Stop sign — Ula.ceramics

After nearly two years of having things feel pretty damn easy, life, as it does, hit with another challenge. Another message. Another little ‘take this, bitch’. I felt like I was cruising through life quite nicely and then, out of the blue, came a stop sign.

I was making the best art I’d ever made. My students were happy. Home and money - good. Friends - good. Partner - good. I thought I was ticking all the boxes, until suddenly I felt shot to pieces.

Going to my gorgeous studio suddenly felt like a drag. I’d walk there and look at the ocean, wanting nothing more than to sit in front of it and appreciate it. I’d later leave what was supposed to be a free and fun art day feeling depleted, having spent the day making sure every area of my career was ticking along, with barely enough energy left to watch the sunset.

I am very lucky to have great friends. I feel fully accepted for who I am, loved and adored for all my weirdness that keeps them entertained. But around the stop-sign, ‘take this, bitch’ period, I found myself having less and less time to spend with them. And when I did, I barely had enough energy to be myself.

Art, my students and other part-time income had slowly taken over the driver’s seat of my life. I made everyone happy but me. My goofy, silly self was getting very little airtime, and I was pretty much only at home to sleep.

I realised I was gripping tightly onto my identity as an artist, tutor, partner, housemate, sister… giver. I had been balancing all of these things and doing life very well - on paper. Until I couldn’t anymore.

I had heard people talking about burnout before, but honestly, I thought it was just extreme tiredness. I didn’t realise it could come with an identity crisis, a fucked nervous system, and the inability to even think about what you truly love anymore.

I started to feel angry and would shake when I interacted with anything that felt like even 1% pressure. Notifications made me nauseous. Anything over about 30 minutes of daily screen time felt unbearable.

I spent a week lying on my sofa (right there below) letting my body recuperate and watching familiar films like Shrek because apparently my nervous system needed to be settled by a cartoon ogre. I reconsidered everything. What do I actually want? What is genuinely mine? What resonates with the woman I really am?

As I began to realise what I wanted to let go of and what crumbled without me holding it together, I said to my sister:

“Babe, I did really well though. I’m proud of myself.” She replied, “Yeah babe, you did. But why did you need to do anything? Why weren’t you just being?”

That sentence from my 24-year-old sister made me rethink my entire adult life. Because even when things were easy, why was I trying so fucking hard? I spent my life doing school, college, my degree, and then trying so hard with my career and everything else, that somewhere along the way I thought grinding was more important than living.

I was fortunate to have enough money. I’ve done some really cool shit. My life was amazing. And yet, I wasn’t really living it. I was constantly trying to transform myself to be bigger, better, more successful, more accomplished, without noticing that the life I had in the moment was already fucking great. And so was I.

So I let my little ceramics empire go. Some other things I loved fell apart too. It hurt. But as I went back to my life with much less in it, I realised I was really in it. I had time to sit and watch the sunset and actually feel how much I appreciated things as they are, rather than thinking about what they might become.

I became less attached to how life might unfold and much more interested in actually experiencing it. I stopped trying to convince myself that everything had to be useful, productive or somehow moving me forward. And there’s so much more joy in my days because of it. And actually, paradoxically, the things I want and need seem to be coming to me more easily now that I’m not busting my arse trying to make them happen.

I know I’m lucky that this was only burnout. No one died. No devastating diagnosis arrived. This was, in the grand scheme of things, a pretty gentle stop sign. But people will die. Things will change. Life will keep giving us its stop signs. And I realised that what I want most isn’t a life where nothing difficult happens. My only dream now is to be living as my authentic self when it does.

Instead of living for intermittent, ‘well-earned’ moments of joy, I want to stay close to the people I love. I want to watch sunsets every week. I want to let quieter moments be boring. I want to play my drums, skate and make art because I want to. I want to be the woman I am and model. I want to be present for the life that is actually happening, instead of constantly preparing myself for some supposedly better version of it.

To not try so hard to live.

And just be here for it.

To not do, and instead just be.

Silly me.