HOW TO: Avoid Burnout

Hasina is frequently found live painting at shows, at your favourite community event or at local art markets. She is a talented visual artist who aims to tell the stories of fellow Black womxn, non-binary people and gender non-conforming folks in her life. In the last year, she was recognized by the Purple Sisters (for the storyteller of the year award) and by the Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) Carleton (for her work in the art community). She is also one of the co-founders of Full Femme.

1. THE ROLE OF DIRECTOR, AT URBAN LEGENDS

Alright, let me introduce you. For those of you who don't know who this wonderful person in front of me is.

*Laughs*

This is the one and only, the ever-so-talented Namitha Ratinapillai.

*Laughs*

H: Do you want to talk a bit about your role (as the director) at Urban Legends?

N: Yeah, for sure. So, with Urban Legends, as a director, a lot of what people see is posting. It's kind of the big thing, but a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff is : figuring out venues, figuring out performers, if we have a feature for an open-mic or slam, grant writing ー I hate it so much , promo stuff ーall those hours of me, on Canva ...

H: By the way your promo is one of the best collective promo, on the scene. I really like how you showcase the artists that are coming in, but also their works, so we are more inclined to go. I love to see it.

N: Thank you. Thank you.

H: Honestly, whenever someone is new to the art scene and asks me how to promote artists, I always send them your page. I’m like “ this is how. This is the blueprint”.

N: I love it ! Oh my god!

2. THE DEFINITION OF BURNOUT

H: For sure ! So, for today’s theme, we're going to talk about how to avoid burnout, as an organizer because ... a lot of us are suffering. A lot of us are taking on way more than we should and I have also seen quite a few people who used to organize a lot just retreat from organizing spaces which I think is so sad because they added so much to the scene.

Just a little bit of the definition of burnout. Burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. Right.

That’s the clinical definition. But I wanna know what does burnout feel like to you personally ?

N: Burnout to me, I think it just feels like not having that excitement that I usually have to innovate and do everything bigger and better, and feel motivated to do that. It just feels like I don’t … It’s like there’s always something that's there but I don't want to do it. I'm putting it off or there is so much stress about the fact that I can't make it the best thing that I don't even want to get started. It just feels like being on autopilot.

3. BURNOUT-INDUCING TASKS

H: Do you have a specific task that makes you feel especially burnt-out?

N: GRANT WRITING! I hate it so much! Truly, I will put off for months if I can.

H: What is so tedious about grant writing ? In my experience, once you write one good, you just copy-paste all your answers.

N: I literally don't know because I thought about that. I have the the previous one that passed directors have written. It's like there. Just something about it I found so exhausting. I don’t know what it is.

H: You know what it might be? I think the experience of having to pimp out your sorrow or your needs in order to... Almost begging for money. That might be the part of grant writing that annoys me. Don't you see me being great ? Just give me your money!

N: Literally! I’m like : “ can you not read? Can you not watch?” Why do I have to tell you all this stuff?

H: You know who I am! What ?

N: So, you’re telling me that you've seen my name and you still need me to write a grant? I don’t ...

H: That sounds sus. That’s very much sus. Are you a cop ? Okay.

Can you tell me about the time you felt the most burnt out as a result of your role as a director?

N: I think that honestly, with everything that's been going on, I think I've been feeling really burnt just like … I don’t know. When you know what’s coming, and you know what it’s like ー obviously I’be been doing this since September ー my roles are pretty set in stone right now. But once this all happened, a lot of platforms were switching to online. People were using Zoom and Google Hangouts ... And, it took that for me to realize I'm so tired and I don't have it in me to adapt and innovate the way I wish I could.

4. DELEGATION

H: Do you have a team that works with you ?

N: Yeah, so I have a couple of people that I am able to rely on within Urban Legends, but I think that, also, I have a really hard time letting people do things. I’m like “ I’ll do it’. I just like … I don't know how to pass things on which is something I'm learning to unpack.

*Laughs*

H: I was wondering, Looking back are there ways you could have avoided being burnt out?

N: Oh yeah! Easily. If I had relied on people around me and been like : “ I trust you to do this thing”. I probably could’ve saved myself an immense amount of stress.

H: Well, that's a very good segue for our next subject because we're going to talk about the delegation. How do you differentiate between tasks you can delegate and tasks you absolutely need to do on your own?

N: For me, basically when I work with Youth Ottawa over the summer,we had an entrepreneur in residence named Manu and he showed us this very cool graph or more like a chart. So it’s basically : not important, important, not urgent and urgent and the ways that those line up is how you delegate. So, if something is important and urgent, I'll do it. If something is not urgent but important, I can do it later. But, if it's something that is not important and not urgent, there's no need for me to be the person to do it. I'm able to delegate that to someone else. So, I think that like all of it is looking at what's important and what's urgent and where that falls on that scale and if I don't need to do it, well,someone else can do it.

H: Do the people that work with you now were working with Urban Legends before you joined or were you the one who recruited them ?

N: So, basically when the past directors, Khalifa and Panos left their positions, they basically put out a call for folks who were interested in doing specific tasks, whether that was promo, grant writing, whatever. Khalifa and Panos basically had people come in based on these task, but honestly as the season went on, we kind of just did things as they came and stuck less to that because I feel like you don't know your skills until you're putting into that situation. I don’t know. I wasn’t someone who really wanted to do promo but I love Canva and would die for it. So now, I'm like “I’ll do promo, don't even worry about it”. It's so funny. My partner and I joke about how when we see a poster sometimes were like “ Yeah that was made on Canva. I recognize the template”.

H: Yooooo when you see the template that you’ve previously used and you’re like …

N: I see you. I recognized you. Respect!

I think that these are folks that were part of UL but maybe not at the director-level. They existed. They knew what was coming. They knew what a slam was like. So, it wasn't completely people who have no idea what they were doing, which was super helpful. Things that I didn't know about, other people did and vice-versa. So, it was good to rely on each other’s experiences.

H: I was wondering how do you find people who are going to be reliable ?

*Screams* It is trial and error truly.

H: Especially, I find that in organizing, you’re often working with your friends and some people ー not gonna name names ー when they see that they are working with their friends, they slack a little bit more.

N: It is so much easier to tell someone you don't know that well that they need to do things.

H: You're triffling.

N: Yeah, exactly! I think that, to me, I think that people can become more reliable and, to a certain extent, I think there are some people, they're not in it for the right reasons. They have different priorities, which is fine if you have different priorities that’s totally valid. But, I think that, for me, it's a big thing of trial and error and learning how to communicate with people and be like: “hey we might not be close but I need us to work together and this is what I need from you and this is how we can work together” . So, I think a lot of it is trial and error and communication.

H: I find that having set expectations and more or less rigid rules really help. So, now you know who’s responsibility it is. You can’t be like “I didn't do it because I thought that so-and-so was gonna do it”. No, that was your responsibility and you were the one supposed to do it. And, also, after each event we try to do a debrief like this went well this did not go well. Next time, we’re gonna need to adjust in that way and that way. We also send feedback forms to the artists who are part of the show. So, they can tell us “Hey! Thank you so much for providing this, this and this. However, next time, I wish THIS would have happened instead”. You know ?

N: Definitely.

H: That's how I make sure that the final result that I have in my head, is the one that happens in real life.