The Emotional Hangover After Finishing Something Big
There's something nobody really warns you about when you pour everything you have into something.
Not the exhaustion — you expect that. Not the relief — you've been dreaming of it. It's the strange, hollow, in-between feeling that arrives after the last thing is done and the world keeps spinning like it doesn't know what just happened.
The emotional hangover.
Maybe you just typed "the end." Maybe you wrapped a film, or ran an event, or crossed the finish line on something that lived inside you for months — maybe years. And now you're standing in the quiet that follows, and it feels… weird. Not bad, necessarily. Just weird. Like the silence is too loud. Like you keep reaching for the thing that isn't there anymore.
That's the hangover. And I want to talk about it.
The Convergence I'm Living Right Now
I'm writing this from inside it, honestly.
Right now, I have several projects all racing toward the finish line at the same time — a kind of creative convergence I didn't fully plan but somehow manifested anyway. It's a lot. And even before any of them are technically done, I can already feel it coming: that particular emotional weather system that rolls in when the building stops and the breathing begins.
I've been here before. I know this place.
After every Show Low Film Festival, I go into what I can only describe as a hibernation state. I pour my whole self — my meraki, the Greek concept of leaving a piece of your soul in your work — into that festival. Every filmmaker who submits, every detail, every moment. And when it's over? I want to disappear into a blanket burrito for approximately one week and not make a single decision about anything.
I'm recovering my meraki. Waiting for my soul to catch back up with my body.
The Time I Forgot I Finished a Book
When I finished The Secrets of Starlight Lake — the final book of my Amberlight Valley trilogy — I had this surreal experience where I kept forgetting I had finished it.
Not in a dramatic way... I'd wake up and for a split second my brain would reach for it, the way it had reached for it every morning for so long. And then I'd remember: oh. it's done. And then I'd forget again. And remember. And forget.
It took about a week before my brain actually believed it.
Eventually, another shiny project caught my attention (bless my beautifully chaotic squirrel brain), and I was off running toward the next thing. But that liminal week… that strange, slightly grief-shaped pause — stayed with me.
Finishing something big doesn't always feel the way you think it will. Sometimes it doesn't feel like anything at all, and that's the most disorienting part.
What the Hangover Actually Feels Like
It's different for everyone, and it's different for me every single time. But here are some of the flavors I've experienced — and that I've watched other creatives move through:
The Flatness. You expected fireworks. You got fog. The project is done and you feel... nothing? This is not failure. This is your nervous system exhaling after months of holding its breath.
The Grief. You loved the thing. You lived inside it. And now it's finished and out of your hands and you have to find a way to be okay with that. Grief is just love with nowhere to go, and finishing something you cared about deeply can bring a very real version of it.
The Restlessness. The project was your anchor. Without it, you're adrift. Your brain, trained to focus on the thing, keeps looking for the thing and finding nothing. This is especially familiar to those of us whose brains run on hyperfocus.
The Celebration. Sometimes you feel great and that's also allowed. Champagne, confetti, a ridiculous happy dance in your kitchen — all of it valid.
No matter which one shows up for you, it's the right one. There's no correct emotional response to finishing something that mattered.
My Lazarus Pit
I'll tell you my secret weapon for moving through the hangover: my soaker tub.
I'm not even being dramatic when I say that thing might secretly be a Lazarus pit, bringing me back to life one bath at a time.
Something about the heat, the water, the stillness — it gives my nervous system permission to fully let go. The project isn't solved in there. The next chapter isn't written. I'm just… dissolving back into myself. Remembering I'm a person, not just a creative machine.
Rest, for me, has always been most powerful when it's sensory. When it speaks to my body first, before my brain. The bath is that. And when I come out on the other side — pruney and warm and somehow lighter — I'm usually a little more okay than I was before.
(If you're curious about the other ways I fill my creative cup during recovery, my Joy Box post is waiting for you. It started there. The bath is just the opening ritual.)
What I Want You to Know
If you just finished something big — or you're about to, and you're already bracing for that post-finish drop — here's what I'd leave you with:
It's okay to not feel anything. The silence isn't emptiness. It's space.
It's okay to feel like celebrating. Let yourself. Fully. You earned it.
It's okay to feel sad. Grief and gratitude can live in the same breath. They often do.
It's okay to feel relieved, lost, disoriented, or weirdly nostalgic for the hard parts. All of it is human. All of it is true.
The project is complete. That's real. And when you're ready… truly ready, not performatively ready, the next thing will be there. Patient as moonlight. It always is.
But for now? The emotional hangover is allowed to run its course. Let it.
What does the emotional hangover look like for you after finishing something big? I'd love to know I'm not alone in this strange in-between. Leave a comment or come find me on Instagram — I'll be the one either running at full speed or submerged in a bath, depending on the day.
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