I’ve been working on a new electronic music and multimedia project: OH!NOverdrive! I think you’ll enjoy it when it’s ready. In the meantime, it has me thinking of how I started creating it and how it gave me time to think (or not think) when I clearly needed to.
When I left my job, I was exhausted and fragile. The first few weeks were a wandering daze. Mostly, I would drag myself out of bed to go for a hike before the sun got too hot. With some exercise out of the way, I’d sit down with my iPad and start whittling down the rest of the morning.
I bought the device because I wanted to use Procreate, which is a powerful and fun art making tool. But I didn’t feel like drawing on my iPad or anywhere. I had tucked my head into so many sketchbooks over the last two year as a sort of a mental life preserver, it was tough to draw now.
The iPad came with GarageBand, too. I tried it once after I bought it. I played with the app for an hour before deciding I didn’t have time to learn it. But for a reason I can’t remember, one morning after a hike in May, I opened it up and threw a quick beat together.
I’d like to say it unlocked something I’d been holding in for a long time. That would be great. In reality, it was just a neutral space to play. There was kind of zen that came with progressive iterations of pulling a track together. There were no expectations. I would just muck around until I got something I liked. Then, I’d start a new song.
Eventually it coalesced into a project I started calling OH!NOverdrive!
On the surface, it’s one more creative commitment, but it is something I don’t think I would be doing if I hadn’t left my job. Not because of time, though that’s a factor. At the time, at the peak of my burnout cycle, the idea of something new, even something I knew would be fun, felt like an unbearable burden.
One of things about burnout is that you’re so tired and stressed that anything beyond self-care feels untenable. And, then you reach a point where there is no number of baths in the dark or amount exercise or whatever will make a difference. You slip into a kind of survival mode, and you start to close off parts of yourself you don’t think you need.
For me, it meant art had to go. It was too much to admit there was a part of myself I wasn’t serving. Art making is such a big part of who I am, this was like freezing part of my brain. It’s a totally backwards way of thinking, but it’s not uncommon. At the time, I was just trying to hang on.
In the aftermath, the work of thawing my brain and reconnecting with the parts of myself I had shut down was difficult and tiring in its own way. It’s ongoing. Playing in GarageBand, in retrospect, was a way to just let my brain run in neutral and let the thaw happen.
I’ve been taking my time developing OH!NOverdrive! because I want to savour the space I’ve given it to grow into its own thing. And, frankly, there’s a part of me that needs it to evolve slow, too.