The And She Looked Up Podcast
Every other week The And She Looked Up Podcast sits down with inspiring Canadian women who create for a living. We talk about their creative journeys and their best business tips, as well as the creative and business mindset issues all creative entrepreneurs struggle with. This podcast is for Canadian artists, makers and creators who want to find a way to make a living doing what they love. Your host, Melissa Hartfiel, left a 20 year career in corporate retail and has been happily self-employed as a working creative since 2010. She's a graphic designer, illustrator, writer, community co-founder and has owned and operated a multi-six figure a year creative content business. She resides just outside of Vancouver, BC.
The And She Looked Up Podcast
0724: Subscriber Soundbite: Creative Block vs Creative Burn Out
Have you struggled with creative burnout or creative block? What's the difference? I've been struggling with a big old case of creative block recently - but I'm not burnt out. In fact I've felt quite energized! But I just couldn't get my butt in the chair to draw - even though I really wanted to! Here's how I'm getting through it - with a little help from my friends!
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And She Looked Up Creative Hour Podcast
Each week The And She Looked Up Podcast sits down with inspiring Canadian women who create for a living. We talk about their creative journeys and their best business tips, as well as the creative and business mindset issues all creative entrepreneurs struggle with. This podcast is for Canadian artists, makers and creators who want to find a way to make a living doing what they love.
Your host, Melissa Hartfiel (@finelimedesigns), left a 20 year career in corporate retail and has been happily self-employed as a working creative since 2010. She's a graphic designer, writer and illustrator as well as the co-founder of a multi-six figure a year business in the digital content space. She resides just outside of Vancouver, BC.
Hello everyone and welcome to the July Premium Subscriber episode of the and she Looked Up podcast and, as always, I just want to say thank you so much to all of you for continuing to financially support the show every month, in and out. It means the world to me. It keeps me very motivated to continue to bring you the best content that I can, and I'm happy that I can do these bonus episodes every month as a way to thank you all for your continued support. So, as always, thank you very much. I wasn't really sure what I was going to talk about for this month's episode and it wasn't until early last week, when I had my monthly mastermind video meeting, that I got an idea from that meeting and it came about in kind of a funny way because it wasn't my month to have a hot seat in the group and I really wasn't expecting to talk very much about myself in that particular meeting. But I mentioned the fact that I was really struggling to draw and we went down a rabbit hole and by the end of it I was starting to feel much better, but even more so through the conversation we had, the women in my group had really got my head thinking and I was able to kind of deep dive even further on my own to figure out what the problem was. Because I think we've all had these moments where we really struggle to sit down and do the thing that we love to do, whether that's drawing, painting, working with clay, fabric, fibers, whatever the case may be and it's just. It's not burnout, it's more like a creative block, and they are very different.
Speaker 1:I've experienced burnout multiple times. This was not burnout. This was me wanting to draw, missing drawing, looking at my sketchbook on the little table next to my desk, seeing my markers and really wishing that I had time to sit down and draw something. And then going so far as to make the time to sit down and draw something but then coming up with a million excuses to not sit down and draw. So I wasn't feeling burnt out, I was really wanting to draw. I was looking forward to drawing. I was looking forward to the blocks of time that I had set aside to draw. I would wake up on a Sunday morning and be like, oh, I have three hours to draw today, I'm so excited, and then not sitting down for a single minute of those three hours to draw, and that is more of a creative block.
Speaker 1:It's not that burnout is very different. Burnout is more all encompassing than just not being able to sit down and draw. This was me just really struggling to put my bum in the chair and pick up a pencil or a marker. My bum in the chair and pick up a pencil or a marker and I couldn't. I couldn't figure out why it's it's. It's such a weird experience to to not be able to sit down and do something that you know you love, that you know is going to bring you joy. The moment you start, you know you're going to be into it. Um, and I had been really struggling with this for months.
Speaker 1:This has started probably March-ish. I had done a few mandalas, but even the last one that I started, the inking, was almost completely done, but I couldn't bring myself to sit down and color it, which is really a very simple process in the sense that it's simple, in the sense that I'm not as worried about making a mistake as when I'm inking. I don't mean to imply that it's easy, but less stressful, I guess would be the better word. But I was just in this state of struggle to just sit down and do the thing and there was maybe a tiny bit of burnout at play there because one thing after trying to do a 365 project last year, of all digital drawings, I was done doing stuff in Procreate on my iPad. I really was craving the experience of working with physical pen and paper, and doing the mandalas really helped with that. But I was still in that phase, I still wasn't ready to go back to my iPad, I still really wanted to work in my sketchbook, I wanted to draw with tools that weren't tech, I wanted low tech tools, and so I was really just struggling to figure out, like, what is the problem here? What is the problem, melissa? Just sit down, do the thing.
Speaker 1:And I knew that once I got into it I would be fine. I knew that once I had done, you know, the first few strokes with a pencil, I would be. I would be there, I would be. I would probably sit there for a few hours, but I just couldn't, couldn't sit down and get started. And it's weird how loud the voices in our head, it's weird how our brains just work so hard to sabotage us. Like I could actually hear the voices saying no, no, you can't sit down to draw yet you need to take clothes out of the dryer, or you know what you should really do. You should really clean that desk behind you, or you're not going to enjoy doing this until you vacuum the living room. Like I could hear my voice, my brain saying these things to me and even though I knew that it was sabotaging me, I went along with it because it just seemed easier to just go back in the living room or clean up the mess on the counter behind me or whatever.
Speaker 1:So, sitting down with my mastermind group, we started talking about this and I started, started to pour it all out and they were fantastic. They were so great at giving me some things to think about and some action items and really helped me kind of drill down on my own as to what was really at the heart of this reluctance, and I think, when it came down to it, it was really grief. It might sound silly to some if you've never had a pet. That was yours, but we've also experienced some other family losses in the last six months, but we've also experienced some other family losses in the last six months, and so I think there was a lot of grief there that was holding me back. I struggled to down to do client work. But sitting down to do things for myself without Sam here is is is weird. I still I'm still not used to it.
Speaker 1:I think one of the other really big things for me was that since he's been gone, I don't move my body enough. Like with him, we went for a walk every single day, like out of a 365 day year, I would say we went 360 days like didn't matter rain, shine, snow, we were out there, even if it was just for 20 minutes, although usually it was for much longer. Like the walks we went on were very often an hour and a half to two hours long and that was my exercise and I've I'm not doing that. I, it seemed working out on your own or going for walks on your own just seems like. Walking out on your own or going for walks on your own just seems like what is even the point.
Speaker 1:I know it's silly to say that, but even when I do go for a walk, it's a fraction of the distance that I was doing with Sam, and so I think that's impacting my sleep. I find when I don't get enough exercise, I don't sleep as well. The hot weather has also impacted my ability to sleep, don't sleep as well. The hot weather has also impacted my ability to sleep. I think, um, just the lack of movement really impacts my brain and my desire to do things, and so I think there's a huge piece there relating to movement. Like not moving, um, really impacts my ability to sit myself down and do things that I enjoy, and it's not something, I think, that was intuitive to me. It wasn't until I really started to think about all the ways that losing Sam has impacted my life that I realized that that was probably a huge part of it, and so, yeah, it gave me a lot of things to dive down into and to really get me thinking about what the problem was here. But ultimately, I did sit down the day of that meeting. After we wrapped up, I had a free afternoon and I sat down with my sketchbook and I probably sketched for a couple of hours.
Speaker 1:I think one of the other things that was holding me back is I had a very clear idea in my head of what I wanted to do for my holiday themed work this year, but it's a bit of a different style from what I'm used to, and I knew I was going to have to do a lot of practice and it wasn't going to come. You know the thing with drawing Miss Doodle the character that I often draw is I can draw her in my sleep. I don't need to practice her. I can pretty much come up with any scenario for her and sit down and whip up a quick sketch in minutes because I've drawn her so many times. I imagine it's probably what it's like for a comic book artist to draw their characters and keep coming up with comics every day, because the drawing part probably isn't the hard part for them. It's probably coming up with the actual storyline of the comic strip. So for me, drawing Miss Doodle is not hard, but to draw something else, I know it's going to require me to do a lot of sketches and a lot of practice and I think maybe there was a part of me that was resisting that just decided.
Speaker 1:You know what I bought the particular sketchbook I was using. I bought that to be a practice sketchbook, so I don't need to worry about putting perfect sketches in there, which I think is something that also holds a lot of us illustrators, artists and painters back. It's the idea that what we put out has to be perfect in our sketchbooks, which is so ridiculous, and yet we get caught in that trap. And so I just had to remind myself that no, this is the practice book. You have other books that are for prettier in quotation marks sketchbooks and so it's time for you to just pick up this book and stop worrying about it. Nobody needs to see what's in it. This is the book for you to practice what it is that you want to accomplish in the long run.
Speaker 1:And so I sat down and I got really messy and I let marker bleed through the pages of the sketchbook, which normally I get a little bit um, a little bit tense about. But um, and by that I mean I always let the marker bleed through, but I don't use the page that has the bleed through on it. But this time I was using the page with the bleed through on it, because the point is that I am practice sketching. It doesn't matter if there's bleed through. What matters is that I'm practicing what it is. I'm trying to do so. Once I got past that, yeah, I sat down and I sketched for a couple of hours and I came up with some really cute stuff, and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It was better than I thought it was going to be, and so that motivated me to sit down again the next day and keep working.
Speaker 1:But I think there's a lot of lessons in this. First of all, I think there's the lesson of figuring out whether we're burnt out or whether we're blocked, because they are very different things and I think the way to approach them is quite different. If I was burnt out, I think it would have been very beneficial for me to be away from my sketchbook, just like I have been away from Procreate. I just don't need to be near Procreate. The thought of it exhausts me, the thought of it drains me. I just don't want to do it, whereas the thought of working in a different medium my sketchbook with pens and markers energizes me. What I was struggling with was just actually sitting down and channeling that energy into the work. So very different underlying feelings there. So that's definitely one thing to think about. I think the other lesson was the importance of diving down into what is causing these changes, blocks that we're having, because it's usually something much bigger than we realize and I knew there had to be a reason for it. I just hadn't dove down or hadn't really figured out what it might be.
Speaker 1:I didn't really consider grief because I'm not sitting around being sad all day, if that makes sense. I think we tend to associate grief with being sad and I wasn't sad for the most part. I've been in a pretty good mood for the last few months. There's been a lot of hard stuff going on around me family-wise, but I wasn't sad in the way that we think of being. I wasn't sad in the way that we think of being like. I wasn't sad in the way that I was when Sam first passed away. I was, yeah, I felt good, and yet there was.
Speaker 1:It's funny how grief changes our habits, and I think that's where a lot of the struggle was. Grief had changed my habits to the point that those habits weren't serving me in a good way, and that is something I needed to dig into. And I think the final lesson here was the importance of having a group of people who we can go to, that we trust and that we know have our back and have these conversations with, who are able to help you dive down. I am part of a mastermind group. I'm not saying you need to be in a mastermind group, but we do need to cultivate these groups of people around us, particularly ones who understand what it is that we do in terms of running a small business, in terms of creating on a daily basis, and how those two things go together. And when we have those people around us, they're able to help us put some distance between ourselves and the things we're struggling with and give us the ability to have those deeper dive moments, while also doing it in a very safe and supportive way.
Speaker 1:And that, for me there's a lot of reasons why I'm in a mastermind group, but I think for me, that is one of the biggest ones is just knowing that when there's a struggle, there's a group that I can go to, who I know has my best interest at heart and will be able to kind of guide me through it, and so that has been incredibly important to me. And so, yeah, I just wanted to share that this month because I think, like I said, I think there's several different lessons there to learn and, unfortunately, I think there are lessons that we need to learn over and over again. I think, every time we go through something like this, we need to learn, and and unfortunately, I think there are lessons that we need to learn over and over again. I think every time we go through something like this, we need to learn the lessons over again. I know I certainly do, so I'm hoping that this little experience uh gives you, if you're when you hit those struggle points, or if you're in one of those struggle points right now gives you some ideas of where to go to maybe help you. And if you don't have a support system in place, you might not feel like you need a support system like this right now because things are good, but now's the time to start cultivating one and look for other women or men. My group happens to be all women. We all happen to be in a similar age range and we all create for a living, but we create in very different mediums, which I think has been a benefit for us, because we get to learn from each other at the same time as we support one another. So, um, yeah, I hope. I hope you find that helpful, as always.
Speaker 1:If you have a suggestion for the monthly premium subscriber episodes, please do not hesitate to reach out. I am more than open to answering your questions or, um seeing if I can help you with something that you are struggling with. So please don't hesitate to drop me a note, either in the comments on Patreon or in an email at andshelookedupatgmailcom, and you can also contact me through DMs on Instagram, although I tend not to check those as often as email and I do get notifications for Patreon if you leave a comment there. I also just wanted to mention, if you haven't already, we have been very active this summer with the prep for the holidays season. It's a bunch of shorter weekly episodes where we talk about the different tasks we need to be working on right now to get us ready for the busy holiday selling season, which is not far away. So if you haven't checked those out and you are planning on selling this holiday season, please do check them out.
Speaker 1:I think they're pretty useful and I've also been having a lot of fun because I've been creating videos for them that are on YouTube that you can go watch, uh, as well. So that's it for this month. If you have suggestions for next month, please get in touch. And, uh, yeah, I think that's it, as always. Thank you so much for your ongoing support. It really does mean a lot and it is what keeps this podcast going. That's it for this month. I'll talk to you all soon.
