on burnout.

Lately, I click on nearly every article I see that mentions burnout.

If I’m being honest with myself, and having a moment of clarity, I am either (optimistically) recovering from burnout or (pessimistically) in a waning-phase of burnout. I hope it’s the former.

I read yet another personal account article about burnout this morning, and in it the author talks about change resulting from burnout, and how burnout seems to literally burn out a piece of who you were.

Recovery, like a forest after a fire, seems then like a process of new growth, new trees and plants, new life filling in the spaces that burnt out and turned to ash and char.

For me that new growth has been art, something that may have grown there anyways if there had been a space for it and enough light to shine though. Now a fresh space exists and I’ve filled it with creativity and expression through paint.

It’s still young and tender and delicate, but someday it will be a mighty forest.