on this email if you get it in your inbox.)
Same, same, same. *nods in sage empathy* But also...OMG, can we talk about that Lilah Pace series bc I've never gotten over it, and to this day, it is one of the best series I've ever read! *ahem* Anyway. I have a nagging theory. Have you ever heard the idea that our tastes change every 7 or so years? What if this is all just normal change for us, but the Captalist WheelTM that we're all caught up in demands productivity, productivity, productivity to the point that it simply doesn't allow for the natural course of time to effect its little cogs? Do you think we would have labels like burnout and big bad emotions about those effects if we were allowed to...just take a break when we'd burned ourselves out on something? Put it another way. Do you ever get absolutely obsessed with a song? You'll listen to it over and over and over again until the new shine wears off, then you won't listen to it for a long while. The obsession is over. Then you hear it one day, and you remember how much you loved it. Maybe you don't listen to the same song on repeat ever again, but you find another new similar shiny thing, and it's all just...okay. No bad feelings. No guilt. It is what it is, and you enjoy it to the fullest in the moment and let it go in peace when it's not an ear worm to you anymore. I know, I know. It's not the same since listening to music doesn't pay the bills the way writing does. But what if we could hack our brains into treating those two things similarly? I'm convinced there has to be a way to connect those perfectly natural phenomena in a beneficial way...
Roni: Your reading habits and topics have mirrored mine very closely over the last 7 or 8 years--down to a very similar list of NF books--and I too was/am in burnout. I seem to have lost my patience for most romances, and other forms of fiction, lately.
Since I'm a #1 Learner, when things aren't working, I look to nonfiction to help me figure it out. I think I knew I was struggling, but didn't recognize it as burnout until very recently. Sorry it hit you too, but it does help to know that I'm not alone, and that I'm not the only one who missed the early warning signs. Or, maybe, ignored them. Have a great holiday!