Burnout:
What is going on everyone? I wanted to address an issue I had recently. An enemy of content creation reared its ugly head – The Resistance. The content on this site is not coming out as much as I would like. I am a guy who, in the start of this year, preached creating every day. Weeks have gone by that a single post has not shown up on here. I swore in the beginning of this year that I would put something, ANYTHING out every single day.
There are blog posts written that have not seen the light of day. Vlogs are sitting on my computer unedited and not finished. My audience loves the book reviews I do – there have been few recently. Not to mention, I want to start dabbling more in short stories. Finally, The B+ Podcast has been gaining momentum, but we have not increased the frequency at which we do them.
I would like to sit back and blame it on our wedding coming up at the end of this year – but that isn’t the entire truth. Don’t get me wrong, the wedding is taking up time, but not enough to warrant no new content for weeks at a time.
Laziness:
There is no way around it besides I got lazy. My after work time would be to go to the gym and then play Xbox. I fell into old habits and we all know – they die hard.
As I always have told you, I am a HUGE fan of gaming and the relaxation it gives me is incomparable. But the fact of the matter is if I come home from work and do that every single day than I am relaxing 7 days a week. The weekends bringing even more of that because of the more hours of free time.
I can’t “relax” the entire week and then go and complain about my life. When I would get home from the gym, I would rack my brain with all the work that goes into getting a new piece of content up. I would let it overwhelm me. The past few weeks I would choose the easy way out and that’s not me anymore.
On the flipside of that coin is the good news. I am rejuvenated. The passion is back tenfold. I always read that I would experience burnout but didn’t think that applied to me.
The Journey:
The fact of the matter is I decided to take this journey for life. You want to be in control of your brand. This means you are doing the entirety of the work yourself. People come and offer help and that’s great. But deep down inside of you-you know the only person with your vision is yourself. I want this to be 100% me without any filters from outside sources.
I understand that the biggest names in content creation have people that help them. These people are in the upper echelon though. That is not somewhere I am and I don’t need any help at this point in my brand.
The brand as a whole is on a very, very small scale at the moment. I don’t have a huge or even big audience.
I still feel the burnout though. People that do this every day can feel it if you have 1 or a million eyes on what you are producing.
The good news is I am back and ready to create again.
All this backlog of work I have will be coming out in the upcoming weeks and months. The recording of new Vlogs will slow down because not as many events will be happening. Winter brings a little bit of isolation and I am alright with that. It is the reason I recorded so much in the summer. I knew this time would come when Vlogs would stop coming out every week. Now, I have all this video and can still put some stuff out here and there during the winter months.
I may have taken a little bit of time off because of wedding planning and laziness, but I will never stop. The promise I made to myself at the beginning of this year is one I made for life.
The spark I have inside of me will always be there.
I know what I must be doing in the grand scheme of things. The spark might not be as bright at times, but it will always be there. Once, I sit down and start the passion comes back in full force. The spark reignited and it is brighter than it was before.
Like I said, I have a small audience right now but they still depend on me to release something a few times a week. I will not let these people down.
This blog post was to check in and let everyone know I am not going anywhere. I wanted to let my audience know where I was coming from. You can expect a lot more content coming up on SeftimorLive.com.
The Resistance:
The resistance will always be there. It resides in my mind every day – telling me to take the easy out. When I get home from work, it’s there, telling me I don’t need to go to the gym. I can give into it and listen or go and put in the work. The thing about resistance is that once I get to where I want to be – either in the gym or creating – I realize how much I love it. I question why I had any resistance in the first place. The minute I do that first set in the gym or write that first word I am on autopilot. I am in my zone and loving every minute of it.
The resistance will always sit on my shoulders – telling me to not put in the work. There is only one way to shut that fucker up and it is by DOING. The act of doing the work and putting in the time needed silences the resistance for a while.
Whether it was pure laziness or burnout, this break elevated me to do better. Life is a learning experience and I am definitely a student. I roll with the punches life throws every single day. The commitment I made to myself in the beginning of this year is stronger than ever. I look forward to the months to come.
