ÀLC FAQ: How do you avoid burnout?

Also, What trends do you hate? and How do you discover new brands?

Welcome back to ÀLC FAQ, a monthly column where you submit questions and I answer them! Today I’ll be answering three questions on:

1. How I push myself creatively while avoiding burnout

2. Trends I like and trends I don’t

3. How I discover brands (including a list of a bunch of my favorite recent discoveries!)

Per usual, the first two questions are free for everyone to read and the last one is a treat for paid subs!

I’m a graphic designer and I’m always inspired by how you push yourself creatively. How do you prevent burnout? It’s a hard line between trying to push yourself to get better at work and not ending hating your job because it becomes all encompassing.

To answer this I have to give a little bit of a personal history lesson, so bear with me.

I always joke that I feel like a completely different person than I was when I worked in-house in my 20s. I remember being 27 and wondering why I was sporadically breaking out in hives, or this one night when I got a haircut after a long day at work and started sobbing right there in the salon chair. I was always at the edge of my emotions, quick to cry and easy to anger at the drop of a hat. 

Part of it was that I worked in a high-emotion environment. Everything felt do-or-die, like the world would implode if we didn’t send a file to print in time. I struggled to keep things in perspective, and I always had this nagging feeling that I wasn’t doing enough, so I’d push myself beyond what was healthy. I felt pressure to prove how indispensable I was, pressure to please tough critics, and most of all, pressure to make things I was proud of.

“Burnout” was an understatement.

It hit me like a ton of bricks when I realized that I just couldn’t do it anymore. What was the point of having a creative job if it was no longer fun? I had learned a ton, and a lot of really wonderful things came from the 8 years I spent there, but it was time to make a substantial change. 

Now, a few years into working for myself and squarely in my mid-30s, I know myself and what I need so much better. I’m acutely aware that if I take on too much, my ability to create, to show up for my clients, and to find enjoyment in my work suffers. It’s tricky, because I still feel like I’m not doing enough; there’s always more business to be booked or more money to be made. But if I’m not setting aside time for the things that fill me up—reading, traveling, binge watching reality TV, flipping through art books, spending time with people I love, writing this newsletter—I start to resent the work itself. (I wish I had come to that realization a little earlier, but here we are.)

So to circle back to your question, I can completely relate to the feeling. I do have a question for you, though: What does “pushing yourself creatively” mean to you?

For me, it looks less like a push towards something and more like a clearing of space. No good idea of mine is going to come from a forced brainstorm in 30 spare minutes between meetings, which would feel like a push, or something that has to be forced. It might feel different for you; maybe growth feels like a sprint, or like a wall you have to break through. But for me, upholding boundaries I set for myself and others, trusting that I will always be evolving and growing as a creative, and giving myself the time to do so is the antidote to burnout. 

While it took me making a career change to figure this out for myself, I don’t think you have to. It’s totally possible to work for a company and to love what you do, to learn and evolve, and to feel creatively fulfilled. So whatever your situation is, my advice is this:

1. Figure out what it looks like when you’re creatively fulfilled. Is it when you’re in a flow state? Is it when you’re working with people who inspire you? Is it when you’re making something just for yourself? What do you need to do in order to access that more often?

2. Trust that you’ll naturally grow and evolve as a designer over time. There are some phases of life where you’ll live in a place of abundant creativity, and there are phases where you’ve just got to show up and slog through. Those times ebb and flow no matter where you are in your career.

3. Try to keep it in perspective. You are not your job. You are not what you make. You’re a whole person whose life extends beyond your work and if you burn yourself out being a designer, that person will inevitably suffer too.

What trend are you not a fan of and what trend would you like to see come back?

I’ll be honest: I don’t think I have a good idea of what’s cool and what’s not anymore. Every time I get on TikTok someone’s making fun of how I tuck in my shirt or the length of my pants and I’ve mostly just decided to ignore it. I have a fairly healthy “good for you, not for me” mentality about most things, so while there are a lot of trends I’m opting out of, it doesn’t mean I don’t love them for everyone else.

ssense

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I struggle with the “-core”-ification of style these days, though: the “old money” aesthetic, the “mob wife” aesthetic, the "office siren", "dopamine dressing", "Grandpacore"… I think the trend I like the least is the way we look at trends themselves, like they’re costumes to wear for a few weeks until they are suddenly no longer topical. It feels like so few people actually have their own perspective when it comes to getting dressed (me included!) because everything is prescribed to us via whatever aesthetic we’ve adopted that week.

On the other hand, I don’t think that trends are inherently bad; they encourage us to try new things if we’re curious about them. If seeing someone dressed like a tween in the early 2000s gives you permission to invite baby tees back into your life, I think it’s great. When I interviewed Jalil Johnson last week, he had great advice: “When you’re figuring out your personal style or stepping out of your comfort zone, you have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Personal style is really a matter of trial and error. Unless you’re truly willing to experiment and occasionally look a little wacky, how will you ever discover what does and doesn’t work for you?” 

ssense

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Who says that you can’t try something new, like it for a while, and move on from it? I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to engage with trends, as long as we have a sense of humor about it all. (See: SSENSE’s Instagram for guidance.) And I think we should give ourselves permission to take a trend, or maybe just an aspect of it, and make it our own. Allison Bornstein made a TikTok last week talking about exactly this and I found it helpful.

But you asked me a question, so in an effort to be specific:

I’m not a fan of low rise pants, (mostly because of my own body issues—I think they look cute on you!) Brat green (I’m sorry I can’t don’t hate me,) mesh, techy sneakers, and whatever this vibe is.

ssense

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Things I’d like to see come back: 2018-era block heel sandals, specifically the Maryam Nassir Zadeh Palma and the Marais Jardin (RIP). I saw a TikTok making fun of these, too, but I don’t care.

How do you find new brands, both for design inspiration and for clothing/personal style?

Instagram osmosis, mostly. I spend an embarrassing amount of time on Instagram (and here on Substack, too) and while I’m sure studies show it absolutely IS rotting my brain, the upside is that I learn about tons of brands I otherwise wouldn’t know exist.

I thought it might be helpful if I outlined the ways I use social media to discover new brands (including a bunch of the accounts I follow for just that reason,) plus a list of the brands I have my eye on right now that you might not already know…