When did I lose it? My spark, my creativity? As of late, I’ve felt backed into a corner, stuck — though let’s be honest, it’s been a few years now, on and off this roller coaster ride of tepid emotions. Is it my stagnant career, my gradually declining interest towards my once beloved hobbies, the political climate, climate change? It’s 2025, April, no less – five years after the world turned on its side and we entered a period of mass disarray, the global pandemic — and I fear I’ve yet to recover.

Fine, dramatics aside, I think it’s my career. I spend at least a third of my life at work, if not more, so it’s no surprise I’m burnt out. In this time of layoffs and a declining economy on the horizon, I sure picked a good time to start questioning my career choices. I’ve been working for the last eleven years at the same company – since I graduated university, without a break. The first half of my career, I chased passion, and genuine delight for innovation; this latter half…I couldn’t even tell you what I’m chasing down the next day — probably deliverables. My motivation and ambition are all but shot, what keeps me going is the comfortable lifestyle my career buys — ample travel, the occasional extravagant purchase, and a roof over my head, albeit rented, but hey, there’s in-unit W/D. Suffice to say, I hate my job, love my life.

In 2021, I made a career move — I thought I’d landed a job and role in a function that I’d been seeking for a while. Turns out, once I was there, the grass wasn’t as green as I thought. Cue me kicking off another transfer after a short ten months (rash decision, I know), to something more traditionally corporate – program management. Since then, I feel I’ve been at complete odds with not only my intrinsic nature, but with the team culture I’m in. I won’t delve too much, but it’s fast paced, cut throat, and if you don’t command respect, well you better. There’s a painful lack of empathy at times, in favor of a just-get-it-done attitude, and most folks put in more time than they’re paid for. Which brings me to realization #2, turns out I’d actually like to spend less time at work climbing the corporate ladder, and more time working on myself. 

But what to do? There are bills to pay, and the pay is good. I’ll spare you the details I agonized over for the last year and some change. Do I stay, do I go? Where to? What to do? I still haven’t quite figured it out, but the biggest realization dawned on me tonight. Which leads me back to my opening question. When did I lose it? My spark, my creativity? 

I was reminded tonight that I even had it in the first place. My night started with me locking into the job hunt. All this lamenting and I’ll have you know I’m (at least for the time being) committed to moving on and finding my next thing, whatever it is. Yes, in this job market. I don’t know how long it’ll take, but I’m settling in for the long haul. After a handful of submissions, I went down the rabbit hole of part time and freelancing — an ideal gig, to be honest, if I weren’t so bad at networking and pitching my worth. I didn’t stop there though — why not, I’m already trying something new, breaking out of bad habits and complacency. I spun up a google doc, fully intending to document my marketable skills, something I could turn into a pitch. 

Then I had a bright idea. Why don’t I just draft this in a template so I can turn it into a digital marketing flyer to upload to freelancing platforms later? So yeah, my brain did the thing it does usually, and went on a full tangent. I proceeded to open Canva, played around with some templates, got bored, opened Google Docs again and looked at its collection of templates; ultimately I googled ‘docs templates,’ which led me to this random travel itinerary template someone had designed for Google Docs. Oh, you thought I’d circle back to the career thing?

As I pored over the design, I was simultaneously delighted and horrified. WOW, I thought, this person who made this is so creative! They did so much with just tables, formatting, and typography!? ….and then the horrified part of me kicked in. When was the last time I felt creative? Genuinely, when was the last time I got as excited as I was at that moment….over some random person’s travel itinerary template in google docs — so elegantly designed, it even makes use of margins & white space. How did they know which fonts to use to bring it together like that!? Then it hit me. I used to love typography. I used to live for good design. Seriously, when was the last time I felt creative and inspired? When was it? I don’t know.

I don’t know, but I hope to find it again, that spark. 

And no, I never did finish that list of marketable skills — but I did write this blog post🐝. My intention is to use this platform as a place to reflect and document my journey (as hokey as it sounds) to regain my spark, my creativity. Take what you want from it, and leave behind what doesn’t resonate, but I do hope you’ll join me at the Burnout Hive again.