I’ve talked about my experiences with imposter syndrome and burnout before, and at length. When your favorite pastime or hobby is in a creative field, it’s a natural part of the creative cycle. When that happens in a hobby, normally you can step away, take some time to regroup, and return to the hobby when you’re past the burnout or block. Unfortunately, if you’re like me and chose to make your creative passion your career, you don’t get that luxury of stepping away.
For me, I don’t realize that I’m stuck in a creative block or dealing with imposter syndrome until it forces me to confront it. Being busy with school and other extracurriculars, I can almost ignore those feelings as they start to creep up, or dismiss them as stress. But then it mutates into imposter syndrome or creative burnout, and it’s like the emergency brake has been pulled on me. I could be in the middle of three different creative projects (which may be a contributor to my creative burnout), and it wouldn’t matter. If my brain decides that it’s done — that it’s restricting my access to my creative side? It’s over. In any other situation, such as when I get burnt out from my other creative hobbies, I would just switch gears and pivot. But when my entire degree and entire future career relies on being able to write and tell stories? I can’t pivot.
When you Google “How to get over imposter syndrome/creative burnout,” a lot of sites will tell you not to force it. To take a step back, maybe experiment with something else for a bit. Sure, that works if you don’t have a deadline hanging over your head. But when you have two papers due for classes, two creative assignments due, and you’re supposed to be creating your own art on the side? You do what I do, which is definitively not what all the articles on Google tell you to do. You force it. I push back harder against the creative block (which can feel like pushing against a brick wall), in hopes that maybe I can topple that wall before it can crush me first.
Spoiler alert: if you try to force yourself through the brick wall that is creative block, it will topple on you. It will win.
Then I’m left picking up the pieces and hoping that this cycle will decide to stop itself at some point. Either that, or that I’ll figure out how to catch my burnout before it catches me.  Which, for the record, hasn’t happened yet. The best I’ve figured out is forcing myself to do a hard restart when that burnout decides to crush me.
I’ve started (slowly) doing a return to the reason why I loved writing to begin with. My reason for wanting to pursue my career came from my love of video games, and the rich worlds and characters that came from these games (specifically Fire Emblem: Three Houses, if you were curious). Something about returning to that game, or just any game in general, has slowly started to remind me why I wanted to write for the rest of my life. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start.
I’m sure I’ll be back here again writing about how my imposter syndrome or creative burnout has gotten bad again. That I ignored the warning signs and now am surprised when it decides to knock me to the ground. But I think I can keep getting back up after that wall crushes me. Or maybe, one day, I’ll finally be able to knock that wall over myself.