There is a particular brand of misery that doesn't announce itself dramatically. It doesn't arrive with a breakdown or a crisis or anything you could point to and say: there, that's the thing. It arrives, instead, as a kind of flattening. You are technically functioning. The emails get answered. The work gets done. You show up, you perform competence, you even occasionally produce something you don't entirely hate. And yet…something is missing, not from the work, but from you. Some quality of aliveness that used to be there has quietly packed its bags and left without notice.

Burnout gets talked about a lot these days. It shows up in workplace policies, LinkedIn posts, wellness checklists, and those well meaning reminders to take a break and go outside.

But for creative people, burnout often feels a little different. Something beyond just exhaustion. Something more nebulous and disorienting than that.

Creative burnout is a strange beast. It doesn’t always arrive with a dramatic collapse. Sometimes it looks like competence. Productivity. A calendar full of meetings. Deadlines met. Invoices sent. Posts scheduled. And yet…