Post NaNoWriMo, when holidays begin and stress begins to mount and pile up inside, the spoonie lives the seeds of burnout. This spoonie is no different. After a grueling sprint to 50K words in November, immediately followed by social situations that drain the life force from me, then holiday prep for 25 plus people, more socializing, and more expectations, this spoonie is perpetually in spoon deficit for months after the end of a year.
I write this to let our readers know that we are here and are still just as passionate about our mission as we were before November, maybe even more so. I write this to let you know that it’s okay not to be okay. It’s okay not to meet that deadline, and it’s okay to take the space you need for yourself. But, more than that, it’s okay to take some time to breathe.
The holiday season is stressful for most of us spoonies. Add to that multiple family parties in my non-nuclear family dynamic, and it becomes so overwhelming to put on that typical mask and pretend I am okay. Fake it till you make it, or in this case, till you can get the F*#k out of there and hide under the covers until the new year. But that relief doesn’t come for me, not until December is over. Until the residual social sludge inside my mind works out like an upper respiratory infection. It can take the entire month of January to begin to work the burnout out of my system. So here I am at 7 am on a Tuesday in the middle of January, posting a reminder to my audience that it’s okay to give yourself grace. It’s okay to ask for more time, an extended deadline, and just more.
We live in a society that wasn’t built for us. The grind of clocking in for an eight-hour shift can completely suck the will to live from us after the initial dopamine hit of a well-done job has passed. The publishing world is no different; deadlines and expectations can change the craft from fulfilling to grueling. From hobby to work. From dopamine highs to dopamine lows. But it doesn’t have to be that way. You deserve to take up the space you need to take up in the world. You deserve to ask for more time; you deserve to have accommodations and get the time you need.
While most of the publishing industry doesn’t follow this particular mantra and can seem like an insurmountable task for the spoonie author, that is why Miss Geek Bunny exists. We are here to lift you up and help you ask for what you need. We are here to give voices to authors who wouldn’t have a voice in mainstream media. We are here to take on the world that wasn’t built for us.
And in doing so, it would be quite hypocritical if we did not take the time we needed to recover from our own burnout.
So I write this to our community as a reminder that we are still here, we are still committed, and we are still passionate, even if we’re in a spoon deficit for the rest of the month. We are still fighting for you, us, and all the neurodivergent spoonies, people with disabilities, and others who struggle with daily tasks.
Spoonie burnout
