Thoughts on Knitting & Burnout

In this episode we talk about the distinction between being someone who knits and being a knitter, and we explore ways that creative burnout can strike when creative work is your full time job. 

Learn more about Sarah here: www.knotanotherhat.com

Learn more about Marie here: www.oliveknits.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to We Tried to Tell You, a podcast full of unsolicited opinions about life, fiber, and everything in between.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

I am Marie Green.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

And I am Sarah Keller. And today we are going to talk about who even are we when we aren't making.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Who even are we anyway?

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Even are we? Yes. If we aren't knitting. For us, that's knitting. For you, it might be um crocheting, painting, weaving, whatever your creative outlet is. All the things are you if you're not doing that?

SPEAKER_00 0:43

This is such a timely topic.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

It's so loaded, too.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

It is. That's a big question.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

I would love to believe that I am not all just about myself as a knitter, that that's not the only part of me, but there are probably a lot of times I'm presenting as that's the only thing about me. That's the only part of my personality.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

I have so many thoughts.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Like, okay, so so many. Obviously, you and I both are making a living through this creative outlet that we have. So it's central to our identity. What happens when it goes away? I nobody is 100% on all the time with their creative outlet. So I've experienced times when it goes away. I know you have too. What happens and who are we with burnout or a busy season or even an injury or physical restriction? So we're gonna try to sit with this kind of sometimes uncomfortable question of who we are without it, and then maybe talk about how we get through times that we don't have our outlet. So um okay, so let me let me kick it off with asking you this. Two phrases. Okay. I am a knitter or I knit. Which one which one is you? I am a knitter. Does it even matter? Is there any difference?

SPEAKER_00 2:10

I think there is a difference. And both of us having been in like you own a yarn shop. I've worked in a yarn shop, and you see people come in that once in a while pick up a project and knit. So I think they might feel like, oh, I knit. But some of us like don't leave the house without our knitting. Like, don't like I'm traveling, I'm packing to leave for an international trip in the morning, and I'm like one of my big concerns is what am I taking to knit? Like that's obviously dominating my thoughts more than my clothing. Uh yes. Maybe to my own detriment. So I'm a knitter. What about you?

SPEAKER_01 2:46

I'm just a hundred percent. I'm a knitter. I like you said, it's like it's so deeply ingrained. Always something in any bag I'm leaving the house with, of course. But not only that, but it is an undercurrent running through most of my daily thoughts. And even if I'm doing something else, I'm at lunch. Um, I shouldn't be admitting this out loud to those people that I like lunch with or my husband that I sleep next to in bed. Like, but it's always there running under the current, thinking about my knitting, thinking about what I'm gonna cast on, or what I'm working on, or how soon can I finish what I'm working on? Like, well, I should I should put an asterisk there. It's always there when it's there. There's been times it's not.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

Right. I I have definitely been going through a phase, an era maybe of burnout the last couple of years. So, you know, we can talk more about that in a minute, but even even then, even when I'm really, really burned out, I really do think about knitting a lot. It's not the only thing I think about, but it's hard to have a day go by that I don't pick up my needles. It's just for me, there's this distinction between the work that I churn out on deadline for 15 years without a break, and then there's who I am as a maker and just wanting to be creative and do something for the joy of the creativity. And that division is what's led me to get really burned out.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

But I find clarified something for me. Did I what? Yeah, okay. Well, just just that, like I'm in a phase currently where I am really on, like really, really on, more on than I've been in months. And I think that it that part that is it is that I am think doing things that are for the love of it and not related to business deadlines and requirements. And that's and then that re-sparked it. I've never thought about it in that in that way before. But I interrupted you. I'm so sorry.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

No, that's exactly what I you're describing exactly what I was talking about. That's it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Um, so I had like a I had a real revelation about 15 years ago when I first really had um my very first carpal tunnel flare-up in my hands. And it was really it was bad enough. I went, I saw um a neurologist got the test. They said, you're at the beginning stages basically of carpal tunnel, and what you need to do is rest. And they told me no knitting for six weeks. It was such a struggle. I had small children at the time. I would say, let's see, 15 years ago, Campbell's 22. So Campbell would have been like maybe seven-ish, Mallory would have been three. And the the I realized how much knitting was maintaining my sanity at home. And I'm being an introvert and really sensitive noise to just sit in a chair with the noise, like the totally normal noise of a household with small children. Like I'm not saying my kids were crazy or loud, it was just the normal kind of goings on. But to do that without knitting in my hands, I realized how much it had been keeping me from being a raging, you know what, uh-huh. A lot of parts of my daily life.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

I think it's how we cope. I I definitely channel stress into through my hands. Like it comes out of me into my hands as I knit. Sometimes the knitting is a source of my stress, especially if I'm on a deadline, but it is also part of how I cope with busy, hectic, loud, chaotic, stressful life, all the things, the news, you know, everything that is a lot, I knitting helps me get through it. Like if I'm waiting in a hospital waiting room for a loved one, I'm knitting. If I'm traveling, I'm knitting. If I, you know, anything, whether it's for fun or stress, like the knitting is sort of my sidekick.

SPEAKER_01 6:57

Yes. What I hadn't realized was that while I was knitting, it wasn't just that it was helpful because it was an activity that I enjoy. And so I got to have me time in the midst of chaos and family time, but it there was an underlying meditative quality about it where my brain was working on problems in the background that I didn't realize. Like it was sorting things out, including just getting through, you know, two hours of play dates or something, you know. Exactly. And I had no idea, or I guess I hadn't concretely thought about before what was happening under the layers, under the obvious production of knitting that's enjoyable. And you know, obviously I love that, right? But there were much deeper layers happening with my brain working through different things. It's it was such a form of therapy that I didn't know was happening until that moment.

SPEAKER_00 7:49

I love that. And I the thing I love about knitting, in addition to how tactile and meditative it is, it's you visibly get to watch that energy turn into stitches. Like it it turns into something in front of your eyes, which I think is a really cool hobby.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

There aren't right.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Uh you know, not everything is like that. And so you sort of get have something to show for that time that you not that that's what it's all about, but I, as someone who is very much in this like constant producing mindset, I'm not saying it's good for me, it's just who I am, but it's nice to see that I've made a a little fabric, I've done something, you know, I can visibly see how that time passed.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Right. Who do you think you would be if knitting was taken away from you for some we will horrors to think of, right? But but like what if that was something and you couldn't do it anymore? Who is Marie without her knitting? Tell me what you think about that.

SPEAKER_00 8:50

I have I've actually thought about that because I am so attached to knitting. I've thought, like, what if it gets taken away? What you know, what if I lose my hands? What if I go blind? What if, you know, those things. I've practiced knitting with my eyes closed, knitting in the dark, just to make sure I can, just in case. But you and Jill both. I know. So goofy. Uh, but the thing is I do know what other things that I'm passionate about. The main thing is that I haven't had good, I haven't had proper working conditions over the last 15 years. So I've had no boundaries between my knitting work life and then my personal life.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

How many times do you think the word boundaries has come up in one of our episodes?

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Oh my gosh. This is like something I think about a lot, uh, unfortunately. Fortunately, it's good I'm thinking about it now, but if only I would have thought about it sooner. Whatever. But I I am also a writer. I love to garden. I don't know if I would call myself a gardener because I don't know if I'm as good at it as somebody who, but I am love it. I love gardening, I love cooking, I love travel, I love baking. So I think that there are other things that I enjoy, but I enjoy them for different reasons. And I am finding as a creative person, I need, I need all of those things. And what I've mostly had for the last 15 years was primarily the knitting to the exclusion of all else because I didn't have any other time. I mean, all of my time, like I said, not good working conditions, not good boundaries because I was working from the second I opened my eyes until the second I went to bed. And even when it's something you love, not having that balance can really be the path to burnout for sure.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

So I feel pretty clear on the other parts of myself. I would be so sad if I couldn't knit anymore because I think it serves a really important purpose. But that said, I still would love to sew and write and garden and travel and all of that. What about you?

SPEAKER_01 10:53

Yeah. Um, well, this was a tough one to think about because my my first instinct was to say, I don't know who I would be. Like, what is Sarah without her knitting? But um similarly to how deep I am in knitting, I used to have other creative outlets before I even knew about knitting. So I have no doubt that I would find something else. And I do think that more fundamentally than knitting is that I am creative, even though I don't actually think of myself as super creative because I like to follow patterns and recipes. Okay. But making is, I think, a core part of me. And so um it would be cooking or gardening, you know, it definitely would not be sewing. I have walked down that road, and me and a sewing machine do not get along. Um but definitely these these um realms where there's creative output, I that's that's what it would be. Um the thing that keeps me from being more creative in the kitchen right now is the fact that I usually would rather just be knitting.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

So if I couldn't knit, there we go. We probably get a lot of other things done, I'm sure, because I think knitting it, I think there's something sort of addictive about it. And anybody who says otherwise, I'll meet you outside in the parking lot after school. I'll meet you, I'll meet you out there. No, I just think it's addictive. I I think it's so uh easy to fall in love with and you get to produce something at the same time and it's nurturing and it's there's a kind of a softness about it that it, you know, in the chaos of life and the loudness and the hustle and all of that, there's just this sort of soft gentleness to knitting that I think is missing in so many other parts of our lives. So it's hard to imagine giving it up. I don't want to, but I also have felt and I wonder if we both, because we both have knitting businesses and this is our livelihood, and the livelihood ends up kind of bleeding over into all the other things in our lives, there are moments where I have kind of lost my my groove.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

And it's because and it's because of what you were saying, like being a maker and being creative, that is a separate thing from just knitting. You can knit and not feel creative at all. And when I'm like I'm really good at producing things and meeting deadlines, so I can produce and churn out new content for my community, new patterns, books, all of that, and not necessarily feel like I've been creative. It doesn't hit the spot because I am just meeting a deadline. I'm focused on what the customer wants, what the yarn company wants, what the publisher wants, whatever. And it's not about what I like or what I want. So I have noticed the big, the big takeaway for me on figuring out how did I get to such a state of burnout. I mean, I've spent the last couple of years like ready to burn everything down. Like just I am ready to burn it down and get out of here, walk away, never look back. It was a weird space to get to because I love the work. I love the people. I'm like, why am I feeling burned out? That doesn't make any sense. And I realized it's because I was not doing the creative part that brought me here in the first place. I was just focused on deadlines and output, and I had lost touch with the part that made it so creative and fulfilling.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

So getting back to that, that's been sort of my focus. And it sounds like you're kind of in the same space lately. And it is helping, it's actually working.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

I know. I mean, I've done an unprecedented amount of knitting in the last two and a half, three weeks. I've finished, I've made I've I've made two sweaters from start to finish in that time and finished two other sweaters. It's very, very um kind of on fire. Different. Yeah, but uh this dam kind of broke, and I have to think that there's part a little bit of it, is that this is the slow time of year, business-wise.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

So I'm afforded a little extra time to kind of daydream about projects and pick things out just because I want to and not because I need to feature this yarn soon or I need to have a design for next month or whatever the case may be. So my gosh. Yeah, it's a it's a delicate balance, right? Uh especially when it's your livelihood. So I guess this kind of brings us to one of the things I wanted to ask you is what does it feel like when you are creatively blocked? Do you do you uh have that when you feel like you are you want to be creative and you can't. There's nothing there.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

Yeah, it's pretty, it's I will say it's pretty rare, but it does happen to me because some of it is I think I've developed a really strong creative habit as far as um just recognizing that if I show up, something's gonna hit me, you know. Like I kind of am, I've gotten pretty good at connecting to the muse. But I think when I'm when I start to feel like it's all just, you know, drudgery. It's like I'm just cranking things out for a deadline, I'm cranking things out for customers and and working with yarn I don't like, a color I don't like because that's the color I'm have to use, and that's the color the company wants, or that's the color I chose, and now it's too late for me to turn back because I don't have time to start over. I can sit there in my chair and just be staring at my knitting and be like, I just, I just can't. Sometimes I'll just start something completely different, but other times I just end up out in the garden or I go make sourdough, or like I just need a break from it because I'm just not, it's just not coming, you know, or like you keep trying the same thing over and over, you keep making a mistake and you keep running into a roadblock and you keep having to frog it. And uh it's so frustrating. What about you?

SPEAKER_01 16:49

Uh yeah, that's a tough one because the pressure to feel like you ought to be doing something, ought to be finishing the project, ought to be creating the new design, is so strong. And when you don't have any kind of sparkling inspiration happening, which I feel like I've encountered a lot more as I've moved into perimenopause.

SPEAKER_00 17:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Um, there's this mental fog that is not giving me the same kinds of what I've come to rely on in my in my creative world of moments of inspiration and flow states that I used to experience. Um, but just similarly to you, I change, change the subject, like move outside, do some gardening, do some cooking. But also um sometimes what I what helps me is to kind of find the low-hanging fruit. So a project that is not required of me, but I've maybe had on the needle, like a sock I've been carrying around, or something like a you know, a hat I started two years ago, to just pick it up and finish it. That's and all of a sudden it's like a damn breaking because I've I've picked it up and I've done knitting, but it wasn't related to anything that was holding me back or blocking me. And it's just like somehow that opens up the space um in my brain to move forward with whatever it was before. I we I you I call that when um when knitters come in and they're like, I just kind of lost my mojo. That's usually what I'll say to them is can you find a quick win for yourself? Um, the low-hanging fruit, something you've already started, or just something you can bang out really fast because it's gonna free up your knitting psyche. That's what I always call it. Yeah, your knitting psyche, that's fine. Yeah, and then you can move forward. And that's the same thing if I'm creatively blocked in in my work knitting. Um, or even in wanting to knit. Yeah, in general. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

I my big revelation recently was that I I think because I was really feeling kind of almost concerned about how burned out I was, like, oh my gosh, I really might just let all of this go. I might just be done because I'm so burned out. And it's because it's again, it's been 15 years of constant output, and that's a lot. I mean, I was looking back, I have like close to 400 patterns. Not even all of them are on Ravalry. Like it's it's just a lot. It's been a lot. So I thought, okay, I had this yarn that a yarn rep gave me when I was visiting a shop, and I thought, okay, I like this color, I like this yarn, I think I would wear this. And so I cast on something months ago for myself. And it was just this little side quest that was not for a deadline, it wasn't for anybody else. For once in my life, I just didn't worry about if anybody else would like it because I churn out all this stuff and I don't like a lot of it. And not because I don't think the design is good, but either I knit it in a color I'm not gonna wear. Yeah, there's just something about it where I'm like, oh, I would have used a different yarn if I, you know, I don't know, just different things about it or whatever. So it's I'm happy with my designs. I feel like my designs are lovely, but I just wanted something that I didn't have to worry about what anybody else thought about it. I did not care. I was like, this is gonna be for me. I'm gonna design the style I want, the fabric I want, the color I want, the yarn I want. When the yarn was given to me, she said, no expectations. You can do whatever you want with it. Don't worry about it. And being free to do that, because normally I don't accept free yarn anymore because the pressure, right? But it it was really fun because while I was churning out the work I had to do for deadlines, I just kept slowly working on this in the background and I didn't have a deadline, but I made one for myself. I decided I'm gonna finish this in time for this trip to Ireland because it's like the perfect thing to wear on a trip. And I finished it a couple of days ago and I tried it on, and it's like the most perfect fitting thing I've ever made. Because every time I got to a spot where I wasn't happy, I was able to just go back and change it because I wasn't on anybody else's deadline. It was just and I thought, I'm not gonna knit this thing unless I love it. Like this is just my gift to myself.

SPEAKER_01 21:09

And when I gift to myself, I love it.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

It was my gift to myself, and actually finishing it and trying it on and it being so just in love with the results. I love every single thing about it. It's called baguette. Um, because of course I still have to write it into a pattern, right? But it's it's no hungry. I know. Right. But I just am in love with it. And when I shared it with my community in Knit Camp, I was like, I did this, I knit this for myself. And I was really surprised that so many people liked the style because in my mind, this is not a style that I thought would sell well. I just did it because I wanted it. And it so it was really kind of a fun surprise to find out that other people like the style too. But it just restored my glue.

SPEAKER_01 21:58

I can picture you like You're churning at work, but then you have this little secret. It's like having a little affair with a different project. It is a little side piece, right? You're like, I can't wait to get back to the my special sweater that's just for me. And then the response to be, you know, love and adoration from the rest of your community, which is not surprising. I mean, you're not gonna make something that's ugly anyways. But um, I just I really love the generation of that, like how it all came about.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

And it was so fun for me that I thought, oh no, I'm gonna have to do this again. Like I w I just wanted another one, which is another thing I never give myself a chance to do is re knit something because who has time for that? And I thought, well, if I can crank out a secret project for no one else but myself, it took me quite a while to do it because it was sort of not my main.

SPEAKER_01 22:51

It got a little bit of time, not a lot of time every yeah, but I kept going at it.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

And that really, I felt like it restored my joy in my work too, because I realized how important that balance is when you're creative and when you have a creative business, especially. I think that we really have to be mindful of how much energy is going into the production side and maybe missing the creative side. Cause I think creativity requires some play and some curiosity and some spaciousness. And you don't get that when you're trying to meet a deadline and you're, like you said, you have to use a certain yarn because that's yarn you need to promote. My design career started exactly there, trying to use yarn that we were trying to sell in the shop. So that's the yarn I may not have liked it. I didn't necessarily like the color, but it was like this pattern will help us sell that yarn. So it's been on that path for a really long time. And it's been nice to give myself permission to just do it for the joy, lean into what I like and let it be.

SPEAKER_01 24:01

It's been really nice. Yeah, that's so funny. It just made me realize how many times we're telling our customers to knit something for themselves because it seems like we have so many people who just knit it and give it away and knit it and give it away and knit it and give it away, and not ever thinking to turn that advice on on our back on ourselves. Yeah, I know. Uh yeah, yeah. Have you ever come to a point where you resented knitting?

SPEAKER_00 24:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:31

Yeah, I'm sorry to say, I think so. I I have an example. I didn't know you were gonna ask that question, but I've I didn't either. Tell them about the perfect example of that. I was in England, I was teaching at a fiber festival in Nottingham, and I was staying with friends of mine. I was on a deadline to submit a pattern, the written pattern and the photo of the swatch for a fairly complex design that I was doing for a company. So I was sitting at their house working on that, and my main memory of being at their house was that I was stressed out because I had a deadline and I was trying to get that written and trying to get the swatch knit. I didn't enjoy my visit with my friends that I hadn't seen in several years and don't get to see very often. And I like definitely felt resentful about how did I get myself into this situation where I can be in this space with really dear friends and not be able to really enjoy my time with them because I'm so focused on a deadline. And that's kind of what I'm talking about with my bad working conditions, right? No boundaries in my business to where I didn't allow myself enough time. Everything's always been overlapping. And when it starts to feel like too much, I definitely feel the resentment creep in. Do you ever get resentful?

SPEAKER_01 25:49

I haven't. I haven't ever arrived at that point. I sometimes have been resentful of obligations to the extroverted parts of my business. Yeah, I get that. Yeah. And that's, I think, more to do with my personality. I've never felt that way towards the knitting, though. Well, I mean, anything where, like you said, there you've talked about like having a lack of boundaries or or allowing lack of boundaries to sometimes make things feel a little worse than they maybe could. That is, I think, part and parcel with the creative business because there isn't defined boundaries for creative businesses. It's not like a nine to five, and you go to the office and turn on the lights and turn on the computer and then shut it all off when you leave and come home. It's always churning. Your brain might come up with something at any given moment that you need to be prepared to listen to. And so it lends itself to a lack of boundaries. Like I do think we shouldn't beat ourselves up too bad. Just even recognizing that that's something we should try and rein in, I think goes a long way towards mitigating the lack of boundaries. It's kind of inherent in being a creative person and making your livelihood about creativity.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

It is. It is. And one thing I've done that has helped is set boundaries around certain admin-related things. So it used to be that I would get emails from customers and I'd be laying in bed answering those emails at 9, 10 p.m. I'd wake up in the middle of the night with insomnia, I'd check my email, and then, you know, my heart would start racing because somebody's stressed out because they can't download a pattern. And then I'm jumping up and I'm fixing it in the middle of the night. And I realized after about 10 years of that, that I was gonna lose my mind. And that talk about resentment. I was like, I'm not enjoying this. So I got really, really clear about all of the customer service emails go into one inbox, and that's not on my phone because I know myself and I will check it constantly and I will never ever have a break. I will be on a, you know, yeah, I'll be in another country at dinner and I'll be checking emails that are not important. And so I have to be really careful. But I went to a four-day work week. I mean, I still work every single day, but four days that involve answering customer service emails, more specifically, meetings, things like that. I don't schedule things on Fridays. And then I don't answer customer service emails Friday through Sunday. And I set it up to create that expectation. You know, it's harder to do after the fact when people are emailing you and they pile up, but when you build that expectation over time, I hardly ever get any emails during those windows anyway, because people know and they get an autoresponder that says, here's when I'll get back to you. And I'm really consistent about that. But those things, like I stop checking my work emails at a certain time. I don't check on the, you know, I I that has tremendously improved the quality of my life and has helped with some of that balance. It's just the I think honestly, my biggest problem and the biggest thing that's led to my burnout is believing that I am superhuman and can do a lot more in this amount of time than is realistic. And that's what's led me to this place. So part of the perimenopause journey that I think we're both on, it makes you start to reevaluate.

SPEAKER_01 29:22

Yeah, for sure. It's a little bit of a forced slowdown.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

It is. I don't have the energy I had before. I don't, I don't have the hustle I had.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

Uh-huh. That word hustle. Oh my gosh. Like we could do a whole episode on how that word has been abused and has been used to make women feel like they need to burn themselves into the ground. Yeah, that is that is really interesting. I think I have also come to put in similar boundaries related to the work side of the creative business. And part of that for me was realizing that I my output is better and more um, I'm more engaged when I have time at home in my office instead of being at the store where there's um lots of fun interruptions that are great, but they do often result in a whole day where I didn't do anything but chit-chat. So yeah, yeah. Things we learn over time with maturity. I don't know how I don't know if this would have been a different trajectory if I had started my business at 40 instead of at 28, you know, but who knows?

SPEAKER_00 30:33

Yeah, it's hard to know. And I for me, I don't know if this is how you are. I feel like you're gonna be more balanced than I am in this, but I almost have to hit sort of a bottom in order to make a change. I'm not one to just willingly go, you know, my life would be improved if I just made these drastic changes. No, it I have to suffer first, and then I'll be like, okay, I'm I'm barely hanging on now. I guess I will make some changes.

SPEAKER_01 31:02

You have to have the big smack down.

SPEAKER_00 31:03

I do. Yeah, life really has to bring out under me.

SPEAKER_01 31:08

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh, that's interesting about whether if I feel that way or not. I think that I do really enjoy looking for different systems and ways to handle everything from you know business activities to personal growth. So I'm kind of always on the hunt for that, um, which makes me a little susceptible to whatever some new guru might be online. I am not a cult joiner, not that susceptible, but you know, just I like systems, and that might be personal systems or business systems. So I like that too.

SPEAKER_00 31:46

I do. I like systems and I love personal growth and business growth. The problem for me has been if I get so in the weeds and I am so busy, I can't even like I don't have the capacity to see what's actually not working. So I'll start to try and fix things, sort of like putting, you know, bubble gum in the holes on a ship or something. You know, like it's not really fixing the problem. But in that moment, it's, you know, I'm really trying to get out of that constant state of urgency so that I can pull back. And I actually feel like the last six months specifically, I've just started taking commitments off my plate. I've started disappointing people, you know, saying no to things. And what it's allowed me to do is have more of that bandwidth. I have more perspective now so I can actually step back and go, oh, right. This is a better way to do it. This is what I need. That's not what I need. And I just wasn't able to do it before because I was in too deep. I didn't have anything left for that. So no wonder I was burned out, duh.

SPEAKER_01 32:49

I know the things we learn, the thing that we have to learn because we do it and trip and fall down and then yeah. So I think maybe the takeaway here is um if you've worried about who you are without your creative outlet, um, or worried that you might be losing the joy of your creative outlet to remember that there's cycles to everything and to give yourself a little grace. Absolutely. Also, just remember. We tried to tell you. All right, join us next time for more unsolicited opinions. Always. See you next time. Bye bye.