Digging My Way Out

Photo by Michał Mancewicz on Unsplash

I’ve been trying to find a healthier rhythm as a creator for a while now. It feels a lot like digging myself out after a heavy snow. Towards the end of 2024, I realized how unsustainable my process had become and that it wasn’t achieving my goals. It wasn’t that the content I was creating was bad; it was how I was going about it. The combination of how I was going about things and the lack of results drove me to change everything.

For the first twenty months of building the Overflow Community, I created various types of content through articles and social media posts to drive engagement. The community aspect of Overflow is hosted on a community-building platform called Circle. I produced programming content within the community in areas I felt were significant based on community values and what I thought would help members and ultimately drive engagement on the Circle platform.

The Overflow Community hosts weekly meetings every Sunday, where members can virtually gather to help them learn, connect, and grow. These meetings provide a safe space to learn more about faith and mental health while connecting with others facing similar brain health challenges. Early in Overflow’s history, I taught the material at the beginning of each meeting and then discussed the topic or other things members faced.

Our approach to meetings would undergo tweaks to improve different aspects to help members and provide a better experience. The experience improved over time, but eventually, members suggested shifting the format of these meetings to enhance our discussion. The suggestion was to remove all teaching from our meetings and move solely to discussion. The teaching aspect would need to be packaged differently, which meant a lot of changes and extra work on my part.

Long before the shift in the meeting format, I saw that many of our members who missed meetings honestly missed the content. This made it difficult for them to feel connected at our next meeting because they felt behind due to their absence at the last meeting. Trying to address their needs, I began recording the teaching I was delivering and editing it to post to YouTube and for an audio podcast. Community members loved this option as it helped them feel more connected when they could not attend meetings.

The shift to recording teaching outside our weekly meetings was a huge investment and required a lot of adjustment. For me, this felt like being on stage or teaching in a different way than before. I struggled with the recording process, which I won’t go into here, but this was a huge growth opportunity. I spent an extra one to two days creating the teaching, so I had little time to work on my book or other projects.

The process of creating content set me on a path of creating content and building a community full-time. It pushed publishing my book and any other projects to the back burner. I was happy to be doing it and felt like I was following God’s calling for my life. I was always on what I call the content creation hamster wheel, working on some form of content creation.

This was super exciting initially! I had dreamed of starting a community and publishing content as a creator for years. I felt like I was living the dream. The longer I was on this hamster wheel, the more I tried to tweak my process to make it more productive and less exhausting. I made great strides toward improving my process.

One of the big glaring problems was that I was always exhausted. No matter how much I tried to recover after hours, I never seemed to catch up on rest. I struggled to relax, and taking a nap or turning off my brain was challenging. There was no separation between my new “work” and my personal life. It all ran together, which was a blessing, or so I thought.

In late October 2024, I began recovering from this ongoing exhaustion by taking a break. I started using content from Life.Church’s Open Network to help with content production, allowing me to pause content creation while maintaining community engagement. The free content from Open Network was a blessing. I also scheduled time off from our meetings around Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Many adjustments were made, and I won’t pretend I eloquently orchestrated this, keeping all the balls in the air. I struggled with different areas of community building, such as on boarding and improving engagement. However, this season of adjustments showed me how flawed my prior approach was. It made me realize that if I hadn’t made these adjustments, Overflow wouldn’t exist today.

I share this story not because it follows my book or because it’s a part of that story but because it is a part of my ongoing journey with brain health. If you are wondering what part of the book this falls under, I would say it doesn’t. Towards the end of 2024, the A Better Way newsletter was all about publishing my book chapter by chapter. My goal of publishing this book on Substack was accomplished. Yay!!

In 2025, I stepped into a different season of creating content around the book and other content that further tells my story. After taking some much-needed time off from creating content for the Overflow Community, I am slowly regaining my footing. I was so tired and burnt out that returning to running the community and creating content took me much longer than expected. I was beginning to wonder if I would ever be back in the mindset of creating.

If you are new to A Better Way, I would encourage you to read How to Respond When Things Aren’t Working and A Time For Change. These posts will help you gain a more complete understanding of my journey.

I plan to publish some A Better Way podcast episodes here on Substack. Based on what I learned last year, I am not rushing to figure it all out. I am more concerned with building healthy, sustainable systems around content creation. I'll update you with more details as I begin to put the pieces together.

So What?!?

What can you take away from this story? The main thing I hope you take away is hearing and understanding my story. I hope my story resonates with you and inspires you to make positive changes in your life. I don’t have three tips that you should implement today. I am learning by trial and error that building healthy and sustainable habits or systems will keep me healthy and living out my calling. It also shows that healing and recovering from brain health challenges is possible.

Many of you might wonder if there is hope for positive change in your life. I want to assure you that there is so much hope for you! The Bible tells us in John 10:10 that Jesus came so we might “have life, and have it to the full.” I often tell people that recovery in their lives will look different than what they had in mind. The first thing most people need before anything else is a change in their perspective. Another major part of recovery is often found within a community. If you are not actively engaged in a community, I invite you to check out the Overflow Community.