I’ve been thinking lately about bandwidth and burnout as an artist.
A few weeks ago, a friend posted on Instagram about a kind of post-event depression that sounded really familiar. She talked about the constant cycle of making, selling, and finding the next event, and the feeling that you can never really slow down. That got me thinking about how much of being an artist is actually preparing for the next thing.
In the past two weeks, I’ve written and submitted two grant applications and an article proposal, written seven blog posts for a partner, submitted work for three juries, taught three classes, designed and proposed another class and made the samples, and shipped about a dozen orders from my Etsy shops. And that’s just the stuff I remember. I also have also personal stuff going on (who doesn’t?!), laundry that needs doing, and I don’t think we’ve mowed the lawn in months. I’m sure this sounds familiar.
Most of the work I’ve been doing this week is for future work. I don’t work if I don’t make the work. There is always another application, proposal, class, project, or opportunity that needs to be imagined and prepared for. It’s a really unique kind of emotional labor: staying motivated when so much of your future depends on applying, pitching, submitting, proposing, and then waiting to find out whether someone else has decided you get to do the thing. You can spend hours thinking really hard about something, making plans, imagining how it might work—and then just WAIT for months in limbo.
There’s also an interesting balancing act in trying to apply for enough things to stay busy without applying for so many things that, if some kind of miracle happens and you get everything, you can’t actually DO all the work.
This week felt a little like a game of Jenga. Everything was rolling along, and then something minor happened that added one more thing to the endless task list. And it had a lot of unknowns. Everything wobbled. I spent 45 minutes doing dumb little computer admin tasks, supposedly trying to motivate myself to go cut down some paper for a project. I picked up and put down a couple of other projects. I was scattered and couldn’t seem to do anything.
I think this is the part of burnout that can be hard to recognize. It doesn’t always look like collapsing in a heap and being unable to work. Sometimes it looks like burnt toast: spending 45 minutes noodling around because your brain can’t figure out which thing to pick up first. Sometimes it’s the feeling that you should be able to handle just one more thing when there really isn’t any more room.
So I took my laptop outside and sat at the patio table for a while. A change of scenery often helps. Mostly, though, I just needed to stop and think.
I realized that my solution to most problems is basically: just throw more Becka at it.
Work harder. Do one more thing. Make it work. Figure it out. Add another task to the list and somehow accomplish all of it. Except there just wasn’t enough Becka to go around. So what could I throw at it instead?
It turns out I could throw someone else at it. I could ask for help.
It wasn’t the first thing I thought of. But as soon as I sent the email and asked, I could feel the wobble stabilize. My brain immediately calmed down.
The problem wasn’t magically solved. The laundry was still there and the lawn was still feral. There are still a dozen projects in limbo, but none of them needed any more me. At least right now.
Sometimes the answer to running out of bandwidth isn’t finding more bandwidth. It’s just finding another pair of hands.
