Poetry Tips I Ask You: Burn-Out

I was hoping to wait a little longer to do another round of “Ask the Audience” but I figure this is a good subject to discuss, especially since I have overwhelmed myself these days. Here’s where I’m coming from: I am involved in lots of hobbies. My dance troupe becomes intense in Spring and Summer with costume classes, shows, and The Big Show that takes place at the end of July. Then there is this blog which I had hoped would continue at 7 days a week but I dropped down to 5 and it is still a stretch. Then, there is scuba diving with my family which also happens more often in warmer weather. Not only that, but there are weddings to attend, anniversaries and birthdays to celebrate and this all overwhelms to create a general sense of burn-out.

My tactic so far is to just keep plodding through it but I feel that my blog and my own writing are suffering as a result.

So, now that I’ve shared my burn-out conundrums with you, let’s bring it up for discussion by asking you all to share your thoughts/advice on the occasional feelings of Burn-Out that you have surely experienced:


1. When/how do you know you are starting to feel burnt-out?


2. How do you navigate around obstacles which crowd out your abilities to focus on poetry in the day-to day?


3. How do you combat poetic burn-out specifically?



4. Finally, how do you know when you’ve conquered burn-out?


I will feature these questions one at a time each Friday once I get a satisfactory number of responses (at least five people) so I hope you will all take the time to e-mail me your answers at poethoundblogspot@yahoo.com and please type the words Burn Out in your subject line so that I know you aren’t Spam. Thank you!

Thanks always for dropping in and participating, I look forward to meeting again Monday…