The Winter Slump has Returned
This year I'm actively combatting The Slump, and it's actually sort of working
Hello and welcome to my Annual Winter Slump. The weather is in the negatives for the next two weeks, and this year’s melancholy is enhanced with a grim career outlook and horrific political reality. Mental health isn’t a tidy upwards narrative arc, and sometimes the flop eras do be cycling back around.
It doesn’t help that we are living in the absolute worst timeline—from my consumption of speculative fiction, I thought the apocalypse would involve homesteading and resource bartering. Maybe a suspiciously adult-looking teenage savior taking down the corrupt government. Orange Hitler, homophobia, and $9 eggs were not the End Times I ordered, but here we are.
Along with the breakdown of democracy, work is slow, and sending pitches feels like futilely pulling teeth. Assignments dropped off in November and have yet to pick back up. We think it’s a combination of SEO updates, editorial consolidation, and laid-off staff writers and editors joining a crowded freelance pool. Freelance is always a roller coaster, but this lull feels more dire. It’s not helping my outlook, especially when I plug my self esteem into my productivity.
Spending a week in the desert with three of my closest writer friends did provide a boost in morale and motivation. If you like elements of my writing, I recommend checking out all three of them: Amelia (conversational and relatable), Hannah (health and environmental reporting), and Krista (literary baddie in nonfiction and fiction).
But this winter still feels hard. And since I like to be productive and dislike wallowing, I’ve taken some steps to help myself feel less like a dumpcake.
It’s not THAT Dire, But the Slump Does Warrant Some Attention.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still really high functioning! I lurch out of bed at 6am every day like I’ve been electrocuted, my house is clean, I exercise daily, and I’m fairly social. But at the same time, I am constantly doing (poor) mental math tracking my income and bills, refreshing my email hoping for good news, and the voice in my head is screaming: If you’re not a highly productive writer with a dozen clients per month, what do you have to offer?
This pattern of projecting my worth onto external elements means as long as things are going well, I have value. I’m a horse girl! I’m a runner! I’m a thru-hiker! I’m a climber! I’m a film wrangler! I’m a writer! I’m extremely susceptible to toxic productivity culture, which reinforces that my value is not inherent, but contingent on output and accolades. For those of you who can relate, Lori Gottlieb wrote a great column about this last week.
This year, instead of just waiting for the weather to get better and Trump to die, I’ve taken some steps to find work, boost morale, and reinforce the idea that my value isn’t entirely tied to my productivity. I’m absolutely not out of The Slump, but we’re slowly doing better. Also I don’t need to say this, but none of these Anti-Slump Measures are substitutes for actual mental health treatment and counseling. Disclaimers, etc.
Step 1: Change Entire Outlook on Self Worth
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Like I said, I am a product of toxic productivity culture. If I am not succeeding in every external realm, I feel like an abject failure. The most important and daunting part of this Anti-Slump process is changing my internal valuation. It helps that I have a lovely community and a wonderful partner who does not care what I publish or whether I backpacked hundreds of miles this year. This criticism is all internal, which I guess is job security for my therapist.
Step 2: Stoppppp Doom Scrolling at 1am!!
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Setting a 52-book reading goal for the year was a great step in reducing my scrolling during the day / before bed. I can truthfully say I haven’t wound up in an internet sinkhole of Japanese speed bed-making competitions in weeks. But I’ve still been shooting awake at 1am and immediately checking the news to see what fresh horrors have happened since I passed out three hours earlier. Step 2 is a work in progress, and I will try to get better at “microdosing the news.” Enough to stay informed, not enough to lose hope. Leaving the nightmare rectangle outside of my room at night will solve a lot of this, I just have to actually do it.
Step 3: The Morning Retired Man Walk
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I stole this from my dad, an extremely happy, extremely retired man who diligently takes a pre-dawn walk every morning, no matter the weather. And let me tell you, this helps. I wake up every morning with the resting heart rate of someone being hunted for sport, and slamming myself into the frigid winter air has worked wonders for my blood pressure.
There are plenty of proven health benefits to the Morning Retired Man Walk, but for me, it’s head-clearingly similar to moving meditation. The repetition and repeated rhythm of walking actually does help regulate your nervous system, and it sets me up for a better day than flopping immediately from bed to laptop. Here’s a very basic SEO explainer on moving meditation if you’re curious.
This is low commitment—anyone can do it! Sometimes I just shuffle five minutes around the block and then go back inside. It’s not a run or a hike where I’m thinking about my elevation gain… just a slow plod around my subdivision wearing my cat in a backpack like a normal child-free 36-year-old.
Step 4: What Did You Used to Love That You Don’t Do Anymore?
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In my case, going back to my roots meant two things: swimming and working with farm animals (not at the same time). I got back into a swimming routine this winter, and being in the water is another form of meditation for me. I absolutely love this Outside story about feeling connected to water.
As far as farm animals go, one of my first independent memories is from when I was 10 or 11, sliding open the minivan door as my mom pulled over on her way to the grocery store. I ran down the dirt driveway, found her horse grazing in a field, then dragged her away from the clover before completing my barn chores and going for a ride. I loved riding, but I also loved the barn chores—anything to be around animals.
I’ve had a lot of ranch and farm jobs since then, but none in the past year. I missed it, so after driving passing a local alpaca farm one day, I emailed and asked if they needed weekly volunteer help. This is the best thing I’ve done this winter. Alpacas of Montana is home to 80 alpacas, two horses, a flock of turkeys, and a dozen llamas. Some of the animals are rehabs and rescues, and it is impossible to be in a bad mood with dozens of alpacas snuffling and sticking their heads in your pockets looking for treats.
Volunteering at the farm reminds me that I am good at things that don’t involve writing, and I enjoy them a lot more too. I feel very comfortable and natural around farm animals, and there’s something so satisfying about tag-teaming an alpaca wrestling match to de-blanket a fluffy fellow. If you’re looking for a sign to shake up your routine, this is it.
Step 5: Volunteer With At-Risk Communities
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I feel entirely powerless against the vitriol targeting marginalized communities and social backsliding in our country, so it seems more important than ever to donate time to local nonprofits. I volunteer for a few programs with Bozeman’s Human Resource and Development Council, including senior grocery deliveries, food bank packing, community kitchen meal prep, and dinner service kitchen shifts. The food bank and community kitchen make a huge difference for unhoused people, and also serve some of our immigrant population.
The other week I was packing groceries with Hailey before driving a delivery route, and we were marveling at how much better we felt spending our morning with the program. I am also on a list for a Lend-a-Hand Volunteer program that assigns senior-aid tasks to more mobile people. I feel deep despair and horror watching what’s happening in the US, and while I’m useless in the grand scheme of things, donating time and resources to local organizations makes a small impact.
Step 6: Don’t Beat Yourself Up for Being a Dumpcake
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Truthfully? I am exhausted from a decade of continually rebuilding as a freelancer and writer. It’s hard to work in an industry where no matter how well you perform, how clean your copy, how relevant your pitches, you can lose editors in staff consolidations, watch your publications go bankrupt, and lose whole clients from budget cuts and bad SEO updates. I am tired.
I’m trying not to fault myself for feeling defeated this winter, and I know this slump will eventually reverse. Actively working at getting out of it has been helpful, so if the state of the world, your industry, the weather, or the orange golem is making you feel wretched, it’s ok. Take a retired man walk and volunteer at a food bank. It won’t fix everything, but it will make you get out of bed. Plus, it’s clinically impossible not to smile while petting an alpaca.
Ok is “skedded” a normal freelance term because it sounds like an absolutely deranged abbreviation of “scheduled”