Creativity Burnout — I hadn’t thought about this before COVID. Creativity is meant to be an outlet from everyday life, after all. But what happens when your whole life comes crashing down around you (as it has for most of us during this pandemic)? The first thing to go are creative endeavors. At least that’s how it’s happened for me.

When I started reading news about COVID, I remember worrying about how we would handle it when it came to the United States. My husband and I knew that it would come here, as we were very closely following its trajectory, and so my little family and I prepared our apartment on the east coast, knowing that a lockdown was imminent.

When my kids’ daycare center closed, I was suddenly thrust into the world of full-time stay-at-home mom. For a mom to two toddlers who was used to being a work-from-home person, I was utterly overwhelmed. Not only was it exhausting to be home 24/7 with two kids who never nap (one of the reasons we started part-time daycare in the first place), but the sheer amount of dishwashing was enough to be a full-time job on its own — seriously, if you’ve ever done three meals a day plus snacks for hungry little ones, you know what I am talking about. Oh, and did I mention? I was still working from home!