Are You Working All the Time?

🔥 Recognizing common signs of burnout + Your October Love Letter

Oct 10, 2025

Keeping Creative Time
it’s never too late to be the creative person you’ve always wanted to be 💖

LEFT: Artist, printmaker, and co-owner of Print House in Asheville, NC, Denise Markbreit, demonstrates how to add color and design to our zines through the process of mono printing at Asheville Zine Fest on Saturday, September 27, 2025. RIGHT: Me, several days later, returning to the scene of my Artist Date to remind myself what it feels like to make something for the fun of the process.

“When work begins to get in the way of balance, a radical notion of self-care, you may need a more thorough visual of what your work is.”

—HOW TO NOT ALWAYS BE WORKING—
by Cody Cook-Parrott

Dear Creative Friends,

I sometimes wonder how I got here. Seated in the chair. Laptop screen open. Lighting the stick of incense. Eating mini cookies out of a ceramic dish. Waiting for my ginger tea to brew. This process of showing up to write, again, and again, and again. The ritual of doing the thing.

Sometimes I don’t acknowledge it as such, but I’m finding more and more as I continue to recover and reclaim my creative life after burnout, that it is the practice of showing up, of leaning into what makes this whole writing thing joyful, that this is what holds me in the moments I want to give up, call everything I’ve ever written complete garbage, tell myself I’m broken. No one cares. It’s all a waste of time anyway.

Usually, when I’m feeling this way, it’s because I haven’t left the chair for hours, my bladder is full, my back is tight, and my shoulders are up in my ears. These are the moments when I know, I am trying too hard to write, to perfect the words, to edit as I type, to make the process as excruciating as I possibly can because that is what overworking does to me. It turns me into a walking head with no body.

You lived like that for most of your life, a gentle voice in my head, now connected to my body, says. And it will probably take most of your life to keep undoing that process, to create a new process, one that feels good to the you now.

I recently led a book discussion for How to Not Always Be Working: A Toolkit for Creativity and Radical Self-Care by Cody Cook-Parrott, for a local nonprofit called Mountain BizWorks that supports artists and creative-based business owners through a program sector called Craft Your Commerce. Before the group meeting, I created a little reader guide to the book, which is filled with quotable nuggets that I keep referring back to, to gently coax my inner perfectionist to let go, to play, to not always be working myself into the ground.

This quote hit the hardest.

Work is subjective. I do, however, know that when the things on my work list became the only things I was doing it hurt my spirit, my partnership, my friendships, and my business. Always working proved to be completely unsustainable for my mental health and for those around me.

The author, Cody Cook-Parrott, gets at something in this book that no other book I’ve read about overworking, or its counterpose, doing nothing, has stated so clearly: Working all the time is hurting our relationships with those we love, it hurts our relationship with ourselves, and it hurts our relationship to our work. But most importantly, it hurts our relationship with our creativity, and our creativity is our source of power.

“For most blocked creatives, fun is something they avoid almost as assiduously as their creativity. Why? Fun leads to creativity. It leads to rebellion. It leads to feeling our own power, and that is scary. ‘I may have a small problem with overwork,’ we like to tell ourselves, ‘but I am not really a workaholic.’”

—THE ARTIST’S WAY—
by Julia Cameron

Here’s a sampling of questions from The Workaholism Quiz in Week 10 of The Artist’s Way.

I cancel dates with loved ones to do more work: seldom, often, never?
I procrastinate in finishing up the last loose ends: seldom, often, never?
I take work with me on vacations: seldom, often, never?
I work in the evenings during family time: seldom, often, never?
I fall in with others’ plans and fill my free time with their agendas: seldom, often, never?
I allow myself downtime to do nothing: seldom, often, never?
I place creative dreams before my work: seldom, often, never?

I can say, with full humility, that their was a time in my life when I could answer often to all of these questions, and seldom to the last one.

Today, my body’s burnout warning system goes off much sooner because I am more aware of my habitual patterns of overworking, overdoing, and seeking perfection in my work to the point of exhaustion. And yet, being aware is not enough, I must also take an action if I want move myself forward (out of the overworking habits that lead to burnout). Sometimes that action means resting more, sometimes that action means ending my work at a time when I say I’m going to stop, and sometimes that action means using tools to reconnect myself when I’ve let the burnout train take my body away.

It all starts with awareness, which I’m still working on.

Did you catch that? I said working. I meant practicing. Whoops!

LEFT: Choosing nourishment that grounds me and helps me feel good at Pulp + Sprout in Asheville, NC. RIGHT: Dogsitting means I get to enjoy all the love without the long-term commitment.

Here’s to a beautiful October month of reclaiming our time from overwork and perfectionism, to nourishing ourselves beyond burnout by feeding what brings us more moments of creativity + joy + connection!

LEFT: Practicing being a beginner again by going back to school to deepen my relationship with yoga. On this particular morning, I was drinking chai at Dobra Tea while reading up on the anatomy lesson. RIGHT: Have you heard of a hammock stand chair? Get grounded while being suspended from the ground. This is where I want to be all fall!

I invite you to come find me online and in-person (around Asheville) this month where I, like

Cody Cook-Parrott

, will be “bumpin’ along in my process of healing and creating and living,” and I’d love to cross paths with you.

Did I tell you I’ll be interviewing the author of How to Not Always Be Working,

Cody Cook-Parrott

, later this month? I’m over the moon about it! See below for the details and share with me in the comments any questions you have for Cody. ✨

LEFT: Taking an actual break (it's been awhile but I am returning to this practice) to sit on the swing at Cowork and enjoy a chocolate sea salt popsicle after my first day offering 15-Min Coffee Chats at Cooperative Coffee. RIGHT: An evening gathering of the BOBs (Burnout Buddies), where we shared stories and stayed warm by the fire.

Where to find creative support through working with me this October

PSST. . . in case you didn’t hear, all of my creativity services are on SALE through the end of this month.

💪 Do-A-Thing! | Creative Cowork Sessions with Faye
Book an hour or two with me this October to commit to doing something you want to get done in your creative practice or anything that supports your creative practice.

Book a Cowork Session with Faye

🍁 Creative Care + Author Care | Creativity Coaching Sessions with Faye
Book a coaching session to receive the grounding, structure, nourishment, and support that we all need to find the courage to create.

Work with me on:

developing your personal creative practice (or restarting after a long drought)
discovering tools to nourish yourself from burnout and keep making your art
a creative check-in to reset and map out your next steps for a project
pivoting, shape-shifting, and leaning into your own rhythm and creative flow

I love working with authors to vision and map your book launch, so that they feel aligned to you, and that you get to connect with the bookstores, libraries, and readers you most want to connect with.

I also love working with artists who are curious about writing and the many different ways of sharing written work.

And I love working with emerging or re-emerging creative people who are feeling stuck, worn out, or that their relationship with creativity is in need of some TLC.

Book a Coaching Session with Faye

Faye is GREAT and a perfect match for me! After just two sessions I’ve already felt a shift in my energy and activity around my business.

—Lisa M.—

Where You’ll Find Me in the Community This October

☕️ October 22 | 15-Minute Creative Coffee Chats
9:30-11:30am, Cooperative Coffee, Asheville, NC, free

🧳 October 16, 23, 30 & November 6, 13, 20 | Creative Essentials: How to Care for Your Creativity When Things Fall Apart
6:30-8:30pm, Virtual with Inward & Artward School of Creativity
+ optional group coworking from 1-2pm on Mondays, October 20, 27 and November 3, 10, 17, sliding scale $325-$425

📚 October 21 | Craft Your Commerce Fall Book Club ft. How to Not Always Be Working by Cody Cook-Parrot and a Q&A with the author, facilitated by me!
5:30-7:30pm, Virtual, free

Not in Asheville? No problem! Book a virtual free 15-minute Creative Rx Session, and we can chat about what’s working and what’s not working in your relationship to creativity and work.

Remember, it’s never too late to be the creative person you’ve always wanted to be.

Take care y’all, and thanks for being here with me. <3Faye

P.S. Before you go, enjoy a song from the playlist I call . . . Odes to Time.

Taylor Swift —“Soon You’ll Get Better”—Lover, 2019.