The Post-Project Blues
You’ve worked hard, pushing yourself (and maybe your family or friends) in the frantic effort to make a deadline, complete a project, achieve your dream. You did it! You should feel elated.
So why do you feel so low?
It was a conundrum I wasn’t expecting to confront when I finally finished the revisions on my manuscript — a project thought would take a year but ended up taking 18 months. I expected to feel ebullient, or at least relieved, to finally send my baby out to agents. Instead, I felt adrift.
If you’ve been there too, I’ve got good news! It’s not just us! It’s not even generational. A 1987 article from the New York Times on “post-writum depression” describes the symptoms of post-project blues, and documents that those of us who have been there are in the good company of Joyce Carol Oates, Judith Krantz, and Danielle Steele.
Psychology Today calls it the post-adrenaline blues and blames body chemistry — a drop in the adrenaline that fueled those final revisions and frantic synopsis drafts. Our bodies actually go into adrenaline withdrawal. That explains why it feels so wretched. The good news is that given enough detox time, we will naturally rebalance.
