Surviving Burnout

Life is a never-ending labor of love, and some stretches are more draining than others. 

(Photo by LBG.)

A few days after my book was published in December, I woke up and confronted a weariness beyond all imagining. Something was clearly wrong with me (bronchitis, as it turned out). But it was more than that. I didn't want to think. I didn't want to read. I didn't want to write. I didn't want to do anything but lie in bed until it was time to pick up my son from school, at which point I could drive home and get back in bed again. This went on for much longer than I care to admit to you.

(Photo by LBG.)

Fortunately, in the last few weeks, I've started to feel like myself again. I have projects and plans for the future, some of which involve the blog and some of which don't. I'm hoping it's all doable. I love blogging mainly because I am so endlessly fascinated with my readers, from whom I've learned so much (SO much!) over the past seven years. I have missed you these last few months and wondered many times what you all are up to -- what you are reading, what you are cooking for dinner, where you are traveling. Blogging is at its most richly rewarding when it's a two-way street, it really is.

For me, the road to feeling better involved taking a deliberate break from books and words. One weekend, I sorted through my huge collection of magazine photos, saved only the images that made my heart pound with passion, and transformed a drab upstairs hallway into an intersection of inspiration. 

All that color on my walls made me feverish to be surrounded by more so I reupholstered a daybed in rich green velvet...

...and gave a gilt chair an amour propre with cubism.

The more I engaged my senses in these kinds of simple activities, the better I began to feel. Another day I bought a few skeins of cashmere yarn and knitted a cottage with a grass roof and embroidered climbing roses all over it. I had no instructions, I set no rules, I just gave myself the freedom to create and the room to explore. 

(Knitted cottage in progress. Photo by LBG.)

A few weeks ago I took a piece of canvas fabric and started to play around with some black thread and a scrap of green velvet. My only goal was to have no goal. Before I knew it, Edith Sitwell had appeared. 

(Photo by LBG.)

These two little projects are inconsequential, but from them I realized a profound truth: 

In order to create something, you first need to create some space in your life for that to happen. Writing my book these last two years was so all-encompassing (and rightly so) that it left very little space to do anything else.

I haven't figured out exactly what all this means yet, but for the first time in months I'm excited again. There are exciting new projects I want to pursue (and which, when the time is right, I'll share with you). As for the blog, I would love to give it a fresh new redesign -- bigger photos, cleaner lines, more videos -- and create plenty of space for things to happen.

All I know is that life means change and change means life. And that when something burns out, the surest way forward is to kindle a new flame.

 (Photo by LBG.)

Stay tuned,

Lisa

P.S. How are YOU? xx