Creative Burnout 🤯

Creative burnout is when the ideas just stop flowing. I had been dissapointed with myself at first, until I realized it. This isn't my fault, it's just life. I had been drawing funny comics involving bugs, but I ran out of funny ideas. I just couldn't figure out why. What happened to my creative flow?

Over the past labor day weekend, I had been doing a lot of work for my family. Being a tech person has its downsides. Whenever anyone has a tech problem, your family comes to you. More often than not I have to learn something new to figure it out, or rely on my past experience. I don't mind helping family or friends, but often it comes to be a bit much. Someone has an app idea, but I don't have the capacity to make it. I know how to, but the doing is the pain.

Many people have an idea that sounds easy, but they aren't putting in the labor to make it. Trust me, I have made stuff I thought people would like, but it was clearly a flop. I am thinking about you Thumbnailing sketcher, a desktop app, and Drawesome web app, a software as a service website application. In addition to that, I have made many applications that integrate with my other applications. Often a lengthy manual process can be automated, so I have to create local admin only tools to accomplish this.

Don't get me wrong, creativity can come in many forms. Often I do think of how I can make a living while being creative at the same time. It is rough I will admit. I haven't found it yet. Making money is not the purpose of creativity. Much of the problems I have are American cultural related. Making money is good, but when it is required to live day to day it is everything.

Many people in my generation work a second job. Or are working towards that. Hey that is me. Working closely to artists has taught me a lot. America is a rich country, many people work who don't have to work. Everyone else it is a day to day fight. Many people don't have the time to be creative when they are trying to get bye. Often when I am done with work, I just want to sleep. Not having much time to be creative in anyway. Caffeeine is a great friend here, but often you are just awake and tired.

Many of my applications I worked on was before the Artifical Intelligence mainstream boom. Considering how everything and anything you put online can be trained by some AI model that you don't own that will most likely be used to automate you is discouraging. Unless you own that model. Why pay an artist when you can pay a cheaper AI to make what you want instead. Let's say I have been encouraged to work on traditional work instead. Perhaps this is for the better.

I believe if you make something, you should have the rights to it. You were the creative. fellow coworkers of mine have already embraded AI art while disregarding how the AI stole art from real artists on the internet. We are moving towards a bad future it appears. As we move towards this odd future, who can afford to take the time to be creative? Maybe it was never about affording it and just doing it no matter the cost.

Years ago I went to an art festival and many artists said no photography of their art. In the past, it was most likely so someone wouldn't use an image instead of paying the artist. Now the artists has to worry about their style being taken entirely.

Why make stuff when the AI will just make it instead. I feel like the current generation of people who are not using AI will suffer the most. Those who are using it are just hurting other. Maybe I am not creatively burned out, but just burned out in general.

I have learned that possibly YouTube is most likely using all of my videos to train their models. I guess that is the cost for uploading videos and storage costs. Goodbye the days of becoming a YouTuber, hello to helping train AI models for free. At least I have total creative control over my website for now. Social media just ain't it anymore. Does all of the data I share before I make a dollar make it so when I do make a dollar with my work I will just be automated away by an llm? Probably, but I should just shut up because I am a poor person. The only people who can give me permission to make a dollar are those who will let it trickle down.

Can only the owners of the AI models be creative? Only by using the llm they used? Probably, lets all grab a spade and a brick until that gets automated away.

I suggest you make your own website? Why? So you can own your social media. The downside of social media is that you often have to feed it with content. I know websites are like that to an extent because of domain authority, but it is a safer investment. Learn a little html, css, and javascript. For a personal website, I suggest staying away from website builders as easy as they seem to appear. Personally I have a build process I use that uses templates and partials using only html, css, and javascript to compile into webpages. This is for efficiency and organization. I am a programmer, so perhaps it is hard for people. Don't even get me started on trying to work with webservers or continuous integration. Which I know plenty about. I suggest Netlify. As they are my personal favorite.

Back on topic of getting burned out. From the period of 2021 - 2024 I spent a lot of time making videos. I like to do this. I also made many viewer suggested videos. Some people let me know through the YouTube comments. Or I run into an issue and make a video. But I had focused on making content that I stopped drawing the stuff I wanted to. I need to be selfish and focus on myself to become the artist I want to be. I think the content economy has a lot of issues. I fell into it as well. I do have to thank YouTube or else I wouldn't be able to self host the videos. I tried this and it greatly slowed my website. The only other option I thought of was Vimeo, but that costs money. Alternatives exist, but YouTube is where everyone is at.

I had thought about participating in Inktober this October. But I have been a bit hesistant. Often when I wake up particularly early, I make mistakes when drawing. Exhaustion is a big struggle of mine. Caffeeine helps, but can only substitute so much for sleep. I think when I am tired I am in a bit of a bad state for absorbing information.

Money is never a good subject. Always need it, never will have enough. When people don't have to worry about money, it can greatly help. You can say it can buy time. I once knew someone my age who wanted to be an artist. He wanted to go to art school. He also drove a fancy sports car. I remember him demeaning me because I took the bus when I met up with some friends. America is a wealthy country overall for many. People living the american dream. Many live the America nightmare in which you have debt and live paycheck to paycheck. You could say the promised future turned out to be a lie. The American reality is jobs that don't pay enough and living paycheck to paycheck. Want to be able to get a job that pays a little more, get ready for lots of debt.

I think the future is broken and art is how we can express ourselves. In a society that is designed to exploit then throw us away. We live in a society. Heh. Sometimes I think our society was made to burn us out completely. I think people put up with it in the past when it paid more. Nowadays it doesn't. I think many can still make an art career nowadays. Not to say the purpose of art is for the purpose of money. Perhaps make the art we truly want to make when we have the time. I think we will have to take a page from Dr. Seuss and create our own Midnight Paintings when we can fit in the time.

Also take track of what you like to do. Early spring and into the summer I focused a lot on game development. But I burned myself out a little. I wasn't doing the drawing I liked to do. I often struggle because I think I need to do everything. Perhaps this is rooted in trauma needing to be in control of the entire process. Did I mention I remember the year 2008 and the 2020's clearly. We can't do everything, but that is a hard lesson I am learning myself. I still want to focus on drawing and music. Game development has been rough. Lack of feedback, saturated market. Perhaps every market is saturated to an extent. Programming has been a constant burnout. The first demoralizing experience was that I spent the periods of 2021 to 2023 and even this year 2024 working on my apps. I think this hurt my YouTube channel. I lost a lot of subscribers because I didn't upload anything. I was more focused on programming. You maybe wondering why it took so much time. That is because I did everything from prototyping, design, distribution, advertising. When I did this, I was full into programming. I did not have the mind for anything else. I went program nuts. Family often asks for help and I don't mind helping them with computer issues. But I am only human. Often it gets to be a bit too much. Some days I don't have time to draw or do music at all. I am good at prioritizing my time. Trust me on this one. But perhaps I should only try do one thing. Or cut time on music.

The world is not prioritized for you to focus on what you want to unless you are financially well set from the start. The rest of us have to fight to do what we want to do. It can often be rough telling if you are making progress or screaming into the void. I am not expecting anything. Rather I want to get the art out of me that I want to make. I think having a lot of devastating experiences in life helped prepare me for this. But you often have to remember that not everyone is in the same position from the start. In a world where they simply cannot be grown here, be a weed. Even if you were hit with a couple sprays of Monsanto.

All I do is complain, complain, complain. Don't do drugs or anything harmful to yourself. Many people tend to cope in unhealthy ways when they feel hopeless. I think a lot of this has to do with the current state of the world. For the most part, this is the normal. The normal is chaos not order. More copes exist more than ever. Keep a smart head on your shoulder. These copes are designed so you develop a dependency on it. Drugs, alcohol, lottery, anything else that can be addicting.

If you are of age, having a little alcohol won't kill you. Just don't do too much. People these days appear to just be checking out. Society is a two way street. When society gives up on you, don't be surprised when the people give up on society. The news will make buzzwords to try to explain societal issues and miss the point. Look at the economy for Japan and the lost generation for how America is going.

For those in charge nowadays, they may wonder why the people blacken your name. I would say the reason is because those who report the news and those in charge decide to ignore it. People are calling my generation the burnout generation. Let's just say they aren't doing it to themselves. Just because we are matches, we didn't light ourselves.

For months I had focused on game development. I did enjoy the problem solving nature, but I ended up placing a lot of my drawing skills to the side. Hard work is important, but you have to be cautious because for a while I did nothing but work. Into the late hours. I then shared it with the world, but did not receive a lot of feedback. Perhaps a bit of a saturated market. I wondered if I went on a large tangent. In addition to that, I also had my day job and family who needed help with programming related work. This was the perfect recipe for burnout. Most people don't understand the large time sink that is required for programming features. I still do like programming. Didn't help that I also updated Drawesome 3.

When you maintain many software projects, it becomes difficult trying to make everyone happy. I try to please everyone, but it backfires on my mind. I made my software free for many reasons. But I have to admit that it became a bit of a fulltime job on the side. In addition to content production through my YouTube and website. I need to draw more. My skills are just so lacking still.

I think I fallback on programming to often because it is what I am good at. Even though I want to be good at drawing and art. Considering social media these days, I have a website, YouTube, Twitter, Newgrounds, Tiktok, Reddit, Discord and more. Dealing with all of this social media has burned me out. It is like I spend all my time jumping around platforms and not making art. But you have to if you want to be discoverable. I think these days I want to focus just on my art. And post to my website and YouTube when I share something worthwhile.

I think nowadays the internet has made the stakes of being discoverable by others greater. But that doesn't mean you will be discovered. I lack drawing skill so that is a large issue. Being on the web has been a large time sink. I think my experience is the general one. Most people probably have already given up by now. Doing work for other platforms while getting mediocre results probably says a lot about my skill. I need to share more images on my blog. I think I often get too text heavy when I talk here.

I hope my knowledge of typograph methods using css and javascript at least helps. I tried to make my website readable for your convenience. I should say that one thing I tend to do is a lot of reading. If people don't try to break paragraphs to around five sentences, most people will stop reading. I hope I haven't broken that rule too much here.

I think I need more balance in my life. I need to stop other things and draw more. It calms me down and feels like a sense of therapy. I wonder if this would be broken if I would do this for a living. Haha.

If I had to give some advice to help artists avoid burnout, it would be the following. Have a personal website with html, css, and js. Learn about search engine optimization and analytics. Create a YouTube channel. Draw and do you art. Put 90 percent on your art skills and 10 percent on everything else. Try to keep costs down. A website name will cost you around 18$ a year. Try to find free website hosting if you can. Make make a Gumroad for your stuff. Whether digital or physical. Create an LLC as soon as possible. I didn't want to, but I was required to because I released software. I was forced to make an LLC because of this. Make an email newsletter perhaps through mailchimp or some other email platform. You can make other social media, but don't let it burn you out.

Notice the signs of burnout. They tend to be constant fatique, not doing what you set out to do. Managing social media to the point you do nothing but that. Losing track of what you set out to do. Never feeling you can do what you set out to do. Take a break to try to recover. If you are experiencing long burnout, you are going to need to take a longer break. I draw everyday but that may not work for everyone. Don't take care of others until you can take care of yourself. You will need to decide yourself what to follow. I don't know everything.

I feel like a day job was designed to constantly make us tired. Many of my close friends tend to be too tired at the end of the day to do anything else. Myself included. I just use a lot of caffeeine. Doesn't help that my field requires me to always be around in some form. I hate instant messengers. I still love you discord. Never tell your employer you are feeling burned out. That is a quick way to get replaced. Never tell anyone that you are feeling burned out unless they are close to you.

Where I live, burnout is a sign of being weak. It means you are a quitter and are giving up. It means you didn't work hard enough. The new normal is living constantly burned out. This is life. It makes most people around you happy that you are exhausted. It is the culture. Because work should be awful. We were placed on this earth to suffer from work. This is our purpose because of canon. Recover from burnout in secret perhaps? Haha.

I feel like it is a trend to try to fill every second of your day with productivity. A lot of this makes sense. I designed my room minimal in an attempt to stay focused. This works, but eventually you need a recovery break. I recommend the pomodoro technique. If you don't take breaks, your body will take one for you. I learned this from experience. I have always had a strong work ethic. But have realized that many may try to take advantages of this.

Of course parents often do this. I grew up around having little free time. If I did, my parents were always looking for some chore for me to do. I began to hate the weekends. Dreading them. I preferred school, studying, then having a little time after that. Say a couple hours before I had to go to bed. I think life is like this because of the industrial revolution of trying to mimic life like an factory assembly line. In the older days, people worked until the sun went down. Now we have technology and we can work all the time.

We are made for work to an extent. Until we break down. But we aren't tools. Although that seems to be a recurring theme in my life. Trying to be a good tool. Maybe be a tool for yourself and your future. Be concious of signs of burnout before you burn yourself out completely.

About Lars Barnabee 🐝 hey that's me