Consume & Create

At the beginning of 2022 I collapsed. My brain refused to keep working, to keep consuming information. If you have experienced burnout, you know what I'm talking about: you want to move forward, to process, to execute, to deliver, just as you were doing a few days ago, but no. The pressure cooker has run out of steam. It feels like having your head surrounded by hard, black, dense stone that won't budge, while smoke is pouring out of your brain. It's like feeling feverish, but without a thermometer to reflect it. Neural connections totally eroded, fatigued.

While the collapse hit me like a truck coming from your blind spot, clearly this didn't develop overnight. I felt it coming a few days (or maybe weeks?) before, but the signs were faint, hiding when I wanted to identify them, behind me, never in front of me. It was not possible for me to prevent it, to stop it in time. The year before I had had similar signs, but I ignored them, rested a bit and went on. However, this time it wasn't so easy, I mean, it wasn't easy at all! I had to stop. Stop ALL of it.

A few months have passed and after doing a lot of introspection, resting and seeking help to process what happened, yesterday, while taking a long walk, I realised one of the factors that contributed the most to my saturation: I lived approximately two years consuming information. This in itself is not so different from what most people experienced during the pandemic, as everything went digital and online courses were at the order of the day. The issue was that I became unbalanced.

I’m saturated. I can no longer listen to podcasts, courses, webinars, books, etc., in the same way I did. I abused myself, I was compulsive, there was no rest, I always had noise. And what happens when there is always noise? You become deaf to your inner voice, As I once heard somewhere "intuition doesn't shout; it whispers". That's true for me, but we forget something: the body is intimately connected to that voice.la intuición no grita; susurra.the body is intimately connected to that voice. If we don't listen to ourselves, the body will speak loud and clear. That's how it was for me.

Today I see that I can only consume information if there is an outlet. If I function as a tube instead of a pot. And right now that outlet is to create. I paint, I write, I cook, I design, I garden. I do it on a daily basis as a way of making space. Transmute. What comes in I can take in because now something also comes out of me. It becomes something tangible. It is no longer abstract, it is concrete. And it makes me enormously happy, as it did when I was a child.

I also became aware of the rhythm that is healthier for me. While I can be impatient and fast-paced, to consume and create I need time. Or, rather, without the pressure of time. To allow pauses, to enjoy, to see how it forms little by little, organically, generates a lot of satisfaction for me. It is making friends with patience, something I always thought was difficult for me. But I see how much it helps me to have patience on my side, to give it space, because I don't function at the speed the world is going. And to get off that train, to stop demanding and forcing myself to follow it, has been fundamental in my healing process.

And you, have you experienced something similar? What helped you? If you want, you can tell me about it.

PS: In my books section I tell you how "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron was the only content I could digest during the first weeks of my time-out. If you're interested, I invite you to stop by.