This is the third post of a four-part series of my favorite personal list ideas. See the end of the newsletter for the rest of the series.
Happy Easter to those who celebrate!
It’s funny how you can become a shell of your former self without realizing it.
I suppose that’s what happens when you have no concept of personal bandwidth. When you deny yourself rest, insisting it’s just "mind over matter”. When you reduce your life to a cycle of work and sleep, falsely believing a job well done at work will one day ultimately reward you. Until then, your daily Starbucks fix will have to sustain you.
In hindsight, it’s no surprise my burnout only hit me when I was finally out of my job —and, coincidentally, in a pandemic. Feeling listless (see what I did there), I needed to fill my time and keep myself sane as the lockdowns dragged on indefinitely.
So I grabbed my personalized notepad. I divided the paper into five spaces and labeled them: Life Skills, Professional Skills, Books, Concepts/Ideas, and Special Topics.
Then I pulled out my mental file of “Things I’ll Do/Try/Explore Someday When I Have the Time” and categorized the entries under the five spaces.
Voila. My Interest Bucket List.
Obviously, I couldn’t do/try/explore every interest. My attempts varied in status and success: an unfinished Photoshop vector of Lewis Hamilton. A four-month Duolingo Spanish streak. (No recuerdo nada de espanol! Jaja!) A writing practice that will never end.
Now what did this have to do with my burnout? It would help first to ask: why do we even burn out in the first place?
Alexander de Heijen’s answer was a splash of cold water on my face: “You often feel tired not because you’ve done too much, but because you’ve done too little of what sparks a light in you.”
I didn’t know it then, but my Interest Bucket List was the match that kindled that spark.
As I dabbled in this hodgepodge of interests for no reason other than to satiate my curiosity and indulge myself, I began to feel myself coming back. I realized how soulful it feels to create, to try, to have fun. How rejuvenating it is — life-saving, even – to make space for things I’m drawn to. And now I know: doing so is entirely up to me.
My previous posts: