I often feel that, if I don't continue to produce new work, everything around me will start to wilt. I need a break, but, ironically, this is the wrong time to take a break. So I start breaking into the emergency fuel cabinet looking for what's there.
A new play. I play with plots and monologues and structures in my head. Right now nothing is really clicking, but I've built up enough heuristics and tricks to power through it. 1
There are a lot of pieces in place that prevent us from breaking down: pharmacological pieces, institutional pieces, culture pieces. Liquid-modernity means you're always bending but never breaking. Even if you break, you're just discarded immediately, basically.
A hundred years ago, a professional person might have been sent to a sanatorium for a few months and given a rest in fresh air as therapy for a stressful age. I think by and large that probably was good—that worked. It worked a lot better than being forced to stay in the stream of things, prodded it into continued productivity, prodded it into cheerfulness.