Maybe you've lost interest in work that once lit you up. Maybe every email feels heavy. You find yourself procrastinating, avoiding clients, staring blankly at projects that used to excite you. You wonder if you're just lazy? You wonder whether you've simply fallen out of love with your creative career. For many artists, writers, musicians, designers, performers and creative business owners, that's where burnout begins. Not with collapse, but with disconnection.

There is a particular kind of grief that arrives when someone brilliant dies young. A collective gasp that then quietly reshapes itself into awe and reverence. We speak of them differently afterwards. We say things like “at the height of their powers” and “a light extinguished too soon” and the eulogies are always, somehow, luminous.

We do not do this for people who die at 84 after a good dinner with people that love them.

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.