When The Burn Out Hits

When I finished university, I didn’t think burnout would hit me… how very wrong I was indeed.

I was fortunate enough to attend a fantastic university, especially for the arts. My first year was during lockdown, and when second and third years came, I made it my mission to dive headfirst into my photography studies. Alongside that, I had a lot of friendships fall through during my second year, much of which was my fault due to poor communication and awkwardness, but I tried to rise above it and redirect my focus. That’s one reason why I focused so much on my studies, besides the fact that I just love photography. During my time on my course, I was told by many that the uni blues would hit many. I naively thought it wouldn’t be me. My teachers were thoughtful with their teaching and in trying to prep us for life after studying. However, what they don’t teach you is the internal monologue you have with yourself when you finally graduate. I have a goal in my head—in fact, I have many—but I never truly grasped how hard pursuing a career in the arts would be. My own fault for thinking so naively, and despite this rut I’m in, I have no regrets with the path I have chosen.

Now, you may be wondering why I’m oversharing and telling you all this. Well, it’s because it’s been over a year since I finished my studies, and I’m still in this rut. To further overshare, my therapist told me that burnout can take about 16 months to get over. I can slowly see myself getting better, but I still have days where I feel completely lost and like a failure. I just have to keep reminding myself that I am slowly chipping away at my dreams, even though I often lose focus of them. Again, apologies for going off on such a tangent.

Anyway, to try and help myself out of this rut, I reached out to Kathy, a lovely technician who used to teach me at university. She graciously let me spend the whole day developing some film. This film had been sitting with me for over a year; I had about six rolls to develop. Being the control freak I am, I refused to let anyone else develop them despite being offered money to get someone else to do the job. If you’re wondering why I’m like this with film, I’ll tell you. I fell in love with the process of developing my own black-and-white film during my studies, and I just didn’t want anyone else to enjoy that feeling. Even when I make mistakes during development and face the long-winded process of scanning all the images onto my hard drive, I love everything about the process. I think I love it more because it just takes time.

I spent half a day at my university near the end of June this year, with no other students around. I spent the whole day alone, headphones on, developing my film, letting it dry, and scanning it. It brought me so much joy, even if only for the day—it was a bit bittersweet, I must admit. I don’t want to get too sentimental (I think that’s too late now, I’ve already mentioned my therapist), but three months after graduating in 2023, I completely lost interest in my film camera. The last roll I shot was during a spontaneous month-long solo trip to Portugal around August/September of 2023, where my camera died midway through the trip, hence why you may see a few scratches on some of the shots as the film got stuck in the camera and I got impatient taking it out. Since then, I haven’t picked up a film camera, despite buying another one from a flea market in Portugal after my original one broke.

Of course, I’ve taken some photos since, for freelance work, but I don’t know why, but in my head, when I’m holding my film camera and taking photos, it feels more personal than with my digital camera. When I photograph with my 35mm film camera, it’s like it’s an extension of my brain, and I click the shutter every time I find something mildly intriguing or thoughtful.

So, I’m writing this blog post today to share some of my favourite images, which I didn’t recall taking at the time of developing (except for one image, which I absolutely love). This morning, before even thinking about writing, I bought five rolls of film. This is the first time I’ve purchased film this year, and I’m writing this as a promise to myself—and to you—to pick up my film camera again and rediscover the joy in those spontaneous, curious, fleeting moments that I used to absolutely love capturing.

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