Ep. 16 - Does Creativity Becomes a Luxury While Chasing Stability?

After a four-month pause, I’m back behind the mic. This time, with more clarity, purpose, and truth than ever before. In this deeply personal comeback episode, I reflect on the silent reset I didn’t plan but desperately needed. It wasn’t burnout. It wasn’t quitting. It was life demanding a recalibration.

We talk about what happens when passion takes a backseat to survival, why rest isn’t weakness, and how even breaks can bring breakthroughs. This isn’t just a return, it’s a reminder: sometimes the path forward starts with stepping back.

If you’ve ever felt guilty for pausing something you love, or questioned whether you’re still “on the right track”, this episode is your permission slip to rethink what progress really looks like.

In this episode you'll know:

• The truth behind the 4-month hiatus
• How overload taught me to rebuild my system
• The mindset shift that helped me return to podcasting
• Lessons from Think Again & Atomic Habits
• Why your break might be part of your breakthrough

Let this be your reminder: passion doesn’t disappear, it waits. And when you're ready, it welcomes you back.

About Pk:
Pratyush has been a designer for almost 6 years. He started creating content to share his knowledge and establish a connection between design and business. He believes that knowledge grows by sharing and he wants to do just that. He is in a journey to help fellow freelancers and content creators make a profitable career.

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Transcript

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the underdog protagonist. It has been a while. Four months to be exact. And if you're still here tuning in after all this time, I just want to say thank you, genuinely.

This episode is going to be a little different, a little more personal, and hopefully just what we both need right now. I have always talked about recharge Sundays as a way to pause, reset, and prepare for what's ahead. Ironically, in the past four months, I had to do exactly that, but on a much bigger scale. Therefore, this episode is all about why the break was not a detour. And I want to tell you why.

Now let me be real with you. This was not one of those I'm burnt out so I need the rest kind of bricks. It was much messier than that. Life got overwhelming. The workload piled up.

There were days where I was juggling way too many things, trying to stabilize my income, figure out what I truly want to build long term, and just survive. Honestly. Podcasting, this thing I'm so passionate about just could not make it to the top of the priority list. And at first, I felt guilty about that. Like, I was not letting something go that I cared deeply about.

But here's what I realized. Sometimes stepping back is not failure. It's a form of recalibration. It's your mind and body saying, hey, slow down so you don't crash completely. And during this past few months, I learned something very important.

I learned that silence has wisdom. When you stop doing the thing you're known for, when you step away from the routine, you hear your own thoughts more clearly. And in that space, I realized this. I was not just pausing podcasting. I was reevaluating my entire direction.

I was unintentionally living my own recharge Sundays. I was not recording, but I was living the reset. That's the wild part. All the things I used to say in those episodes about rest, about clarity, being intentional, and more, I had to finally listen to my own voice. I had to do it, not just reach it.

This break showed me that passion does not disappear. It waits quietly, and it keeps pulling you back. That's what podcasting is for me. Every time I stop, something eventually brings me back to the mic. But here's where the real growth happened.

I stopped seeing the break as a loss. I started seeing it as a part of the story. And maybe you're there right now too. Maybe you have stepped away from something you love and maybe you're doubting whether to pick it back up. I want you to know it's okay.

Not every part of your journey has to be productive. Sometimes the pause is the point. Let's talk the bigger picture. Why do we feel so guilty for stopping, for slowing down? It's because we have been conditioned to believe that doing is what makes us valuable.

The rest is laziness. That breaks our signs of weakness. But that's just a flawed mindset. There's a book by Adam Grant called Think Again. I'm sure you must have heard about it.

He talks about the importance of rethinking what we assume to be true. And I had to rethink my entire relationship with productivity. I had to admit that taking time off was not lazy, It was necessary. Sometimes a break is the only way to avoid a breakdown. Now I don't want to be very dramatic saying that I was avoiding a breakdown or I was on a verge of breakdown.

It's not really that. It honestly became very difficult for me to manage multiple things and, you know, put time frames or priorities for each and every task and commit to it on a long term basis. I had to drop what I was passionate for just so that I can make a living. And here's what the workload taught me. Firstly, that was very real.

I was chasing stability financially and professionally. And when your brain is constantly in the fix it or build it mode, creativity becomes a luxury. So podcasting for a while felt out of reach, but that chase also taught me something. I don't want to live a life where I'm always in survival mode. I want to create from a place of peace.

I want to build systems where this passion project, this podcast is not sidelined every time life gets intense. I have read this interesting book by James Clear, atomic habits. I'm sure a lot of people have already read that and, you know, told you about the benefits of the book. And I want to point out a quote from the book. He says that you do not rise to the level of your goals.

You fall to the level of your systems. And that quote stayed with me because my system was not supporting my passion. So I've been rebuilding it quietly, slowly, and now I feel like I'm ready again. Not completely, but I feel like I should take the first step, the baby step, so that the step two becomes easier. Thinking on it or pondering on it for a long period of time won't make sense.

I'll just be sitting in my comfort zone, trying to delay it, trying to procrastinate on it, and maybe I'll even drop the flow. You tell me. Have I dropped the flow or not? I'll appreciate that. Now I want to flip the mic to you for a second.

Where in your life have you taken a break? Not because you wanted to, but because life made you. And have you judged yourself for it? Or have you given yourself grace? I want this episode to be a permission slip for you to see your pause not as a detour, but as a part of your comeback.

Take a second and ask yourself, what did my last break teach me? Because I promise you there's always a lesson there, even if it's just that you needed more rest than you thought. Now zooming out, what happens now? I mean, what happens next for the underdog protagonist? Well, for starters, I'm back.

Slowly but consistently. And the episodes may not always be perfect, but they will be real. They'll be intentional, and they'll be created from a place of deep purpose. Because that's exactly where I'm right now. Recharge Sundays might return in a new form or maybe we'll explore new themes.

But the heart of it stays the same. This is a space for those underdogs who are trying to build something better, something new, and in a verge of making that big breakthrough. And eventually want to live the life and create something big or are already living the life and are here to help you do the same as well. Either way, this will be the space to empower all of you. I thank you again for still being here, for being patient, for allowing me to step back and come back.

That kind of support means the world. If this episode resonated with you in any way, share it with someone who might need it. Maybe someone who's been hard on themselves for taking a break. Let them know they're not alone, and neither are you. I'm Pratyush and you are listening to the underdog protagonist, and this this is just the beginning again.