Am I In A Rebuilding Year?

And other questions about burnout and writing

Hi friends,

I’m thinking about writing: what I’m writing, what I’m not writing. I’m also thinking about burnout. How long does it last and can I speed my way through a bunch of jigsaw puzzles to come out of it sooner? Join me on one woman’s journey to see if she can cheat code herself out of burnout.

I am technically “writing.” I’m writing this newsletter, staff recs for Parnassus and captions for the Love Island UK screenshots I post on IG.

I also wrote a newsletter for a friend. If you’ve been here since my Joy the Baker days, you know I used to link to Leave it to Leonor in my JTB posts. Every summer Leonor takes a month off and asks four guest writers to take over. This is my week. I wrote about the new Taylor Jenkins Reid book, Cole Escola, Naked Gun and a lot more. You can read it here.

But back to what I’m not writing. I’m not writing a book, which is fiiiiiiine. I think my burnout is worse than I thought. Did you know burnout recovery can take one to two years? I didn’t!

Early in the Text Me Back podcast, Lindy West described how she’s in a rebuilding year. I can’t remember how she described it because she used a basketball analogy, but I understood the concept.

I think I’m in my own rebuilding year. I quit my job six months ago. I live in the country now where everything is quiet, still and there are animals everywhere. I’ve started going for walks again. I’m also crafting, which is kinda funny except maybe not because I saw a TikTok about how crafting is good for burnout because using your hands to knit, crochet, puzzle, etc. helps regulate your nervous system.

We bought this house late last year and I spent a lot of time thinking about who I’d be when we moved in. In hopes that I would become a chilled out, puzzle person, I asked my father-in-law for a puzzle table for Christmas. It’s a fancy one with adjustable legs and drawers for puzzle pieces. But I wasn’t using it, until I started noticing how many jigsaw puzzles are at thrift stores. On a whim I bought a 500 piece puzzle with a bunch of birds on it for a dollar. Then I got out my table and put the puzzle together while listening to the Atmosphere audiobook.

Puzzle? Complete. Tears? Shed. Emotions? Regulated. Touché random TikTok person.

I talk about writing a lot in therapy, mostly as in ‘What is wrong with me? Why can’t I write?’ The working theory is that I also burned out on writing since I had to write so much for work and on deadline. I suppose it’s possible. My therapist suggested making a “repair” with writing. Instead of jumping in and trying to write emotional, personal essays I can turn into a book, maybe I use writing prompts and just write to get back in the practice of writing, even if it’s bad.

I know the difference between someone who writes and someone who doesn’t is allowing yourself to write badly, HOWEVER, I am special and insane and have to be perfect all the time. Thank you for understanding.

I will say, I’ve felt like writing again lately. It’s funny, months ago my therapist was like, ‘I bet you’ll feel like writing again in August.’ Well, August is next week. So … Watch this space! In the meantime, you can continue to find me here, in your inbox, telling you what I’m reading and writing you letters like it’s Blogspot dot com.

Don’t forget to read my guest post for Leonor!

Thanks for being here.

XO,

Kim

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Related reading

Burnout and an Argument for Vacations

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Comment Corner

How have you navigated burnout and/or writing? Have you ever had a rebuilding year? Comments are on for everyone, so let me know if you’ve been through something similar.

Thanks for reading!

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