The Narrative Thread: Post Project Malaise? Or, Is It Just Burnout?

Writing — and most creativities — is an endless list of unfinished projects. They loom and lurk in the background and haunt our peripheral vision.

Even in the midst of . creating two games at once (projects that consumed all of my free time and headspace), I was already thinking about the next projects on my list, as in, If I can just finish this, then I can move on to the next thing

And yet. . . having completed those projects, I found myself in a frustrating state. Suddenly, I couldn’t bring myself to make anything. In those moments in which I could even bring myself to open a doc, I would star at the little blinking cursor for a few moments before closing the doc again.

Just thinking about the numerous projects that I wanted to do felt like too much effort — and with that came a sense of guilt, because I wasn’t working or moving forward.

What is wrong with me? I thought. I was so productive last month. Why can’t I be productive now?

At the time, my assumption was that the problem had to do with deadlines. Both of the games projects were completed as part of gam jams, which included hard deadlines for completion. I creatively thrived under those deadlines and, without them, I began to have doubts as to whether I could complete…