Restoring the Soil

On creative burnout and finding the balance

It isn’t until I’m shoveling chocolate-covered almonds into my mouth with mindless abandon and jamming my feet into wet slippers that I haven’t bothered to dry since I spilled an entire glass of water on them yesterday that I realize I’m in over my head again.

It happens sometimes—when you make your own schedule and freelance and fill in the holes with creative pursuits that are financially rewarding or spiritually fulfilling or (best of all) both—that occasionally you take on too much. You miscalculate the calendar. Your eyes are bigger than your stomach and you’re left with too much on your plate.

I try to pepper my projects across the weeks and months so that each has its turn, my focus revolving like a sun in orbit. I give seasons names that tell me where to put my attention: The Time of the Student, The Time of the Traveler, The Time of Going Nowhere and Watching the Birds Return (my favorite time, early May, the sound of the wood thrush animating the air again). I rotate activities the way you’d rotate crops to keep the soil alive and full of nutrients: writing, recording, rehearsing, performing, teaching. I’ve come to learn that I work best this way, in cycles, responding to the changes of the earth and the migratory pattern of my attention. If I stay in one place too long, I get bored. I prefer to keep moving, to accelerate in short bursts. In high school, the track coach kept trying to get me to join the team as a sprinter, but I always chose to be in the spring musicals instead. Yet I find I am a sprinter even still, dashing through one thing and then letting my body unspool on the other end before kicking into gear again. Alternating the run and the rest. 

But sometimes I get it wrong. I wind up running an entire relay by myself, all four legs of it, all four seasons in one go. I remember how in elementary school, when we did relay races, the batons we used were made of jewel-colored metal. Rods of shining cobalt and copper changed hands in a blur of flung aluminum. I don’t know why I’m fixating on running metaphors—I hate running. But the feeling is there: that I’ve taken on too much right now, and I’m flagging. The days a flash of molten metal.

In the last 24 hours, I have worked on my book, attended two meetings for a class I’m co-teaching this semester for kids, launched the latest session of my songwriting workshop, worked on a set for an upcoming show, listened to and evaluated mixes for my latest album, posted a new poem to my Patreon, co-led a writing circle, and written this newsletter. The writing, recording, rehearsing, performing, and teaching have all gotten mangled into one moment. My careful plotting has collapsed into chaos.

I don’t mean to complain—I deeply love the work that I do, and I find so much joy and gratitude in getting to shape my days around these pursuits. But it doesn’t work unless there’s space in between. In the last couple of days, instead of feeling energized and excited by all of these projects, I have felt low in spirit and energy, completely depleted. I’ve talked with other creatives about this phenomenon of finding the balance. The balance between working hard and generating income and creating work that you feel proud of, and then having moments to lie fallow and daydream and restore your soil. Sometimes it feels impossible to get it just right.

Let me linger on the soil metaphor a moment here: a packed plot can be full of beautiful symbiosis—like the Three Sisters of Iroquois and Cherokee agriculture, the squash, beans, and corn that work in harmony to help each other grow. But tip the scale too far, and plant too much in one small space, and suddenly nothing is doing well. The resources are depleted. The sun is crowded out.

The balance is the holy grail for which we are destined to hunt. It is elusive and slippery, and our pursuit of it can come with financial anxiety and fear of failure. Am I doing too much or not enough? But this is yet another binary in our lexicon that needs to shift. There is no forgiveness in it. There is only the frustration and exhaustion when we take on too much, and the guilt and worry when we feel we haven’t taken on enough.

I don’t have the answers to all of this, I am just in it, a witness. I know I will keep making my calendars, with color-coded tasks as bright as batons, and naming my seasons in the hopes that I’ll stay in control of my life. But in this moment of overload, I also recognize that it’s okay to not get it all done. That I can let some things go. That I can cull the overgrowth to make space for what’s most important. That I can make room for rest. That I can notice when I’m neglecting to take care of my body (what I will now think of as the wet slipper effect) and go outside for a walk, where every branch is encased in ice right now like a see-through secret. The ice deactivated from a threat into something more like a blessing, freezing the branches in place for a day. See! these branches say. What you thought was an onslaught was actually an opportunity to take a pause. So I do. I stop in the middle of the street, staring up at these giant diamonds growing from the ground. Marveling at the wisdom of a forest made of crystals.

Photos by my friend Nellie Ostow since I didn’t take any pics on my walk :)