New job, New Brain, Who Dis?

Working everyday all day in a creative field can be extremely taxing. For over a decade, working as a graphic designer, there have been many times I come home and just want to binge bad TV, eat junk, and zone out to refresh my brain. While this doesn’t sound bad, when you outlet to relax is normally a creative pursuit, you can get really burned out.

I’ve tried to schedule, have time blocks, give myself breaks, but after a few months is always comes to the same thing. I am to exhausted to be creative.

When the pandemic started, it was actually a full creative blowout. Being trapped in an apartment, being immunocompromised, and still working, I tried to schedule creativity. It went as well as a wet paper bag to hold items. My work suffered, I wasn’t inspired, I just made what I could pump out.

While this was helpful to get me started in some areas. I had enough items to put into a few shows. I was able to get my work into a gallery space at a bar. It was crazy and all over the place. From characters, to large painted pieces, and so many unfinished projects and ideas have been packed into boxes as I then moved across country to start my new life.

I now work as a digital advertising specialist, or a fancy way of saying a media buyer. The job is creative, but in a different way. I’m using my analytic brain instead, looking at data, users, and conversion rates. Doing research on best practices and products. With this I’ve found my brain has done a 180. While yes, I may still get tired or a bit burned out, its not in the same way.

I’ve found myself reading more, researching more into ideas I have, fully fleshing out creative pursuits. With this in mind, I’ve decided to start focusing on a few large projects artistically that I can work on. While I had questioned if it was a good idea to take a different job from what I was doing, a job that was the other side of the creative, a job that uses my master degree, it has been one of the best decisions of my life.

I’m excited to see what I can do with my brain firing on all cylinders in the creative realm. I do suspect some type of burnout, I am only a person who tries to do too much, I think I will accomplish far more of my dreams than I ever thought possible. Maybe this is a little lesson that change is a good thing for what you really want to pursue.