My year of artistic (and personal) rekindling
As I mark a year of stepping away from my job, I reflect on the journey through burnout recovery, financial challenges, and the surprising paths of self-discovery.
Long time no see, friends! Happy Friday the 13th š
The last time I published something, I had finished my semester of woodworking and ceramics. Iāve enjoyed reading under the sun, listening to live music at OMCA every Friday night, eating stone fruit, roaming farmersā markets; Iāve enjoyed bingo at The New Parkway, catching up with friendsāold and newāfrom Boston, from Cleveland, from LA, hiking through East Bay hills, rearranging and decluttering my home office. The days are getting shorter and I wake with the sun kissing me through my living room window, say goodnight with the gentle breeze that sweeps through the entire apartment. Autumn teases me with crunchy fallen leaves I cannot help but step on. Soon it will be the season of cozying up.
Amongst the many things I am reflecting on as our environment changes (turning one year older, the ebbs and flows of friendships, loneliness, dumbphones, the relationship with my body), it is officially one year since I quit my job. It has been equal parts relaxing and exhausting, liberating and confusing, entertaining and isolating. I am learning to accept that all these feelings and experiences, though often contradictory, can exist at the same time. I donāt have to do anything to ease these contradictions but live in the moment. I am grateful for this time to slow down and rekindle (hey itās the title of my newsletter!) my love for art and fervor for living. I am, however, saddened by the unfortunate fact that 1) life goes on (with or without me) and 2) nothing in this life is free.
In honor of 365 days (plus some change) of quitting my job, here are some of my most important truths.
Burnout gets smaller but doesnāt exactly go away.
There seemingly is no āendā to burnout. There will be a "before the burnout," "during the burnout," and "after the burnout" just like experiencing the pandemic or experiencing the death of a beloved. How I function in the world is forever changed. I grieve who I once was before all this and I am always fighting the bad habits that started my exhaustion in the first place. Right as I think Iāve gotten over my feelings of burnout, another wave of exhaustion knocks me down.
Unfortunately, it isnāt just the endless hours of work over the past several years that burnt me out. I can point to the concurrent three jobs, volunteer gigs, and hours of studying (or, rather, hours of wishing I was a better student) as evidence of my burnout. But I know there are other factors at play like the feeling that I need to take care of all my family members (and feeling like I'm failing at that), the feelings of isolation, and my general sense of fear and perfectionism. The fact of the matter is that my existence in America, my existence as a woman and child of immigrants does not lend itself to true breaks. How does one recover when the system (and perhaps my culture) wasnāt built to support someone going through burnout?
It is these recurrent setbacks that remind me how much I still need to accept my circumstances. The heartbreaking truth is that there never may be enough time to recover, especially as the goalpost continues to move. I know there was a strong disconnect between my mind, body, and spirit. It wasnāt until all three of these synced that I realized how unhappy my life had become. What does a healed Marjerrie even look like?
Money is a tricky relationship but has led to fun discoveries.
One of the biggest things I learned throughout this journey so far is that my relationship with money is extremely emotional. Once the new year rolled around, I sought out ways to make some cash even though Iād saved enough to cover 24 monthsā worth of expenses and emergencies. I signed up to care for pets through Rover, took on a part-time gig as a studio assistant for a fine artist here in the Bay Area, and began selling some unnecessary items as I decluttered. This past summer, I even worked Monday through Friday to teach middle and high school-aged students graphic design (the closest Iāll get to a full-time gig any time soon) all in the name of security.
Despite these obstacles, I have enjoyed finding free events in my city that I had never known about before. The library has become a refuge with its free educational and artistic programming. Free concerts at my local museum, at the farmer's market, and at the random street fair have brought me so much joy. Iāve faced my social anxiety head-on by attending various Meetup events ranging from yoga, hikes, writing groups, and more. I try my best to attend free museum days and take advantage of Discover and Go. My mantra these days is that if itās free, I am there.
Coupled with my ongoing no-buy experiment, my relationship with money has gone through countless transformations. I accept that there is comfort in knowing that some money is coming in rather than none at all. Iāve learned that it feels good to earn money and it feels even better when I donāt have to worry about how much something is. I wish I could have been comfortable enough to be completely unemployed this entire year, but am endlessly thankful for the structure all my small jobs have offered me.
I am a person, not a project.
I have long fallen into the trap of self-help seeking to ābe better.ā For so long, I thought there was something wrong with me because I couldnāt focus the way people wanted me to, I couldnāt choose a single thing to be interested in, I couldnāt wake up early enough and stayed up too late. But as my long-gone-but-never-forgotten therapist1 pointed out, what or who am I even trying to be better than? What does being ābetterā even mean? Why isnāt being Marjerrie enough?
Since the beginning of my sabbatical, I have sought stability and structure. Filling my time was easy in the early months because there was my trip to Japan, the holidays, and general rest. I took woodworking and ceramics in the spring but panic tends to set when I canāt figure out what to do or when thereās nothing on my schedule. I have to remind myself that there is beauty in a routine, in the predictable, AND there is beauty in spontaneity, in the unknown.
Taking time off from work has unveiled all the internal work I still need to do. It is easy to reprimand myself for not spending my days the way I had hoped. It is far harder to be compassionate with my own humanity. I quit my job to take a break from all this noise. Why muddle this experience with should haves and could haves?
Working kinda sucks and my career is diverging.
Iāve said this many times to the people in my life, online and off, but I am convinced that we should only work part-time (if that) and fill the rest of our time with anything that feeds the soul. This might look like community building, developing artistic practices, or being in nature. It could be gardening or cooking. It could be learning a new instrument or cycling across the city. It could be doing everything at once or doing nothing at all. Whatever it is, I wish everyone had the time to cultivate something meaningful for themselves. Iām tired of bearing witness to all my friendās incredible interests and talents washed away because of corporate, capitalist fatigue. I often fear getting back to work because I donāt know how my body and heart will handle it.2
On top of it all, I have hit a confusing crossroads with my career in design. I still very much admire the craft but am exhausted by the industry. I love looking at design, talking about design, critiquing, and analyzing design. But put me in front of a computer to work on something and I clam up. Maybe I would feel different if I had properly managed at the beginning of my career. Maybe I havenāt found the type of design that sparks enough joy.3 Maybe I donāt want to be a designer as much as I thought I did. Or maybe I donāt have the grit or determination to āmake itā in the way I had hoped I would.
It often feels as though I am fighting a losing battle. As my former manager has put it, I so badly want to fall back in love with design again but I donāt know how to or when it will happen. I know that whatever I land on next will serve me well, be it in design or not.
Allowing myself to dream is a beautiful adventure.
One of the biggest surprises so far on my sabbatical journey is my newfound ability to dream.
I had vast aspirations as a child: meet Barney irl, become a Pokemon Master, be as hot as Sailor Mars, as mysterious as Raven, and marry Danny Phantom. I hoped to collect keychains, travel the world, host my own food show, and adopt a puppy. I wanted to become a writer, a chef, an architect, a photographer, a teacher, a marine biologist4. But, these answers never seemed to please the adults around me and I learned early on how important it seemed for the adults in my life to choose a āsafeā dream, a āsafeā career. I began to self-edit and regurgitate answers that were spoon-fed to me: doctor, lawyer, engineer, businessman.
While the adults in my life had good intentions5, their nudges toward what they deemed respectable dulled my imagination for my future. Taking a break from work has allowed me to dream to my heartās content without external judgment. Finding meaning in my new dreamsāvisiting all 50 states, visiting all national parks, living somewhere new, doing an artist residency, becoming fluent in my mother tongueāhas shown me what I value most. As I enter early adulthood6, I am aware of how important it is to choose a āstable,ā āfinancially secureā career, but these facts donāt force me to self-edit in the way I used to as a child.
These days, I dream of working with books in any capacity. It would be incredible to design book covers, work on a cookbook, review novels, become a librarian, and maybe own a bookstore of my own. I dream of writing a book someday. (Maybe childrenās? Graphic novel? Poetry book? Contemporary fiction?) I should have connected the dots earlier. One of my favorite movies as a child was Matilda particularly because of how magical she made books. I loved writing stories as a child; I can recall saving a story I titled āSally and her Smart Dogā on a floppy disk. I have always wanted to get into editorial design even in middle school.
Stories, whether oral or written, published in print or film, artistic or literal, have been and always will be the common thread in my life.
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So, where does all this healing and dreaming lead me?
I may not know when or what my next job will be, but I at least have a general direction of where I want to go. In this next stage of my sabbatical, I hope for less screen time and more silence, less endless rumination and more dinner parties full of conversation, less meat and more vegetables. I want to walk along the water, start meditating more often, collect beautiful leaves and flowers, and pick persimmons. I want to sell more of my belongings, complete my sewing projects, get creative in the kitchen, and talk to more strangers. Maybe, just maybe, Iāll feel bold enough to find something that brings me peace.
Thank you to my dear friends Earvin, Pedro, Jessie, Matthew, Andrew, Emily, Nimah, and Taylor for listening to my dreams. Thank you to Xena, Matthew, and Andrew for always telling me how much they read and look forward to my newsletters. Without your support, I wouldnāt be able to take all the risks in my life.
Until next time,
Marj āØ
No, sheās not dead. I terminated our relationship after 3-ish years because I felt that our time together was over! It is a great feeling to end therapy on my own terms, but I sense I should go back when I can afford it.
To be frank, I know how my body would handle it. While I was working 30-hour work weeks through July, I caught Covid and got food poisoning. Iām uncertain how my heart would take it, but I have a good guess.
A bit of a lie, I know what type of design makes me excited. I am not ready to pursue it fully yet.
Can you tell Iām a millennial with this answer lol
And clearly, they didnāt even work in the first place, I chose to go to art school and pursue a career in the arts!!!
The National Institute of Health deems young adults as anyone who falls between the ages 18-26. Excuse me, but if my life expectancy is 79, I FEEL LIKE I SHOULD STILL BE ABLE TO CALL MYSELF A YOUNG ADULT?!????