Hella Chisme Podcast is where unfiltered storytelling meets bold conversation. This show serves up juicy chisme while diving deep into the chaos and beauty of everyday life. From sex, dating, and marriage to pop culture, spirituality, and everything in between — no topic is off-limits.
Through a strong lens on identity, culture, and connection, Dana and friends keep it real for a community of listeners who are curious, culturally fluent, and down for the ride.
Welcome back to another episode of the Hella Chisme Podcast
This week we diver bak into a conversation with Ryan and Mike Brown.
The dream you're chasing shouldn't cost you your peace or your rent.
On our 100th episode, we sat down with multidisciplinary creatives Ryan (visibility coach, founder of Get a Grip, host of Lion Ryan) and Mike Brown (award-winning podcast producer, creator of The Art of Letting Go) for the conversation most creatives avoid: how to keep making art when the algorithm, the bills, and the burnout all want a piece of you.
creative burnout, balancing passion and career, redefining success, financial freedom for creatives, charging your worth, freelance pricing, imposter syndrome, self doubt, comparison, social media algorithm pressure, detaching from metrics, journaling for mental health, content batching, creative block, unlearning societal expectations, queer creators, queer podcast, lgbtq community, mental health for creatives, work life balance
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And I kind of want to just have a conversation about, you know, when you start, when you have felt or have or feel burnt out, what are some of the things that you recognize for yourself and kind of how do you work through some of those things?
SPEAKER_00
Ooh, I'm interested in hearing your answer, Mike.
SPEAKER_01
So working through burnout, that's a good question. Like I I really feel like in the last year or so I've I've done better about it because I used to just burn out and just not be able to do nothing for months. And I think I really just follow the flow of my feelings. Like if I'm feeling myself not feeling something, I kind of give into the feeling and it'll give me that space to get back to where I need to be. Yeah, that's that's probably the clears for me.
you saying giving into the feeling is like surrendering. So you let your body know and you let your nervous system know that it's okay. And that's pretty much it. Yeah, and that's less burnout. That's less burnout. And that that's the key right there. That's that's it. Because if I sit here and tell y'all I ain't gonna hold you, it could probably be a nervous system response, or it could probably be a trauma response. I don't feel burnout. You get what I'm saying? Because it might be that, well, what if you always burnt out, girl? But what if burnout, but what if my burnout life looks like this? You know what I mean? So I tap in as much as I can. I really do. I tap in as much as I
can. I do the work as much as I can. I check in, I ask myself how I'm doing. I'm doing my somatic stuff all the time. Like I'm I'm breathing through everything, but it's not from a place of well, just breathe because you're about to die. It's not like that anymore for me. I I think I reached some sort of switch where I can control this. Yeah, I can control this, I can control this. If I don't want to do it, I'm not gonna do it. Yeah, and then how do you get burnt out if you don't do it? Now, you know what I mean? Yeah, but also a lot of people believe that burnout is overworking when burnout is doing the same thing over and over again with no results. Okay, okay, so so if I'm trying, I am trying over and oh, I'm not being seen. I have no results. I can't under, I can't get it. I can't get, let's say, a grand. I'm trying over and over again. Or or check this out. I could do this Lion Ryan podcast. I'm on season three twice. Now I'm on episode one, season one for the third time. Now you could now I'm gonna let you know right there. I could feel that burnout. I could. I'm not going there. I'm gonna try again. I'm gonna try again in April because what did I lose? Who's watching? Because I wasn't consistent, there's no audience. Let's be real. I did that to myself. So who can I be mad at? Oh, you know, there's the solution to a lot of what would be burnout. A lot of music artists have burnout because they have no streams, they keep producing music, they make music, they make music videos, they got no views. Well, if we go back and see what we did to not have any views, were you consistent? Did you put out enough content? Are you dropping too many singles at once, confusing the hell out of your audience? Are you doing these things? Because this all matters. So, my burnout, like I say, I can't say I am perfect, but I just don't believe it's there, whether it's a trauma response or I just found the hack, which is this is your fault anyway.
SPEAKER_01
That's hilarious.
SPEAKER_00
I'm not playing, I'm not playing about my body this year.
And and I think, I think for me, a lot of times it's really like, you know, like I just get that feeling, like you said, of doing something so many times. And like just I'll hit that block of like, all right, I want to do this in a different way. And rather than like just being so like bogged down by it, I'll go do something different. Like, that's the same thing I tell people about when they say, like, oh, I have writer's block or I have this, I have that. No, you know, just go do something different. If you don't feel like writing a song, go take a picture. You don't want to take a picture, go make a podcast. Go do any like we're so creative that we could literally go do anything else. And what I found a lot of times is when I focus my energy somewhere else, it'll bring me right back to that thing.
SPEAKER_00
Yep, that's that's human nature, that's our bodies.
My favorite thing for when I have the block is to do nothing. And that's just me. That's just me. Because a lot of my peers can't do nothing, silly. We have ADHD, silly. We can't do nothing. Like my peers don't stop, okay? And I think that I have the closest friend group. I believe I have the closest friend group because I'm neurotypical and a hundred percent of my friends are neurodivergent. 100%. Not even one, not even one. And I've been I've been evaluated several times. I'm like, how show I ain't got that? I don't, I, I don't have ADHD, but my friends who do are like magical geniuses. They're genius people, but they also can't sit down. So the burnout and the fatigue is much more intense. So I under I understand both sides. I get it, but try to do nothing, y'all. Just try to just do nothing.
SPEAKER_01
Listen to it. It's funny because I am one of those people that like I just can't sit still, but then at the same time, when I do sit still, it usually leads to me finding what I need to do. So I I think that stillness is so valuable.
here. I when I find myself being still or wanting to do nothing, I'm still doing something. And like recently, my I was telling my therapist the same thing. I said, I have writer's block, I haven't been able to write. And she's like, Well, guess what? Here's your homework assignment. Go write out them goals that you want to achieve and make sure you write about how this time last year you were struggling so hard and how you almost lost your mind, and then you had to come find a therapist, and now we're getting you together. Wow, yeah. So I did, and and I mean, and when she and so when I did that, I then was like, okay, I've my the juices are flowing, things are happening, things are going. We good, and that's how it happens sometimes.
As you say that, Dana, it makes me think about my journaling practice. And Ryan, I'm curious to hear about your practice because I know you designed a journal, but yeah, I journal three pages every day, and sometimes I don't have anything to say. Sometimes I got a lot to say. Sometimes I'm just writing bullshit just to just get out of my head, like brain dumping. But Ryan, I'm curious to hear like how journaling has impacted you and how creating a journal has impacted other people.
SPEAKER_00
So I love journals. Speaking of journals, I sell uh this journal on Amazon. Uh, we also are on TikTok shop, and we also uh I can also do orders personally if you need it signed in autographs. So the reason the reason why I was inspired to do a journal, it wasn't because it's like a digital asset or like something to get rich. It was something that changed my life because I remembered when I was out of everything. I didn't have anything, like nothing. The only thing I had was a pen and paper. Um when I was unhoused, I used to go into Barnes and Noble and just read, but I could never buy a book because I was just like so, so broke. I was I had nothing. Like I couldn't buy a Starbucks coffee chap. Okay? And I I realized that journaling actually it changed my brain chemistry.
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