Tag: burn out

new blog post: April 2026 wrap-up post April 2026 Wrap-Up Post
Monthly Review

April 2026 Wrap-Up Post

Kara JorgensenLeave a comment

April has turned out to be the month I realize I need to slow down and let myself recover from all the chaos that has been going on. This month’s accomplishments will probably be scant, but you know what? That’s what needs to happen sometimes. Here was what I thought I’d get done in April:

  • Write the rest of “An Unexpected Christmas”
  • Edit “An Unexpected Christmas”
  • Rewrite some of Flowers and Flourishing
  • Take Katie for her CT scan
  • Take Katie for her radiation treatments
  • Maintain my mental health as best as I can
  • Finish grading for my classes
  • Read 8 books
  • Blog weekly
  • Send out monthly newsletter (with AUC)

Books

My goal was to read 8 books, and I read 10 in April.

  1. The Maid and the Crocodile by Jordan Ifueko- 4 stars, technically this is part of the Raybearer series, but you don’t need to read those books to understand this one. A young disabled woman with vitiligo works as a maid and realizes she’s more than she thought she was. Of course, this means becoming entangled with a crocodile deity who is rather attractive and wants to help her. It’s also a story about revolution and making society better for everyone.
  2. Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe- 5 stars, a queer graphic novel classic, but I just read it. Kobabe goes into how xe figured out xeir gender, pronouns, and xeir journey to finding where xe fit in. It was highly relatable as a nonbinary person.
  3. All the Murmuring Bones by A. G. Slatter- 4 stars, a dark fairytale about a woman trying to fight against a generational curse and live her own life. It’s a bit of a slow burn in terms of the story, but I really enjoyed the audiobook.
  4. Liberated: the Radical Art and Life of Claude Cahun by Kaz Rowe- 4 stars, Rowe’s graphic novel is about a queer artist from the first half of the 1900s who created avant garde art and managed to survive the war despite being targeted by the Nazi’s for resisting. It’s short and well worth it as an intro to Claude Cahun’s life.
  5. The Titan’s Bride (#6) by ITKZ- 4 stars, (CW: lots of on page sexual content) I love the two MCs and how they are trying so hard to both be good for each other and for the kingdom they represent. The human MC is so earnest and trying so hard to do right by everyone, and it’s refreshing.
  6. The Titan’s Bride (#7) by ITKZ- 4 stars, see above
  7. Wolf Worm by T. Kingfisher- 5 stars, T. Kingfisher is a fav of mine, and if you want a bug horror book that feels like something Guillermo del Toro might create, this one is for you. It’s more gross than scary, and the MC is a naturalist painter with anxiety, which felt highly relatable, lol.
  8. Seasons of Glass and Iron by Amal El-Mohtar– 5 stars, I adored this anthology of stories and poetry. El-Mohtar writes fantastic sapphic stories and stories that focus on women’s lives. Her stories are rich with texture and speak to the longing for places you can no longer inhabit or have never been before.
  9. River of Bones and Other Stories by Rebecca Roanhorse- 4 stars, if you enjoy Rebecca Roanhorse’s work or want to read more work by Afro-Indigenous authors, I highly recommend this short story collection. It collects a lot of Roanhorse’s shorter works in one place and highlights her horror and scifi stories especially.
  10. Painter of the Night (#3) by Byeonduck- 4 stars, (CW: this is a dark romance with dub-con) what I really enjoy about this series is the scenery and set design involved as well as the way the artist MC is losing his innocence in regards to the world as he goes deeper into his relationship with the lord he works for.

Admin/Behind-the-Scenes Stuff

  • Wrote some of “An Unexpected Christmas” (TRM #4.5)
  • Brainstormed some changes for the Flowers and Flourishing rewrite
  • Graded a ton of stories, projects, papers, etc. for my students
  • Took Katie for her pre-radiation CT scan
  • Took Katie to 3 weeks of daily radiation treatments (1 more to go)
  • Printed, collected, and celebrated my students’ literary magazine and its launch
  • Paid Q1 2026 taxes
  • Participated in the Narratess Sale
  • Sent out newsletter
  • Blogged weekly
  • Had to put a new battery in my car .-.
  • Realized I was burning out and tried to mitigate the damage by slowing down

Blogs

Writing

There isn’t much to say here. I posted about this more on Instagram, but I ended up realizing I was burnt out due to the emotional stress from February onward. I hadn’t dealt with the grief and other feelings I was having, and that combined with work stuff and the chaos of the US government caused me to inch closer and closer to burn out the more I tried to force myself to write. Halfway through April I decided to put all my creative stuff on hold until I could decompress a little, which means when the semester ends and Katie’s treatments are over. They have been slowly stressing me out more and more. I plan to start writing again in May, but I’m giving myself the space to just exist for a bit and refill the well.

Hopes for May

  • Write more of “An Unexpected Christmas”
  • Brainstorm more changes for Flowers and Flourishing before I rewrite it
  • Finish grading/turn in grades
  • Finish Katie’s radiation treatments
  • Figure out next steps for that
  • Take partner to get glasses
  • Plant pumpkins and peppers
  • Continue to avoid burnout
  • Read 8 books
  • Blog weekly
  • Monthly newsletter

new blog post: giving myself a pep talk Giving Myself a Pep Talk
Writing

Giving Myself a Pep Talk

Kara Jorgensen2 Comments

I had a rough week. It was one of those weeks where nothing objectively terrible happened, but a bunch of small things conspired to absolutely wring the life out of you. I was exhausted from the semester starting again, I had a butt ton of papers to give feedback on, I had to go to the DMV to get my car inspected and have my partner get a new ID, my body decided to kick my butt in terms of fatigue and pain, and my partner’s mom ended up in the hospital for a moderately scary issue. Ultimately, mom-in-law is okay and on the mend, the papers got graded, and everything went well, but I barely got any writing done this past week.

On Thursday, I got home from work and thought I would finally be able to write now that everything had settled down, only to have the words bounce off my brain. I could feel myself ready to beat myself up over it, but instead, I stepped back and listened to an audiobook for a few hours before bed. Normally, I would try to just push through or punish myself by refusing to let myself read or decompress with anything fun because I didn’t “deserve” to have dessert if I didn’t eat my vegetables (aka writing). I’ve been trying to be better about recognizing when I’m mentally fried and need to do things to help me refill the well. Void staring as punishment does not help, and I’m glad that I trusted my body and allowed myself to decompress because, even though I didn’t write much on Friday, I was able to reread what I wrote the previous week to reacquainted myself with the text and edit a decent chunk of it.

Even if it was tiny, it was progress. Saturday was a bit better. I hit the point where I realized I needed to major edits on a scene and spent most of the day untangling that mess. Once again, it was a semi-low words day, but I still wrote and still worked on my book. Editing is time consuming and uses up a lot of brain power, which is why it’s sometimes hard to write afterwards. I resisted the urge to beat myself up again on Saturday because I did not hit my minimum goal or catch up. This was all made worse by this being the first week of September– first week, start strong, fresh start, blah blah blah. You get the mentality.

By Sunday, I had hit the realization that it’s just another week in the year. It is one week out of fifty-two, and falling short of your goals because you had a week from hell isn’t a going to ruin The Reanimator’s Fate or set me so far back I can never catch up. It’s fine. I’m fine. The book is fine. Ever since I realized I had to push back the release date for The Reanimator’s Fate, I have felt very guilty about it, even if my readers have been lovely about it. Releasing the book in early 2026 isn’t going to ruin anything or let down my readers who are eagerly waiting for the final book. No one is mad at me. No one hates me. The only one who is beating me up over it is me.

That’s really the crux of the matter: the only one punishing me for not being perfect is me. It’s still hard for me to grapple with the fact that giving 100% does not mean being at peak performance 24/7. I always feel like I should be writing 1k or more a day without fail, but that is unrealistic. 100% sometimes means just rereading what I wrote. Other days, it means just editing, and on bad days, 100% is refilling the well and watching Deadliest Catch while I passively think about what I want to write tomorrow.

My writing career is a marathon, not a sprint, so sustainability is key. Listening to my brain and body is a major part of that, and I’m trying to get better about not beating myself up when I need to take a short break to recharge. Sometimes, a month starts out rough, and that’s okay. A new week is a new week, no matter where in the month it falls. All that matters is that you start again and keep going.

Personal Life

Burn Out and the Grad School Grind

Kara JorgensenLeave a comment

Grad school has begun again. Well, technically it began last week, but today marks my second week of classes. As much as I love my MFA program and the people in it, I hate the stress that comes with going to school. It sets me on edge and raises my anxiety, which means more headaches, stomach problems, and overall fatigue.

Back to school time can be very trying for people with anxiety. New people, new schedules, homework, deadlines, readings. It’s a difficult balancing act without having to add psyching yourself up to deal with people. Usually, I end up listening to music that pumps me up on my way to the university. It helps immensely, especially if you have another playlist that calms you that you can listen to on the way home. That transition time can allow you to decompress and not lash out at relatives when you arrive home. I still do it once in a while when a class has been particularly stressful, but it’s a lot less frequent than when I just went through the motions.

During this time of year, it’s very easy to get lost in the muddle of assignments and readings, but you need to remember to take time out for you. Your body is a reservoir that needs refilling, and if you get too low from stress and work, you will have a meltdown that will take time to recover from. It’s like a car battery. If you run a car for a while, then turn it off, and come back a few hours or a day later, the battery automatically refills itself, but if you leave a car on for three days straight, the battery will die, and it will take multiple jolts from another car to restart it. That’s what happens after a meltdown or if you let it get to low and you burn out.

Take time for you. Finish your assignments, get your readings done, create a schedule, but take time to do the things you enjoy. Don’t get buried in your work, or you will be burnt out by midterms. I know the reaction, I was there as an undergrad, “Take time for me? Are you crazy? Do you see the pile of crap I have to do? When am I supposed to fit that in?”

You can, trust me. When you have a lot of classes and assignments, you would be amazed how much a whiteboard calendar can help in terms of organization. Make lists of what you have to get done for the day or week. As you do them, cross them off, but leave time for you at least a few days a week. Go for a cup of coffee with a friend or take a trip to the mall. Get out of your normal space and do something you love. If you don’t like going out, read something you want to read, watch a few episodes (few- not a whole night’s worth unless you finished your work) of a show you enjoy. Do something that will make you happy and decompress.

It’s much easier to refill a half-full bucket than an empty one. Know your limits, know what you need to accomplish, and know that you matter. You aren’t a machine, despite what others may think.

Writing

Feeding the Beast

Kara Jorgensen6 Comments

This summer has been two months of experimentation regarding my writing and what I need in order to be productive. What I have found is that to continue to be productive creatively, you need to feed that creative beast.

Writing is an incredibly solitary activity. You sit in front of your computer or notebook for hours, constructing a world of your own. While it’s rewarding and you wouldn’t have it any other way, it’s hard to do day after day. Burning out is a constant threat, which leads to productivity problems, lack of motivation, and overall blah-ness. It sounded scientific up until that point, didn’t it? It’s true though. As much as we would like to pretend that writers and artists are limitless fonts of creativity, it’s very possible for the well to run dry, and it does, much to our dismay.

Typically my summers consist of me living a mole-like existence where I don’t leave my house unless I have to attend a university function or go to work. This year, I decided to try to get out more and actually do some fun things to boost my creativity. Here are some things I have found that feed that creative beast:

  1. Read! No seriously, read a book, one you actually want to read. Most writers are fairly avid readers, and I’ve noticed that when I am reading a book or series I enjoy, the words tend to flow more than they would if I was slogging through a book for grad school.birthday books3
  2. Color. Or draw or paint. Do something creative that is not your current project. For my birthday, I received one of those adult coloring books and a new box of colored pencils. It’s wonderful. While you’re utilizing someone else’s design, you’re choosing the colors and figuring out how you want it to work. The repetitive nature of coloring also tends to reduce stress and help you reach that zen-like state that is conducive to creative work.
  3. Get out of the house. Seriously, step away from your computer and go outside. It’s easy to fall into the trap where you sit for 10 hours at a clip staring at Microsoft Word wondering why the muses are being so cruel. Part of you says, “I can’t leave the house! What if I get my mojo back while I’m out?” More than likely, you’ll be enjoying what you’re doing out in the world, but bring a notebook just in case or use the notepad feature on your phone to jot down your idea on the fly. Go to the mall, go to the bookstore, go to the park. My favorite right now is going to the beach or to the water. Water is an incredibly grounding force. If you can, get to the water (lake, ocean, bay, whatever) and take off your shoe and socks. Let your feet soak in the water. I find the ebb and flow of the tide to be an incredibly grounding force. This summer I went on a 3 hour boat tour, and it was wonderful. I brought my notebook, but I was so busy enjoying the water that I didn’t even reach for it. When I got home, it was writing time.

    water
    A little pic from the Jersey Shore.
  4. Watch a little TV. When I say this, I don’t mean an 8 hour binge of Orange is the New Black on Netflix. I mean, sit down and watch something you truly enjoy. Put away your laptop for an hour or two and just enjoy the show. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Project Runway or Poldark, just sit and watch for a little while. I tend to not advocate Netflix because the autostart the next show, and 1 episode turns into 10 in the blink of an eye.

Remember that your creativity is like a being all of its own. It needs to be nurtured and fed, and when you work it for weeks on end, it needs time to rest or recuperate. My suggestion is to do at least one of these things each day. Read before bed or during your lunch break, get out of the house on days off is possible. Take time to enjoy your work and feed your inner creative being with things that inspire you.