This post was written as part of my newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.
A diary entry reflecting on how creatives normalize and sometimes even prioritize unhealthy work habits for the sake of “making good art”. I mention suicidal thoughts in this one so skip this one if you think that’d be upsetting for you.
I’d bet big money that every single creative person who does creative stuff for a living I’ve known has experienced burnout symptoms at least once. I’m sure of it because it’s a topic that comes up every time we get together with other artists or devs, without fail. And also because there’s also a lot of systems of exploitation in place for those who “work for passion” to end up having all that passion squished out of them. There’s a general recurring theme of meritocracy in our spaces rewarding those who have worked so so hard (which is a lie that thrives on the ones that worked just as hard but that remain unappreciated and invisible), and a lack of general knowledge on worker’s rights that are just two ways our networks are failing to provide a space where we can get access to the tools we need to take care of our health regularly, and to be able to have nuanced conversations where we teach each other ways to be more gentle with our bodies and minds.
I can’t help but wonder, would we be any better if left to our own devices? If nobody really cared about the needs of the market and there was no need to, would we reach the conclusion that we can’t create without a good balance of rest and leisure in between working on our projects? Maybe I’m underestimating how much of it happens because of our environment, but most artists I know get really obsessive and hyperfocused on our projects even when our livelihood doesn’t depend on it. We are naturally extremely bad at realizing when we need to take a break in the midst of it, and we can’t help but long for doing something that begets meaning and is useful whatever it takes. Very often we fall into mind trappings like thinking we just need to push through it when working on it is starting to feel like a struggle, and that only because we did will the project be worthwhile. Neurodivergence plays a role in this for a lot of us too, which makes it even harder to separate how much of this is in our own nature and how much of it is learnt.
I’ve been thinking very hard on this lately (I think I’m having my first big adult identity crisis over it) because I’ve only recently realized how much of a victim of having this relationship with creativity I am. For years now, I've found myself thinking often: I'll go to therapy and I'll try to get my mental health back to a liveable place when (whatever project I had going on at the time) is finished because now I'm just too busy to work on myself. This is something that I’ve let pile up for years on top of an already distressed mental space, and ironically every time I get swept back into suicidal ideations my thoughts turn into "Okay, I can die, but I have to wait until (whatever project I have going on at the time) is finished", so this is a thing that is keeping me both alive and unwell. I forget to shower so often, I generally don’t go out unless it’s for something work-related or if I’m forcefully dragged into it. I still doom scroll so much even though I’ve put in a lot of effort and given myself written instructions on how and why to avoid it. When people suggest I should take month(s) long holidays, I get so overwhelmed by the thought that I shut down, because I can’t even begin to imagine what I would do with so much free time at once.
I have normalized this is the mental space I have to be in order to keep regularly putting good quality stuff out there, because it couldn’t be that concerning if I’ve remained high functioning for years, is it? A lot of my friends and people I talk to are artists or indie developers who share similar experiences too, or who I see reinforce them daily. So I can’t help but feel we are moths desperately clinging to a flame here.
It’s the people who have been exploited for the passion of others whose perspective has made me snap out of it and really start questioning what the fuck I am doing. People who have been employed in companies know that having to work overtime and not have mental space for anything but your job is not part of the process, but a sign of nefarious organization or an effort to further alienate workers. So when they see me or any self-employed creative being worse on ourselves than the worst of bosses, they see it clearly as a health hazard because they have that perspective and a lot of direct experience with it. There are a lot of ways to stay healthy from these environments that we can merge into our processes that wouldn’t make our art worse or slower, they would just give us breathing space to be a little more human while we’re at it.
I am still very productive doing things the way I’ve always done them, but my work ethics were written when I was still very inexperienced and had no perspective on the long-term effects of it. I’ve been praised for being “so productive and so young” my entire adult life, but that can’t be all my personality amounts to for much longer because the clock is ticking. It just doesn’t make sense to cling to it. Being on fire can’t be the only way I get stuff done!
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A little update on myself: This week Laika: Aged Through Blood released, the last out of the three published games that I’ve participated in since conception that the stars have aligned to have release in the span of the same year (and coincidentally, the one I feel has the most of myself in terms of how much health I lost along the way working on it and how much of ideas and topics I care about deeply it has).
Along with how happy that makes me, I’ve been saying NO to very big, important, amazing projects a lot lately to focus on really sitting with myself and figure out what I want to focus on next, which was a very painful in the beginning (because aside from being addicted to work I am a people pleaser), but that feels extremely empowering now. In Spanish we say “tropezar dos veces con la misma piedra” which translates to “to trip twice with the same rock” and it looks like I am capable of learning how to do exactly not that!
We’re also working on a little Playdate project along with nbmach1ne inspired by a weird game we both love very much called The Herbalist, by Balázs Rónyai (It’s very short and I recommend it very much because I have thought about this game for years). (We are taking it easy with it)
My conclusion from today's newsletter: I feel like these newsletters could be going deeper into these topics, but I feel like I don’t get far enough with just words. I want to try and make something more experimental on the next one!
Thanks for taking time out of your day to read my thoughts!
This post was written as part of my newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.