Picture this: you've just completed a huge project that you've been doing for months, tirelessly and putting 150% of your effort into it every day. The day you finished and you sit back and relax, you realize - you don't want to get back up again.

It's a sensation I think we've all at least experienced once - burning out. That feeling of not wanting to do absolutely anything, especially after doing something for a significant period of time. It's where a person may feel the complete drain of the drive they had put in so enthusiastically before. It honestly sucks to feel it.

I think half the time what's worse is the guilt that comes along with it. You've been so used to being extra productive for such a while that doing nothing feels like absolute sin. It's as though you are doing a disservice to yourself as a Productive Person™ and the notion of actively avoiding to be active is so insulting.

Why am I talking about this, you may ask yourself, dear gentlemen/lady? I'm burned out and it sucks.

For nearly half a year, I've worked together with 4 of my talented classmates in a project of producing a near 5 minute 3D animated short. I've talked about it a few times here and there on SteemIt but it's basically, it's a huge deal for us as students.

The main purpose for us to create this short was that this will be used in our portfolios to get jobs. Then, this short would be shown to a panel of people from the industry in a showcase (pictured above). The amount of sheer pressure we felt was at an all time high and there was this expectation to do better than previous batches.

How did we do? To be honest, no matter how great the work may have ended, it will never feel enough. There is always something that I feel deep down I personally feel could have done better.

And this is what you call a recipe for burn out...

Right afterwards, I just didn't want to look at anything or do anything I liked - drawing, cartoons, film - basically anything that reminded me of that project. The guilt seeped in soon after and it was awful. There was a point I looked backed at this thing I've worked on for months with sheer contempt and my insides were spitefully screaming "I wished I never do anything with you again."

But like life, eventually, that negativity soon passed. I got back into drawing again and it felt so, so good. I'm actually thinking of a couple of ideas that could be turned into my own personal one person project.

To get there, however, took a lot of down time. Beating myself up over not doing anything is not going to help at all. It's worse than not being productive, it's counter-productive. I'm only human too and although that seems like an obvious statement, sometimes that little fact is forgotten when trying to strive at your hardest.

Slowly, I'm working on being productive at a relaxed and more balanced state. A huge hurdle was just overcame and it's time to take that pat on the back. I had felt absolutely guilty at not posting here especially. But that has another reason...