health

The Pain of Overload

Published on by Kristi Holl

As I mentioned last time, writers need margin in their lives in order to write. However, margin has disappeared for many people.

Frazzled mothers, office workers, retired grandparents, and other writers struggle to find both time and energy to write. Make no mistake: it is harder today than at any other time in history. It’s not your imagination.

It’s also not hopeless. It comes down to adding margin back into your lifestyle.

Before we talk about how to do that, let’s talk about how the overload happens and what it looks like.

Tipping the Scale

Overload in any area of your life happens slowly. It is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. It is having one more expectation of you at work or home, one more change, making one more commitment, making one more purchase that you must pay for, facing one more decision.

You can comfortably handle many details in your life. But when you exceed that level, it’s called overload.

Reaching My Limits

All people have limits, and overloading your system leads to breakdown. Some overloading is easy to spot. A physical limit can easily be recognized. For example, I know I can’t lift my car, so I never try.

Performance limits can be more difficult to recognize. If my will is strong enough, I will try to do things I can’t do for very long. I might try to work 80 hours per week every week or lift my refrigerator. The overload can result in sickness or stress fractures.

Reaching your emotional and mental limits can be the hardest to spot. Each person is unique. My overload might result in symptoms like migraines and ulcers; your overload might result in a heart attack or road rage.

Has overload always been with us? No.

Multiple Sources

Changes are happening faster and faster, and overload can appear almost overnight. Here are some ways you can become overloaded:

  • Activity overload: We are busy people, we try to do three things at one time, and we are booked up in advance.
  • Change overload: Change used to be slow, and now it comes at warp speed.
  • Choice overload: In 1980 there were 12,000 items in the average supermarket; 10 years ago there were 30,000 items. Now there are many more.
  • Commitment overload: We have trouble saying no. We take on too many responsibilities and too many relationships. We hold down too many jobs, volunteer for too many tasks, and serve on too many committees.
  • Debt overload: Nearly every sector of society is in debt. Most are weighed down by consumer debt.
  • Decision overload: Every year we have more decisions to make and less time to make them. They range from the minor decisions at the grocery store to major decisions about aging parents.
  • Expectation overload: We believe that if we can think it, we can have it. We think we should have no boundaries placed on us.
  • Fatigue overload: We are tired. Our batteries are drained. Most people are even more tired at the end of their vacation than they were at the beginning.
  • Hurry overload: We walk fast, talk fast, eat fast, and feel rushed all the time. Being in a constant hurry is a modern ailment.
  • Information overload: We are buried by information on a daily basis-newspapers, magazines, online blogs and articles, TV and Internet news shows, and books.
  • Media overload: Almost 100% of the American homes now have television, and shows are on 24/7. Images are flashing at us on screen many hours per day.
  • Noise overload: True quiet is extremely rare. Noise pollution is the norm. It interferes with talking, thinking and sleeping.
  • People overload: Each of us is exposed to a greater number of people than ever before. We need people, but not the crowding.
  • Possession overload: We have more things per person than any other nation in history. Closets are full, storage space is used up, and cars can’t fit into garages anymore.
  • Technology overload: It has been estimated that the average person must learn to operate at least 20,000 pieces of equipment.
  • Traffic overload: Road rage is one byproduct of clogged roadways. Rush-hour is not a rush nor does it last an hour anymore.
  • Work overload: Millions of exhausted workers are worn out by schedules demanding more than they can do without breaking down. The earlier predictions of shorter work weeks, long vacations, and higher incomes have backfired. [From Margin by Richard Swenson, M.D.]

Isn’t reading that list simply exhausting? No wonder we feel overloaded. No wonder we have a difficult time writing!

It’s not your imagination! We Americans are overloaded – but we don’t have to stay that way! I hope you will check out Margin–it has many more helpful ideas than I have room for here. It’s a five-star book for a good reason!

Restoring Balance

Published on by Kristi Holl

Each person has his or her own set of priorities.

However, remember that time is finite. It can’t be stretched, saved, or borrowed.

The time devoted to things must be balanced.

If we give too much in one area we neglect our duty in another important area. 

Restore Balance Now

Here are Richard Swenson’s suggestions for restoring balance from his book, Margin.

First, you must cultivate the ability to say no. “In life, as in the buffet, our plates fill up sooner than we realize. In attempting to be sociable we try to accommodate everyone’s invitations. In attempting to be good parents we try to give our children more opportunities than we had. In attempting to be compassionate, we want to help with everyone’s problems.” Sometimes you will have to say no, even to some very good things.

Second, you must gain control over your own life. Sometimes your life and time are ruled by other people’s demands or crises. Sometimes your life is ruled by your own out-of-control behavior. Do what is necessary to regain control over your life.

Third, beware of trying to solve the problem of imbalance by becoming even more imbalanced. A doctor warned his patients that we tend to respond to our sense of imbalance by committing more time and energy to the area in which we feel deficient. But if you are already maxed out in time and energy, you can’t give added attention to one area unless you subtract from another area. (That sounds like common sense, but it’s still the mistake I usually make.)

Fourth, accept the no given to you by others. Give others the freedom to find balance in their own lives. Don’t put your expectations on other people.

Margin and Writing

In case anyone thinks I’ve lost the point of this blog–first aid for writers–I haven’t. These issues of finding margin (while maintaining your mental and emotional and relational health) have been the biggest struggles of my writing life for thirty years. Few of us are raised by mental health professionals or counselors, so we come to some of these principles later in life. But if you want to have a healthy writing career as well as a healthy life, these ideas will help you get there.

I’ve barely skimmed the surface of the ideas, suggestions, and life-changing advice in Richard Swenson’s book, Margin. I hope you will find a copy for yourself. This is one book I would have dearly loved to have about twenty-five years ago. And if you need specific help with boundaries as a writer, see my Boundaries for Writers.

 

Lions, and Tigers, and Bears…oh my!

Published on by Kristi Holl

Deadlines, and funerals, and a computer virus…oh my! It’s been one of those weeks!

(Photo courtesy of http://the-english-spot.blogspot.com/2009/11/cartoon-idiom-to-be-swamped.html)

A Few Days Later

It’s the weekend, and I’m more tired than I’ve been in a good long while.  And with the holidays coming, I’ve plotted my deadlines and weekly/daily writing “must do” lists on a giant calendar.

And something’s got to give. I won’t make my deadlines if it doesn’t. 

One thing that is going to be put on hold is this blog. I’ll be back when the calendar turns to 2015, but I need the next five weeks to just hunker down and write. I may not be on social media much until then either.

So…Happy Thanksgiving! Have a blessed Christmas. And Have a Happy (Writing) New Year!

Beware! Burnout Ahead!

Published on by Kristi Holl

Published writers, beware!

“Writing is not everything,” Lisa Shearin said in a 2010 Writer Magazine. “And if you want longevity in this business, play isn’t just important–it’s critical. We get so intensely focused on having achieved the dream and working so hard to keep the dream going, that we’re blind to the signs that if we keep going down that road at a fast pace, that dream could quickly turn into a nightmare.”

Recipe for Burnout

I was very glad to read her opinion piece–and I wish that message was published more often. I wish someone had said it to me years ago. Having a healthy drive is good, but letting yourself be driven–by others or your own inner critic–will eventually ruin the joy you originally brought to your writing.

“Dreams are meant to be savored and enjoyed,” Shearin says. “You do have to work hard, but sometimes, the work can wait.”

Too Late

Great advice, but what if you’re already burned out? What if–from overwork, juggling too many jobs and family members, a major loss, or chronic illness–your ideas have dried up? I’ve been there twice in my writing life, and it was a scary place to be.

Peggy Simson Curry spoke about this in a Writer Magazine archive article first published in 1967. She detailed the process she followed to “slowly work [her] way back to writing” and discover what had killed her creative urge in the first place.

Face the Fear

I think most writers would agree with Peggy that fear is at the basis of being unable to write–fear that a writer can’t write anything worth publishing. Burned out writers constantly think of writing something that will sell.

“This insidious thinking,” Curry says, “persuades the writer to question every story idea that comes to him. He no longer becomes excited with glimpses of theme, characters, setting, threads of plot. He can only ask desperately, ‘But who will want it?'”

Healing Choices

Among other suggestions, this writer said it was very important to deliberately get outside, away from the writing, and just enjoy the world around you. In other words, play. [This is one of the best things about having grandkids living close by!]

Coming out of burnout can be done, but it often takes methodical, small daily disciplines to do it. For me, digging in the flower gardens and stitching small quilted wall hangings finally unclogged my creativity. Things that help will be different for each writer.

Have you ever felt burned out with your writing? If so, what helped you to come out of it and write again? If you have a minute, please share an idea with other readers.

Writing Through Physical Pain

Published on by Kristi Holl

When my kids were toddlers and in grade school, I was wired shut for eleven weeks after two jaw surgeries. I’d had some health problems over the years, but being wired shut topped them all. I couldn’t talk to my four small children or even call a friend.

I was dying to talk, but couldn’t. So I hurried to my computer where my characters “talked” onscreen. Dialogue flew back and forth, and (rather surprisingly) this mental conversation went a long ways toward satisfying me. Usually I wrote a MG novel in 5-6 months, but it took me just two months to write Danger at Hanging Rock, turning this post-surgical problem into salable writing.

A Real Pain

Writing about pain and writing through pain is possible. Not FUN, but possible. Health problems crop up routinely. They range from short-term problems (like your son’s broken leg), to things needing constant close attention (like diabetes or arthritis). The most serious problems (like terminal illness or a death in the family) affect us all, sooner or later.

However, instead of quitting, we can also transform these experiences into publishable writing, whether it’s a simple case of the flu or a stay in the hospital. It’s tempting with short-term health problems to abandon our writing “until things settle down.” If at all possible, don’t do that.

Instead, stand back, rethink, and keep going. For example, I finished a mystery called Cast a Single Shadow during my four-year-old daughter’s hospital stay. I couldn’t sleep, so I borrowed a nurse’s clipboard and wrote while the rest of the hospital slept.

Chronic Pain: Another Story

I’ve had TMJ, facial nerve damage from several surgeries, and arthritis in my jaw joints for 30 years. I’ve also had five neck surgeries to deal with a chronic pain condition. The two main challenges for writers and artists with chronic pain are (1) finding the energy to write, and (2) fighting depression.

Writing, as you know, demands a high level of energy, and people fighting chronic pain may use 30-50% of their daily energy just fighting their pain. If chronic pain threatens to stop you from writing, try these things:

  • Accept pain as a fact in your life.  Don’t compare your life with anyone else’s or brood about “how life should be.” It won’t help. Books like Judy Gann‘s excellent title The God of all Comfort: devotions of hope for those who chronically suffer will help and encourage you. You’ll realize that many others deal with chronic pain–and overcome  it. You can too.
  • Fight the depression.  If possible, try writing about the positive aspects of your situation. (“Life’s Simple Pleasures” was an article written by a migraine sufferer about learning to appreciate what most people take for granted, like a night’s sleep, a picnic with the family, or planting tulips.) Any type of writing you enjoy is helpful in fighting depression because it tends to distract you from your pain (like when you forget your headache during an exciting movie).
  • Find the energy. Create mini-goals (for example, writing just fifteen minutes at a time). Divide each writing task into thin, achievable slices. Assure yourself that you only have to complete one mini-goal or slice, then stop if you need to. Pace your activities, even on the days you feel better than usual. Pushing yourself only increases chronic pain.

Terminal Illness

Terminal illness and a death in the family tax your creativity the most. The shock, numbness, and months of extended grief can derail even the most  dedicated writers. However, even in these cases, certain strategies can keep you going.

Why would you even want to keep writing during such a stressful time? The point of it is so that you still have a career when the weeks or months have passed. You don’t have to start over at Square One. Yes, you take the necessary time to grieve or deal with things. However, if you put your writing “on hold” until things are “back to normal,” you may find it too difficult to get started again.

Keeping that in mind, some tips during a really rough patch might include:

  • Journal your feelings.  Journal in hospitals, waiting rooms, and cafeterias. Your deepest heart-felt thoughts will provide excellent material for later. They may become fillers, daily devotions or even greeting card verses for people in similar circumstances. Or…no one may ever see your writing, and that’s okay too. Either way, you keep up your writing habit, which will pay huge dividends later.
  • Encourage and coax, but don’t push yourself to write. Burnout occurs when the demands we put on ourselves outweigh our energy supply. Some days you just won’t be able to put pen to paper.
  • Again, write about your experiences.  It can be the best healer of all. To deal with the pain after my dad died thirty years ago, I wrote The Rose Beyond the Wall, a middle-grade novel about a grandmother with terminal cancer.  It was a book written from the heart. Despite its subject, it’s a hopeful book for children, and it sold well in hardcover and paperback. Think about doing the same thing with your experiences.

Remember that “this too shall pass,” and when it does, you’ll be in a position to share with others what you’ve learned. That’s a writer’s satisfaction that money can’t buy.

To Survive as a Writer: Finding Margin

Published on by Kristi Holl

Certain Type A personalities seem to thrive on overloaded lives, but most writers don’t.

Our best ideas – and energy to write about them – require some peace and quiet, some “down” time. To get that, we must rebuild margin into our lives.

Defining Margin

What exactly is margin? According to Richard Swenson M.D. author of Margin, “Margin is the space between our load and our limits. It is something held in reserve for unanticipated situations. It is the space between breathing freely and suffocating. Margin is the opposite of overload.”

Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?

You might wonder at what point you became overloaded. It’s not always easy to see when it happens. We don’t have a shut off valve that clicks like when we put gasoline into our cars. Stop! Overload! Usually we don’t know that we are overextended until we feel the pain and frustration.

We would be smart to only commit 80% of our time and energy. Instead, we underestimate the demands on our life. We make promises and commit way more than 100% of our time and energy. Consequently, we have no margin left.

A Simple Formula

What exactly is margin? The formula for margin is straightforward: power – load = margin.

Your power is made up of things like your energy, your skills, how much time you have, your training, your finances, and social support.

Your load is what you carry and is made up of things like your job, problems you have, your commitments and obligations, expectations of others, expectations of yourself, your debt, your deadlines, and personal conflicts.

If your load is greater than your power, you have overload. This is not healthy, but it is where most people in our country live. If you stay in this overloaded state for a good length of time, you get burnout. (And burned out writers don’t write. I know–I’ve been there more than once.)

The Answer

So how do we increase margin? You can do it in one of two ways. You can increase your power — or you can decrease your load. If you’re smart, you’ll do both.

Many of us feel nostalgic for the charm of a slower life. (Few of us, however, miss things like outhouses or milking cows or having no running water.) Usually what we long for is margin. When there was no electricity, people played table games and went to bed early, and few suffered sleep deprivation. Few people used daily planners or had watches with alarms, let alone computers that beeped with e-mail messages and tweets. People had time to read–and to think–and to write. It happened in the margins of their lives.

Progress devoured the margin. We want it back. And I firmly believe that writers must have it back.

PLEASE SHARE: Do you identify? What does “fighting overload” mean to you as a writer? Have you been successful in any ways you can share?

Overloaded Lives

Published on by Kristi Holl

Do you have any margins left in your life?

Or is your life marginless?

For a long time, I’ve known that something was wrong. People everywhere, of all ages and walks of life, are frazzled. People are anxious and depressed.

And why is that especially important to writers? Because tired, frazzled, anxious, depressed writers don’t write. Or when they do write, they can’t write well.

I have been re-reading some favorite books lately. One such book is Margin, by Richard A. Swenson, M.D. In this book he talks about the fact that most of us live marginless lives now.

What’s “margin”? Margin is the space that once existed between ourselves and our limits. Margin is having something held in reserve for unexpected situations.

Bring It On!

Instead, most of us live overloaded lives. The cost of overload is seen in health problems, financial debt, family and friendships going by the wayside, and having very little or no time for solitude and renewal.

Because of exponential progress in technology and other areas, things in our culture are changing faster and faster. We have more and more choices. Along with all the progress comes increasing stress, change, complexity, speed, intensity, and overload.

However, despite all this speed and change, human beings have relatively fixed limits. We have physical limits, mental limits, emotional limits, and financial limits. Once the threshold of these limits is exceeded, overload displaces margin.

Why Now?

The book details how many conditions we have at play today that are different than at any other time in history. We have run out of room to breathe. We have run out of time to sit and think. And I think this overload – this living beyond our limits – makes writing extremely difficult.

Can anything be done about this? You can’t stop progress, can you? Maybe not, and maybe we don’t want to, but can we regain our emotional health and physical health and relational health? Is it possible to redirect our over-extended lives? Yes, it is, according to this author.

How About You?

As we move into summer, give this “margin” idea some thought. We’ll be exploring some ways to regain margin so that you have more emotional energy, more physical energy, and more time–when you can write, if you choose to.

I don’t know about you, but for me, it’s just what the doctor ordered.

What is one way YOU try to avoid (or deal with) overload?

Tug of War in Finding Balance

Published on by Kristi Holl

In the Margin book, Richard Swenson, M.D. talked about the tug-of-war in our everyday lives and the challenge of finding balance.

The Balancing Act

I don’t know about you, but I feel a constant tug-of-war between choices. Should I work now, or relax a bit? Should I take action, or should I think about it more? Should I take the lead in this decision, or be a good follower? Should I speak up, or just listen? Should I keep studying and researching and learning, or is it time to apply what I know? Should I judge and confront, or should I give grace here? Should I say yes to this gathering, or retire in much-needed solitude?

It’s no wonder we have difficulty finding balance!

There are so many decisions to make, minute by minute sometimes. Added to that, we know that life requires both. We need to both work and rest. Sometimes we need to speak up, but sometimes we need to listen. We need to both study and apply what we know. We need the company of other people, but writers also require a lot of solitude.

These are not either/or questions. “Balance has always been necessary and will always be necessary. It is just becoming more difficult,” says the author of Margin.

Balance or Excellence?

I believe in high standards. I believe in doing things in an excellent way. In many ways, especially in the past, I’ve gone overboard into perfectionism.

“Much is made today of the virtues of excellence. But what does this mean? Often the excellence described is only in one narrow corridor of life,” says Swenson. He talks of musicians who are virtuosos, executives who live at the office, and other passionate high achievers. Many are not so successful in the rest of their lives though.

Many writers – including myself – have dreamed of the day when they would have time to be passionately high achieving writers. While my children were smaller and I was also teaching, I dreamed of the day when I would have the hours to be one of those high achieving writers I read about. I have met a few of them at conferences, and I admire them a great deal. But each time, when talking to them, I discovered something that I knew I didn’t want in my own life. I didn’t want to ignore my community, give up my ministry at church, lose close contact with grandchildren, or be unhealthy and out of shape. I wanted it all!

Choices, Choices

“While undivided devotion to one cause can bring great success and vault a person into prominence, such a priority structure often leaves the rest of that person’s life in a state of disorder,” says Swenson. You might excel at your career – like the famous surgeon or performer – yet fail as a parent or neglect personal health in order to achieve it.

I have found this to be true in my own life. I can push through when deadlines demand it. I can do it for months on end if necessary. But to my frustration, something always breaks down. Headaches get bad. I find that I’m out of touch with grown children or grandchildren. Or I put on five pounds because I stopped walking and feel like a slug.

What’s the Answer?

“Doing our best has limits,” says Swenson. “Our rush toward excellence in one quadrant of life must not be permitted to cause destruction in another.” Those who go “all out” for success in one area – even writing – risk failure in other important areas of life.

So what’s the answer? Come back Wednesday, and I’ll give you four tips for restoring balance in your life.

Writers: Sitting Fit Anytime

Published on by Kristi Holl

One of my health goals is to stop taking so much aspirin and other painkillers. It causes more problems than it helps. This has been an ongoing goal for years, and recently I found something amazingly simple that is really helping!

The Painful Side of Writing

When I started writing, I don’t recall ever reading anything about health problems associated with writing. But sitting for hours, especially at a computer, takes a toll on your neck, back, wrists, and hands. The associated headaches and back pain keep many writers on painkillers of one sort or another.

Then my daughter suggested that I get some yoga DVDs. My initial reaction was negative. My mental image of yoga was of some spaced-out chanting person twisted into an inhuman pretzel. Not for me!

Yoga for Writers (and other stiff people)

I quickly learned that my ideas were outdated. From my library, I checked out “Healing Yoga for Aches & Pains,” which was as soothing as a massage (and got rid of my headache!) I have yet to try “Yoga for Inflexible People.” My favorite DVD so far is Yoga: Sitting Fit Anytime, which has nine separate 3-5 minute segments addressing individual needs of people who sit at computers for hours.

It’s easy to follow, you do it sitting, and it targets neck and shoulder tension, lower back pain, upper back pain, tight hamstrings, headaches, and carpal tunnel problems. There was even a segment for stiff hands and fingers. There was no chanting. 😎 (FYI: I skip the New Agey intro–not for me! Just want the stretches.)

Preventive and Restorative

If you don’t have aches and pains from writing, thank heaven. But also consider doing some routine stretching to prevent developing such problems. If you already suffer from head, back and/or arm pain, consider yoga as a drug-free solution. Your body–AND creative mind–will thank you.

[P.S. If you long-time faithful readers thought this sounded like a repeat, you’re right. Had a ripping headache today that I finally got rid of with the DVD stretches! Thought you all might need the same reminder I did.]