Stress and Zen Doodling

Have you ever been burned out?

I have - back in 2018/2019. There had been a lot of changes at work, mergers, a lot of staff left and - it was not a fun time. Add to that some family related bad news and I was pretty much a wreck. Exhausted yet still mostly functioning at work (with a little help from the pharma industry - which I never thought I would ever need but...) still - nothing was enjoyable.

This past week felt very similar as my work-related stress got really bad. Since the beginning of May our department has been operating on 75 % of staff (even at 100 % we were doing some overtime at times) now imagine that for the past three weeks we were down to 50 %.

At the beginning it wasn't too bad but then it got overwhelming pretty quickly. I work in supply chain and we are feeling the lingering effects of the pandemic everywhere - fun stuff!

And this includes, of course, the job market. We have been looking since May for a new team member and it took us till now to find someone. Hopefully, with time they will be filling the hole and things will normalize. It will certainly take some time but at least we are back to 75 % plus.

I mentioned previously that usually making my art and also blogging to some degree (like this post today) form my balance to my work. Unfortunately, when the stress gets too bad I am no longer able to switch off my work-brain and from there on it gets worse and worse. Can't do any art? Well, might as well use the time and work a little longer, right?

Wrong.

Last week I originally wanted to paint a character for an NFT project for the upcoming game #psyberx but - I couldn't. I did start with sketching and a background but I haven't been able to work on it any further.

Instead one evening after work I took out my small 6x6" Strathmore Artist Tiles block and started doodling, zen doodling to be precise. The idea behind zen doodling is to - just doodle, no erasing, there are no errors.

During the process of this zen doodling my mind focuses on nothing but the line my pen is making on the paper. I get completely absorbed by the patterns the lines are forming. And the canvas is small, it is not a big task that seems insurmountable. That is essential.

I have done many of these little drawings a few years back and I guess for me it is a kind of helpline, back to the roots, paper and ink. A reset of kind.

I finished this little drawing yesterday afternoon and I hope that it is a step in the right direction to getting back on track of finding my balance again.

If you made it this far - thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy my little whale. Below are a few close-ups of the mini drawing.

Have a great rest of your day!

Cheers,
(Ocean)Bee