On Monday 6/19 at 12 PT, I’ll reply to my favorite piece of advice in the comments section below & gift that person a $150 Jenny Pennywood shopping spree.
Even if you decide not to comment, you cared enough to stop by & that matters...
Deep Knowing by Jen Garrido, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 52 x 48"
I'm feeling a little burnt out
This year has felt like a closed loop of circular thinking. It’s like my head is in an orbit I can’t escape. I’m not depressed, but my headspace is spinning. These days (most days), I feel burnt out. Ups & downs are part of my process, so this feeling isn’t so new but I am just so tired of it.
My burnout has a backstory
Let's travel back to the early 2000s. I had just graduated from grad school & was teaching art at a small, private K-8th school. It was an amazing job. Or, it would have been had I loved teaching. I didn’t love teaching, but oddly enough I always thought I’d teach. During those same years I taught, I also waited tables & was an affiliate artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts where I was just beginning my art career.
After several years of juggling jobs, my art career began to unfold. At 30, I decided to let go of teaching because if I didn’t try to do art full time, would I ever? It was the right choice. I think. My career was up & running until 2008 arrived & the economy crashed. Suddenly, the relationships I had worked so hard to build ended due to one thing or another. So, I decided to create Jenny Pennywood as a way to explore textile design. Fast forward to today & it’s as though I’ve been living a double life & hustling ever since the crash.
My deep desire to recenter
Recently, it dawned on me that for 20 years & counting (essentially my entire adult life), I’ve been incredibly persistent in setting goals & assigning myself tasks with the simple intent of getting somewhere. In many ways, this has been an organic unfolding marked by key moments in time where things seemed to be coming together. But if I’m being honest, I’ve mostly struggled along the way.
Fast forward to today & it’s 2023. Here I sit, drowned in a deep desire to recenter. But, what’s next?
I love the work I do, I love Jenny Pennywood & I certainly love painting. In fact, I always want to paint more. I’m cool with the struggle in some ways, but I would rather it be a side dish rather than the main course.
What's on the other side of the struggle?
Have you ever been stuck? How did you climb out? What was your key turning point? Is there a version of life on the other side of the struggle, where there’s still struggle, but not so much? Comment below & share your story, struggle, words of wisdom, best advice, tools, habits or something else altogether that you think I should know. Whatever it is, I want to hear about it. Thank you for caring. XO, Jen
35 comments
I completely burned out a couple of years ago after pouring myself into my career, which I viewed as my calling. Listening to many hours of the Slow Home podcast with Brooke McAlary during my commute to that job helped me separate my identity from that career and figure other ways I could find joy, meaning and fulfillment. It didn’t happen overnight, and it required a break from the work I was doing to bounce back from the burnout. I hope this helps in some way—I ended up making some big and small life changes—kind of a mid-life resetting of my priorities—and it completely reenergized me.
thank you for being so vulnerable and sharing with us. i have always wondered if there would ever be an opportunity for you to merge jen garrido with jenny pennywood or vice versa. sounds like a super reckless thing to do, if only because i assume that there are some nuts and bolts business side stuff that will make it not easy to do (????). it seems like at one point the separation helped you immensely, to create these different buckets while you contended with each side of you (commercial vs. artist) in what seems like a past lifetime ago by now. today, these entities exist on the same platform (ie, your website) side by side, and they talk to each other in such a beautiful way that perhaps there no longer needs to be any partitioning between the two. as a customer and admirer of your work, i see both sides of you as one.
My dad used to say “If you don’t know which way to turn, keep going straight.”
Instead of putting the pressure and focus in word on myself, I try to think of nice things to do for others. Whether that is calling in really listening to a friend, I like to write handwritten thank you notes or appreciation cards and send in the mail,i compliment strangers or make sure to hold the door. It helps remind me the importance of community. Kind of without realizing it, that’s exactly what you’re doing… Reaching out to your community, offering a gift, creating a space where people can talk about what helps them or their own experiences.. i hope it helps ♥️
When things are overwhelming and I feel stuck all over, and even meditation seems impossible, the practice I turn to is deep breathing. It helps so much. Sure, the bed is still unmade and the storm rages on, but those moments of peace and stillness help me find a path through the day. And then maybe that momentum builds into the next day and the following.
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