Reclaiming Joy Through Creativity

By Archana Maniar, MD

Mid-career.

Like mid-life and middle age, it is a term that describes being neither here nor there. It is a time of competing obligations — a time in which one feels the eyes of others nudging us on, to render an opinion, to solve a problem, or to pick up the slack. Add to that the middling requirements of aging parents and young children, of balancing home life and work life, and one feels a constant set of responsibilities, some sought and fulfilling — others not so much — but all pulling us in different directions.

It was in that mid-career phase that I began to feel something was off. The sense of burnout started well before the term “novel coronavirus” had ever been coined, back when infectious disease doctors like me waxed poetic about a pandemic in the abstract. As fulfilling as it was to be a physician, as much as it remained a calling, something was missing. What it was, I could not name.

The thing is, I was a writer long before I was a doctor. I was ten years old the first time I had an inkling about penning a novel (a phase when I was obsessed with Trixie Belden mysteries). I had just drafted a tale of the fictional adventures of the first kid in space. As I grew older, I ventured into essays and poetry. In college, I kept a journal that still graces my nightstand today.

I am not exactly sure when I gave up my scribbles. But between the sleepless nights of residency training, the rigors and long hours of early career medicine, and the struggle to balance work and life as a young parent, I simply stopped writing. In fact, I stopped reading for joy as well. There was always a task that needed tending to. The relentless, nagging tug of the electronic medical record, the sense that I needed to catch up on the constant backlog of journals, the general exhaustion of trying to be everywhere and do everything, the full-time job that creaked and leaked into so much of my personal life.

Medicine felt like a spotlight that consumes the room, always illuminating the priority of the moment, seeping up one’s attention, leaving the edges and the corners in the dark — the places where dust bunnies wander freely and dirt gathers without worry of exposure. At first blush, it seems that there is nothing compelling about those neglected spaces. But for me, the wandering dust bunnies and the errant grains of dirt were vestiges of who I used to be before.

Over the past year, many physicians have shared similar anecdotes with me. Somewhere along the line, many of us have abandoned an outlet that gave us joy (writing, cooking, dancing, drawing, etc.) and we aren't sure why or when it happened. I only know the benefits of reclaiming that outlet after happening upon a free creative writing workshop offered by the Sacramento Public Library.

Within three lines of writing to the prompt, I realized what was missing. That was when I began tinkering with the first scenes of what would become a book. More than ten years and a long mental journey later — after much doubt, countless revisions, many rejections and an absurd amount of persistence — those fledgling ideas were published internationally in a debut novel called Dry Spells (Lake Union Publishing, released May 2024).

For me, the act of writing has been therapy. As a hospital epidemiologist during the COVID-19 pandemic, my world was defined by a certain lack of control (likely a common sentiment among health care workers of all stripes). During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic we were asked to render opinions with a dearth of data. Would we have enough personal protective equipment to ride out the storm? Were there enough isolation beds for a surge? What was the most effective treatment? The list went on and on and on.

After a long day in which I controlled very little, creating a fictional world where I controlled the characters, the conversation, the scenes, and even the weather was strangely cathartic. It provided a remedy for my burnout. Even as the memories of that tragic and unprecedented time grow more distant, I’ve found that reclaiming my creative side has made me slow down and focus much more on each patient interaction. Health care workers have a unique vantage point into the human condition. And though I have always drawn a distinct line separating my physician life from my writing life, to pen ideas about the human experience with compassion — even in the broadest strokes — it helps to slow down, listen to people, and try to practice with empathy.

A good deal has been said about how to approach burnout among health care workers. It is incumbent on health systems and medical practices to develop strategies to combat it without simply putting the onus on physicians. From assuring that electronic medical record workflows are efficient to eliminating unnecessary mandatory trainings to finding strategies to foster interactions among colleagues, countless considerations should be on the table. But on the individual level, no matter how far removed from medicine our long-lost interests may seem, there is something to be said for getting back to what once inspired us.