On avoiding burnout…
Hey all. Making something you are passionate about and keeping dedicated to it no matter what else is going on in your life can be incredibly tough even if your life is going pretty ok atm. It’s easy to get distracted, feel like it’s not working, not enough of success by whatever qualifications you deem successful etc.
I started Main Street Electrical Arcade nearly a year ago with just a Twitter account. It wasn’t my first attempt at a creative endeavor, it wasn’t my fifth. I’m not sure of the exact number but let’s say I’ve started and stalled on a lot of things like I’m sure most creative people have.
Most of those I failed to keep up with because of one simple thing: I tried to start all-in and stretched myself way too far, going for too much scope at once. I have a job, I have a wife, and even if I didn’t, it’s not healthy to devote every minute of free time you have to a narrowly focused project, you lose perspective. I love Disney, I love videogames, but I can’t be all about Disney videogames 24/7. Life balance and all that.
And hey, I don’t bring it up on here too often or on the Twitter account because it’s not that kind of place for that, but 2020’s been a weird and on many occasions a really bad year and it might get a little worse before it gets better, we just don’t know. That takes a toll on anybody mentally.
When I started this project, the idea was to start very humbly and small with just the Twitter account, which originally I even thought would only post about and discuss Disney video games, like if it wasn’t directly related to that, I wasn’t going to bother. And it would be at least one quick tweet a day about Disney video games. Then when I felt comfortable expand upon that, but only at a rate I was sure I could handle.
Since then, the project has grown quite a bit in scope relatively speaking. The Twitter account still is heavily focused on Disney video games as it should be, but I do discuss other things both Disney and non-Disney to help make it have more dimensions and be a little more personal. I have an Instagram account that is regularly updated. I have this blog that I commit to writing at least four posts a month. And I plan eventually on hopefully growing that into an active Youtube and Twitch channel, maybe hopefully even a podcast at some point, but I’m only one dude and only have so much time and energy and again, the easiest way to feel burnt out would to be to try and grow too big too fast, so those will come along when they come along.
This is a very long way of saying taking a step back and a break every now and again is important, arguably more so now than ever. Next weekend I am going to Disney World for about a week with just my phone and my Nintendo Switch, and while that doesn’t make it impossible to write, it does make it significantly more difficult and therefore I’ll basically be taking a creative break from now until at least near the end of October to refresh my creative batteries some. The Twitter account and Instagram will still be updated but not with any particular planned content, really I’m mostly just not doing any blog posts or trying to dip my toes into streams of videos for at least a month. But I love this project and will return to it at the latest sometime in November for sure. Until then, stay safe, wear a mask, and see ya real soon!
