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This is a podcast for anyone feeling stretched thin by work, activism, caregiving, or just surviving under systems that weren’t built for our thriving. On Balm in the Burnout, we speak with artists, organizers, and community builders about what’s helping us stay grounded and resourced in the face of burnout. Together, we reclaim our right to soothe, heal, and make hopeful, sustainable action.
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[00:00:00]
Megan: All right. Welcome to Balm and the Burnout Today I'm so excited to have my friend and former classmate, Taylor Brorby. Taylor Brorby is the author of three books, Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land. Second book- Crude: Poems. The third book is Coming Alive: Action and Civil Disobedience, and he's the co-editor of Fracture: Essays, Poems, and Stories on Fracking in America.
Taylor's work has appeared in the New York Times, the Huffington Post, Literary Hub, Orion Magazine, and is widely Anthologized. Taylor's work has been supported by fellowships from the National Book Critics Circle, the MacDowell Colony. [00:01:00] Mesa Refuge, and the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. He has been interviewed about his work on MSNBC and NPR and serves on the editorial boards of Hub City Press and Terrain.org.
A contributing editor at North American Review, he teaches in the MFA program at the University of Alabama. And fun fact, Taylor and I went to undergrad together at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. So throwback, but here we are now, it's 2025, and we're together again.
Taylor: surviving and hopefully thriving. Megan.
Megan: Let's hope for it. Well, thanks again for being here today. You know, this bio, it really speaks to who you are, right? You're, you're so many things, and I'm curious if you wanna speak to who you're becoming these days.
Taylor: Well, first, thanks for having me on your program, Megan. It's wonderful to reconnect in this way, and [00:02:00] it's a question I rarely get asked as a writer, who am I becoming? Because most of the time as a writer, we. Sit alone in a room and scribble on our yellow legal pads or type on a computer and talk out loud to ourselves and say, we're channeling different voices. as I'm getting closer to 40 now, which feels so odd to say, I think I'm becoming a much more grounded person. I think I'm still that bubbly, extroverted, Truman Capote type homosexual bouncing around. Yeah. there's a lot more craving in my life right now for calm, steadiness. Some type of 23-year-old me would hate what I'm about to say. Routine, you know that. I mean, my day when I am living sort of my best life and think, oh, this is the person I really wanna become and this is how I wanna operate. [00:03:00] It looks like mornings are. Given over to writing until about noon, and then in the afternoon going and exercising, then starting cocktail hour around five with friends and cooking dinner and having a lovely evening either with those friends or in reading or listening to music or watching a movie.
And if that could be my life from now until the. Earthworms have their way with me. I would be a very happy ginger. That's the type of person I'm trying to become because I think in a routine I also get the things done that I want to. I feel a sense of calm, maybe not outright control. But feel like I have a handle on my life and I can, I sort of like to live a simple life in those ways, but life that feels, that's creative, taking care of myself, but also filled [00:04:00] with relationships too.
I.
Megan: Yeah, I hear that. I hear your values infused in this becoming. I hear just that groundedness and how that not only supports you, but supports your community, the community building, the teaching, your artistry, your writing. You know, I've heard there's something about those morning pages.
Taylor: Yeah, that's right. Julia Cameron. She is just there with us looking over. And I have to tell you though on that, I mean, years ago I was a night shift worker. As a writer I would start at 11 and work till 3, 4, 5 in the morning and I had shifted all my teaching in the afternoon to, I still needed my eight hours of sleep. I can't tell you how refreshing it is to wake up at noon and have most all of the emails you're gonna get for the day in, and then you can just knock them out and be done with them rather than trickling in. But then during the plague times being awake at [00:05:00] that time of day or night. I kind of eerie because that's also when you're alone and no one's up, which used to be why writing at that time was so good. No one would bother me. then before vaccines and things like this, I kept, you know, then all those dark thoughts started swirling around. I'm like, no one's really
Megan: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: I shifted to the morning 'cause it just felt. I'm waking up early. I'm gonna wake up before the world wakes up and try to start my work, but then it'll be the daytime and then I'll go to, it's almost like being a kid who's scared of the dark in some ways, but now it is.
Morning pages, Megan, to your point.
Megan: Yeah. And what a, what a sweet noticing for yourself of just. The loneliness, the things that come up, the things that shift. And I think people don't often do that with routines. You know, they're just like, oh, this isn't working for me anymore. Well, I'm not gonna do that. Right? But you're obviously committed to your craft.
You're a [00:06:00] writer, you're gonna keep writing. So being open to shifting those routines so they fit with your needs as they change over time.
Taylor: Yeah, I think I was feeling more like round peg, square hole syndrome or something and thought this is no longer working for me, and this is such a part of my identity. And being a writer feels more like who I am rather than what I do. And I love waking up. It used to be being up late at night, but I love waking up to that mindset of saying, oh, I get to wake up in my imagination and for two to four hours every morning.
Really, it, it's almost like a meditative practice, even if writing doesn't get done. the commitment to operating in that same head space every day and thinking eventually. Over time, something will come. It's like practicing as a musician, you know, you practice your scales and your arpeggios and they serve their purpose.
So I think showing [00:07:00] up to the work and having a certain mindset every day really is helpful. It's like mental flossing, I guess.
Megan: Love that. Yeah. And you talked about just how much presence you have in that routine, and is there just another time in your life, maybe outside of that routine where you felt just really present? Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah, I think I have felt really present if. We can go really dark here in moments of death. I
Megan: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: really been on my mind in the last year. A year ago in April, my oldest nephew was 18, about to graduate high school, was killed. And there is a certain, not only clarity, and I don't mean clarity in that cliched way about like what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life.
Thank you Mary Oliver. You know, may you rest in peace. But a real heightening of the senses. Like I can remember day up [00:08:00] through that funeral and that after the funeral, it's sort of like being so on to the dynamics of family, my sister and her loss, my nephews losing a brother. It is in sharp relief in my memory, Megan, and, and how I felt.
I can even feel it in my body as we're talking about that. I felt really. Present in that moment. And I also felt present in that loss,
Megan: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: sounds almost contradictory in some way of I, I, of course, felt the spiraling thing, you're losing someone you love, and I immediately felt how much space my nephew occupied in my life.
And so I felt really present to that loss. And then. to seek tools to help me process that loss. I'm still processing that
Megan: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: and I am not a [00:09:00] person who is resistant to therapy. I didn't have an ongoing therapy practice at that point, but got back into one a few months after my nephew's death.
I, like most people, probably say when they're starting up, I waited too long. But I felt in that time, those months, I was really present.
Megan: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: present maybe in an overwhelming way.
Megan: Yeah, yeah. Present with the grief that keeps rolling and that grief is hard to hold on your own. And so, you know, he
Taylor: a culture that does not do grief well, to be
Megan: No.
Taylor: I mean, my sister had told me months later. In her official work documents, their company policy is that she would have three bereavement days. mean, can you imagine? You lose a child and you almost have to go, well, I hope you lose your child on, you know, a [00:10:00] Tuesday.
So you can have Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday off, come back to work. I, I mean, it's just, it's crazy, you know? I mean, and, and to think of how quickly. world, our American culture wants us to quote, get back to normal even though our new normal is not what our past was anymore.
Megan: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for speaking to that. I think culture is a huge thing, and so even just you honoring your own needs and maybe that. Time when you did wait a little bit. It always takes so long to, you know, you're like, like a referral goes through and then you have to schedule, and then the first session with the therapist is always, you know, diagnostic and you're like, I just need to talk like, wow.
Taylor: And then when you do start talking, you're like, this is a random stranger. I'm just bawling in front of and I Our time's up. Okay, I'll see [00:11:00] you next week. You know,
Megan: Yep. Yep.
Taylor: very, yeah, but so important. I have found, I mean, I feel so much more. To your questions grounded and
Megan: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: in my life and, and my therapist has a phrase that's really, it really works for me as a writer and a teacher too, where she'll say, if I'm feeling a certain way, well that's just something to be curious about. You know, can you
Megan: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: about that? Not judge it. Just be curious about it. And I thought, oh yeah, I can be curious. So
Megan: Yeah.
Taylor: helpful.
Megan: Oh, I'm so glad. And I just, you know, thank you for speaking of the authentic grief and how the dual line of that presence of feeling it all and having those heightened senses while also, you know, having this presence on the other side where like, you have this, you know. Whatever it is, greater appreciation for life, like better understanding of, of your time [00:12:00] with the people that you love, right?
It provides that perspective no matter how hard it is. Um, and I really see you living that. I know you're also writing about these themes too, so.
Taylor: yeah, yeah. When you're a memoirist like I am, you have to go back into those emotions and recreate them in such a way that the reader feels 'em. So this is often too, why in memoir classes or nonfiction writing, we really advise our students, are you ready to write about it?
You
Megan: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: never be ready to write about it. Or it might only be in journal writing because part of it is you have to, if not relive it, think about, oh, what was I feeling in that moment and how can I. a story around that to help the reader feel that, I mean, it is like a magic trick, but it can be a risky magic trick for the writer themselves if they're not at a place where they've been processing that.
Megan: For sure. I'm hearing hints of that idea of burnout [00:13:00] coming in for an artist who, you know. The content that you're working on or whatever it is, brings up stuff that you need additional support with. So how have you experienced burnout in your work, and what do you do to remediate that?
Taylor: Yeah, I think, I am a self-described, probably not in how most America views it, but you know, a type of workaholic. I mean, it's to that earlier comment of being a writer is more who I am rather than what I do. When I am talking to you right now, I'm thinking about, okay, how is Megan's head slightly tilted?
You know, how would I describe the background color on her wall? Like, I've got this stream of light in front of me looking like a swords gonna cut off my head or something. So you're constantly noticing and that that's something that can be exhausting at times, you know, to really pay strict attention, whether I'm writing actually about you, [00:14:00] or it becomes a way of thinking through what I'm writing about being scheduled has helped with the burnout, but I am also someone who, you know, I move at a pretty quick pace.
Not like physically I don't believe in running or things like that, you know, but that I. I can write quickly and confidently I'm not a very patient person with the, the way that publishing industry, which is a major controller of my life, works 'cause it's much
Megan: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: than I am. burnout to me has really looked like having too much time to stew not moving projects forward.
I mean, my life is so Around writing, since I really think of my writing as also in service to people that if I tell my story really well, [00:15:00] it helps other people feel less alone. I mean, we, it's why we read, you know, as the character CS Lewis in the Play Shadow Lounge, "we read to know we're not alone." And
Megan: Hmm.
Taylor: so I really like that idea as a writer to think my writing isn't for me, it is for others.
Not that I can. Solve their issues. Uh, I get more, I really burnout to being frustrated. Maybe they're the two sides of the same coin in a way of feeling like things are stagnant. Why aren't things moving forward? And I don't mean to say am I not more successful? It's just sort of those projects out the door so you can also let go of them
Megan: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: of cluttering your mind or creating kind of like. calcified buildup in your brain and you're having to do the constant like jerk back of like, oh, do I need to do something different so that that project seems sexier so someone [00:16:00] will take it. are the times when I usually need to go on a little like vacation
Megan: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: trip. I mean, it's usually when I need to go fly fishing is, I mean, before our official conversation we were talking and I keep thinking. I am pinging around in my mind too much, I really need to go out and reconnect with nature. And for me, that does look usually like fly fishing because there's better to cool your tubes than standing in a cold stream for like six or eight hours. it's better than a deep tissue massage, you know?
And it's, it's back to that way of noticing, oh, I'm noticing an eagle flyer. Maybe there's a Martin that comes down to the bank. But I also think in my health is a way that I've really avoided out. I've been close to burnout. I wouldn't say I've officially burned out where I [00:17:00] feel incapacitated or I need a career change or things like this, but when it's been getting close is when I've not been prioritizing my physical health. As well. so those are just simple things, getting out in nature and exercising, which both are moving my body. You know, I think in American culture we can become so screen dependent or sedentary that we just ingest or inject, excuse me, maybe ingest healthy foods, but also a little movement in our lives. Dancing. I regularly dance alone around my apartment. It just helps me feel good and so I'm a sort of hedonist for pleasure in those ways.
Megan: Love that so much. And I think I'm also hearing, and I just kind of wanna bring this a little bit back to integrative health. 'cause what you described sounds so [00:18:00] much to me, like some of the, philosophy behind energy medicine when you were talking about. A creative project's doing and sitting in your brain too long and it literally starting to feel like a calcified thing in your brain.
Some of the pieces around energy medicine, you know, the philosophies are that we have these many different energetic bodies beyond the physical body, and when something starts to bother us, it kind of starts in those external bodies and start making their way in and start affecting the physical body.
And so your intuition to say , I know what I need right now, let's go fly fishing. And how that supports just the relaxation of tension, your presence, you know, everything that we know about how nature can provide health and wellbeing. I think. That was just fascinating to me how you described, knowing that it starts to feel like that and, and noticing the symptoms for you feel like, you know, the pinging around in your brain, we really need a break.
Right. And so you're, you're actively doing [00:19:00] that when you reach close to those points so that you can keep doing your work.
Taylor: Yeah. Yeah, because I think we have a odd, work is probably my favorite four letter word, but I think of work as separate from my job. You know, it's sort of, really related to that concept of vocation. I guess. It is something that brings me pleasure. it also, again, is back to that service idea.
So thinking that there's plenty of work to be doing these days, and it might be difficult work, but also there's an element of joy in that work. And so that's why it feels like such an important part of my life to be focused on my work because it. It benefits me as well. It's not just saying, oh, I'm like the Oracle of Alabama disseminating knowledge across the world here.
You know, it's really about being in deep relationship with myself as well.
Megan: Yeah. Thank you for reframing that and offering [00:20:00] an alternate definition. I mean, I think too, I read your bio, but there isn't a lot about, you know, the other things that you do for your work. You know, some of this community-based activism, environmentalism. So do you wanna just share a little bit of what sparks you with that kind of edge these days?
Taylor: Yeah, I mean, I grew up in a, you know, swimming in a lake that never freezes in North Dakota, and every lake should freeze, so I. The reason that is, is 'cause the water of that reservoir was used to cool the coal-fired turbine edges power plant where my mother worked. And so I really view that as growing up in a landscape of lies because I was told every lake in North Dakota freeze. Well, my home lake doesn't. I mean, in January, Megan, you and I could sit in that lake with stocking caps on when it's 20 below and it'd be bathtub warm. And so. That creates very curious questions in a little boy if you grow up in that type of landscape noticing, of questioning [00:21:00] baseline stories or facts as well.
And so I think it implanted in me, not a resistance to authority, but a curiosity to say, is this the complete story that I'm get getting? Is there only one way to view a situation, whether that's a historical narrative. daily reality. Is this the only way to view the situation I'm in? Could I think about it at a right angle? But my life has really gone from. Thinking about sustainability. When we were back in college, I studied a lot with this wonderful professor, Jim Ferrell, who, you know, just put the world into color from black and white. For me, of thinking, oh my gosh, everything is related to environmental thinking about how do we design buildings, buildings for health, both environmentally and also for us.
Why? Why do we put people in cubicles which are soul killing, you know? Um, then it [00:22:00] moved into other areas of fossil fuel production, being a coal baby to oil with the bachan oil boom in my home state. Uh, at the time of the bachan oil boom from roughly 2006 to 2014, North Dakota was the second highest oil producing state in the country. that just changed the whole landscape. It's, it became like the lake of fire, like what I was taught in Lutheran Sunday School. Like in the book of Revelations, the night the horizon flickered from the flaring of natural gas in North Dakota. gave off more light pollution, the Minneapolis St. Paul, but it was from flares rather than street lamps. And so those. Questions were in my mind about what's my responsibility, what's my role. I mean, my family has benefited from the fossil fuel industry. We're not the Rockefellers. I mean, I grew up in a trailer house [00:23:00] in a county without a stoplight, but still that industry put food on my family's table and paid for my saxophone lessons. And so I, I really thought of environmental thinking and coming from a place that no one. Visits. I mean, North Dakota is the least visited state in the country. thought I had a real role to play in my writing to show how beautiful, excuse me, how beautiful my home state is, because I we often destroy things that feel threatening or we don't understand, or we think of them as ugly.
Megan: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: if I could write really beautifully, because I do view my home state as beautiful. It just takes longer to appreciate its beauty than say the Tetons or going and seeing the redwoods. So I thought there was a real role to write about the natural world in my life, um, to
Megan: Okay.
Taylor: [00:24:00] protect it, to protect a place I love.
So it's a big preoccupation of mine.
Megan: Hmm. And I, what I'm hearing too is that your practice of being present and seeing the beauty in your homeland, in the people, in the benefit that these extractive industries have had in your life, that helps you weave together this story.
Taylor: Yeah.
Megan: Right, and, and just the impact that you have with story on people's lives, and I just wanted to spend a moment talking about that, just how your books and your teaching do support that, that healing.
How does storytelling help us heal?
Taylor: Boy,
it's so wonderful.
encounter characters, poems, stories on the page where you go, oh my God, I thought I was the only one that thought that way. But here it is, and usually it said it a better way that I could ever think it. [00:25:00] So I just, I've had that experience so much in life. I mean, that's why reading has been so important.
It's not just to get information, it's back to that. The, the CS Lewis never said this, but the character in that play that is c. S Lewis in shadow lands, when I just think about that, so often we read to know we're not alone. And you can feel that whether you're reading Plato who says, you know, be kind for everyone's fighting a difficult battle, or reading an essay by Zora Neal Hurston called How it Feels to Be Colored.
Me. I'm not a black woman living in the 20th century in the American South. it helps me think about what was it like to be a gay diabetic man living in the South in the 21st century? And if she could write an essay like that, could I write my own essay? I bet she struggled with self-doubt. I'm sure Plato struggled.
Well, maybe Plato didn't struggle with self doubt. The Greeks loved Plato and stuff, [00:26:00] but, uh, to think, know, since others have done it. gives me enough chutzpah to think, well, I can do it. And I think when you come from, again, a place where, I mean, I could just say Megan a famous North Dakota writer, long silence, you know?
And our most famous Louise Erdrich actually just lives near you in the
Megan: Yes, yes.
Taylor: You know, she doesn't live in North. None of us live in North Dakota who are writers. And so when you. Acknowledge that there is a largely empty bookshelf of a vital region to our country. Uh, there just becomes this whole way of, you know, occupying that space of story.
You know, that part of the pickle I might think that we're in as a nation right now is because we've reduced rural America to one thing, flyover country. are a [00:27:00] lot of people living in flyover country and those people may very well feel lonely in the stories that they're reading about where they live, having their stories told by other people as well. And I think for a long time as a writer, I've. We often talk in the creative writing classroom. Who's your audience? Who's your audience? And that question sometimes just exhausts me of like, oh, I'm writing for queer people. Well, there are a lot of different queer people, Megan, on the pla. Like I probably have more in common with someone who votes very differently from me, who grew up in rural Kentucky than I do with a gay person who grew up in Los Angeles.
You know what I mean? And so. and because I'm inherently lazy. For me, the stories I've been working on, I think of one person, I've just imagined this person, but do you know where broadest Montana is?
Megan: No, [00:28:00] but I drove, I drove through a lot of Montana last summer.
Taylor: if you'd have to be off the interstate. That's just the point is
Megan: Yeah.
Taylor: one goes to broadest, you know?
I mean, I don't even, I've never even been to broadest, you know, but I know where it is. But that. keep thinking there's gotta be a 12-year-old who's questioning who he is in that town. That's who I'm writing for.
Megan: Yeah.
Taylor: one person. It's almost like books become this long letter to this person to just say, here's what I experience now I'm gonna give it to you. That might be exactly how you experience life. It might be somewhat like how you've experienced it might not at all be like how you've experienced, but that creates a conversation and I think that's what telling our stories does. I mean, start talk, start talking about your grandma. Someone else is gonna hop in and start talking about their [00:29:00] grandma that, you know, that stories beget other stories for us as well, so.
Megan: Hmm.
Taylor: I think they help us remember, and they help us feel less alone and they also present us with options,
Megan: Yep.
Taylor: and I think that's been so helpful. That's why for me, like going to college was so helpful that I was surrounded by people who read books. I grew up in a household where reading wasn't encouraged. If I was caught with a book, my parents would say, go and do something. So I think whether you're reading those stories on the page or you're hearing those stories said out loud, they also give us options for maybe ways of looking at who we've been, and then let us ask questions of who we wanna become as well.
Megan: Yeah. Mm. And really just that lived history, right? It's not just history in a book. It's one person's lived life. [00:30:00] That example. And like you said, that becoming, seeing different examples of just how to live, how to be, how to work, how to heal, everything we've been talking about today. And so I'm just so grateful that you have this work that you're doing and you're sharing.
How to show up for it and you're sharing your stories with the world. I can't wait for more writing to come and we'll be seeing you at Moon Palace books in Minneapolis on June 4th. You have your paperback coming out for Boys and Oil. Do you wanna talk about that a little bit?
Taylor: Yeah, I am very excited because the Wall Street Journal just earlier this year is saying a lot of publishers of nonfiction are doing away outright with paperback books
Megan: Wow.
Taylor: most of us will have to get used to. The idea, if we're buying a physical book, it will most likely only be in. Hard
Megan: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: that price point as we know is higher than a paperback
Megan: Yep.
Taylor: I [00:31:00] just love knowing three years after the original publication of the book, not only is it getting another little boost with now going into paperback, but that it might become more accessible to people, particularly people who don't do audio books or read on Kindle. They now will have a smaller, more compact version they can throw in their backpack and it's just thrilling.
It's thrilling that it'll take me to new parts of the country for some conversations. And it's always nice to have a book, This is the same book, but just a different version going out in the world. I anticipate hearing from more readers once it's in paper back too, which is always such a humbling and gratifying. Thing. I mean, it's, I've sent letters to hundreds of writers I've admired, and so when you start getting your own, I mean, usually they reduce people to tears, so
Megan: Hmm.
Taylor: nice. Yeah.
Megan: Wow. Yeah. I'm so excited for that. [00:32:00] And so. There's a lot to come with you and your work and people can find you. We're gonna link to your Boys and Oil Book and your Instagram. , But is there any kind of takeaway you want our listeners to have after our conversation today?
Taylor: Yeah. I think with the conversation we've been having and the space we've been holding together is. To bring it back to what my therapist asked me. You know, how can we be more curious it whatever we're going through in life, and is that an invitation to take up a new hobby, a new passion project, set a different goal for yourself that you didn't have before? Cook a little bit more for yourself, but how can you just be more attentive and curious about the life you're living? to see where you can make some shifts if things are no longer working for you to feel that you, do have agency rather than being the victim of your life to be a agent of change for [00:33:00] yourself.
So for me, that's been looking like writing. Writing is the way that I've understood my life, been able to view my history, maybe articulate my hopes and dreams as well. But for someone else it might be. don't know. Alpine and skiing for all to be reminded. We don't have to think we're fully formed at any stage and we can be curious and change things that are no longer serving us.
Megan: Mm. Yeah. Be curious and nonjudgmental
Taylor: Right, exactly.
Megan: and noticing how much our society works to keep us judging and pitted against each other, and how your work and what you're advocating for sounds like belonging.
Taylor: Mm.
Megan: Connection, sharing wisdom, like honoring each other's truth. And that sounds healing in and of itself.
Taylor: Well thank you Megan, and thank you for [00:34:00] this conversation
Megan: Yeah. Thank you so much. I'm looking forward to seeing you very soon and just we'll look forward to following your work.
Taylor: Thanks so much, Megan.
Taylor: