From Main Stage to Monday Morning
Three days ago I returned from an out-of-town trip, a real fun one, and now I'm staring at a stack of garbage that needs to be taken out, a pile of laundry that needs to be washed, and wondering how the hell I went from "exciting work travel lady" to "Apartment living person responsible for toilet paper inventory."
This brutal comedown to ordinary life after a momentous event is not an unfamiliar experience to creators. We get high on "novelty-seeking behaviour". When we experience new, stimulating environments, our neural reward system lights up like a pinball machine. Studies show that people high in openness to experience (ahem, creatives) have a 23% higher baseline need for stimulation compared to the general population.
We're literally wired to chase shiny things.
But the programming goes deeper: Researchers have identified an annoying pattern called "hedonic adaptation", your brain's ability to return to baseline happiness levels regardless of positive life changes. That thrilling trip? That mind-blowing conference? Time spent on a new film set? Your brain files it under "new normal/boring-regular" after just a few days. It takes an average of 3-7 days to recalibrate, which explains why I'm on my sixth load of laundry and questioning all of my life choices, not at all acclimated to the mundane on day 1.
The addiction isn't just to novelty, it's to recognition, to feeling seen. This particular trip afforded me rare encounters of peer acknowledgment and validation. I was getting pats on the back, positive feedback, all the fun kudos. At this very moment I don't have an open channel to an audience, or to peer recognition, or any real immediate external validation machine. Turns out the intermittent reinforcement of connecting with new people and opportunities at a networking event is incredibly addictive, not unlike the positive feedback a creative gets from performing, or posting a new piece of content.
This has me reflecting on the influencers in the room. I'm imagining having an identity so thoroughly entangled with experiences that your grocery store run needs to be "content-worthy." When you're an influencer, your morning coffee has to have the right lighting, your belly bloat day becomes a "vulnerable moment" for the feed. What a fucking hamster wheel of hell.
The statistics back up this intuition. A 2023 study found that creators experience 34% higher rates of burnout compared to traditional workers due to "performative living." 78% of full-time creators report feeling "always on," and 61% say they've compromised personal relationships for content opportunities. How would this not make for a personality disorder??
Based on those numbers the key to evading these comedown lows isn't pursuing constant stimulation, constant consumption, and constant audience feedback, because you'll literally break your fucking brain. Neuroscientist Dr. Anna Lembke calls it "dopamine dysregulation," when you need increasingly intense experiences to feel normal.
You'll also break your bank account. The average "experience-seeking" millennial spends 13% more of their income on activities and travel compared to previous generations, while 40% report feeling financially stressed by their lifestyle choices. Bonus: you'll fuck up your real relationships too. While you're collecting passport stamps and networking events, your actual friends and family are having meaningful conversations over regular meals in familiar spaces.
Takeaway: Proximity to excitement and non-stop content creation doesn't make you productive, successful or happy. Sitting still doesn't make you a failure. Needing a few days to acclimate to your real life after a memorable deviation from normal is completely normal.
If you're with me in the post-adventure slumps, wondering how to find inspiration again, here's what I'm trying:
Accept the recalibration period. It takes 72 hours minimum for your brain to stop sulking about returning to baseline. Stop fighting it, plan around it.
Prepare your re-entry. Have a checklist of robotic to-dos ready to get you back to normal. Find your anchors, not adventures. One of my daily anchors is Writers’ Hour, it happens whether I'm feeling inspired or contemplating the existential weight of taking out the garbage, it’s cozy and comforting and kicks off every weekday at 6am.
Be a tourist at home. Were you trying exotic new foods? Hit up that new noodle spot that just opened. Were you staying in fancy hotels? Wash your sheets, throw in fabric softener, buy the good coffee beans. Were you meeting interesting people? Actually call that friend you've been meaning to catch up with, or connect with that new contact and ask them out to coffee.
Practice gratitude for your real life. Find real, raw, gritty appreciation for the comforts of your home and familiar routine. Hold a moment of appreciation for your morning coffee ritual, your art supplies, the familiar faces at your grocery store, your afternoon walk.
Mine your experiences. Process the takeaways from your time away. What feelings came up? What conversations made you think differently? What moments felt electric? What awkward encounters taught you something about yourself? Write it down, voice memo it, sketch it - whatever works. People who spend just 15 minutes reflecting on recent experiences retain 35% more useful insights than those who just "let it settle naturally."
Those new ingredients you collected - the different perspectives, the unexpected conversations, the way that museum made you feel, they don't automatically integrate into your creative work. You have to consciously mine them.
Harvard's Happiness Lab found that people who find joy in routine activities score 19% higher on life satisfaction measures than those constantly seeking novel experiences. Sustainable creativity comes from what Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls "flow states," and these happen more often during familiar, low-stakes activities than during high-stimulation adventures.
I guess downtime isn't dead time. It's processing time. Integration time. The time when your brain takes all those stimulating experiences and figures out what to do with them. It might not feel nourishing, thrilling, or particularly rewarding, but this is our reminder that it's valuable and serves our professional, personal, and creative development.
Your laundry basket isn't the enemy of creativity, it's just another fucking Wednesday. And Wednesday, as it turns out, is exactly where the real work happens. Sometimes the most revolutionary act is accepting that inspiration, and levelling up, doesn't always come from exotic locations or networking events. Sometimes it comes from the quiet space between the extraordinary moments.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have some Power Core Banana Shakes and Tostitos to transform into what I'm generously calling "meals” before I vacuum the apartment then clean the toilets. Revolutionary stuff, really.