한적한 마음에 활기가 차 네가 내 빛으로 떠올라
눈 감을 때 you're my sweet dream at night
이젠 편히 잠에 들 것 같아, yeah
네가 있어서 이불은 '천' 정도
'Cause you are so warm '만' 개한 내 미소
나도 네 일부가 되고 싶어 (Okay)
Junkyu being open about his burnout and how he overcame that phase is something that truly amazed me. His beautiful words that encourage everyone why pacing yourself actually matters 🥺🤍
🐨: I actually went through myself a burnout recently… was it in 2025? It’s not that I started to hate music, but when it came to making music, to working on it, I hit burnout. I really did. Nothing felt fun anymore, and no matter what I did, I just couldn’t move forward. No matter what—seriously, no matter what.
🐨: I work on music on my Mac, right? and I didn’t turn it on for a whole year. A year? Maybe even a year and a half? Since sometime in late 2024? It’s not that I chose not to turn it on—I couldn’t. That thought kept coming to me, “Even if I turn it on, nothing will come out” or maybe, “Even if I turn it on, I won’t get anywhere close to what I want”. My interest just… how should I say it… completely dropped. So I couldn’t turn it on. I was scared—scared that I’d have to face that feeling again. So I kept my distance from it.
🐨: But this time, starting in Korea and then going on tour, meeting TEUMEs a lot as we move through 2025 and into 2026, without even realizing it, I felt refreshed. Like I’d been aired out and I thought, “Huh? should I try again?”, “I kind of want to do it again”. “I want to go back to when I really enjoyed this”. “I want to try again—the thing I loved back then. So I finally made up my mind and turned it on. and when I did… it had been so long that I got chills. I’d forgotten everything—the details, the keys, everything. “How did I even do this before?”, “What values did I use?” I’d forgotten it all.
🐨: I completely panicked. I thought, “Oh… is this how it ends?”, “Is this how I lose the thing I love?” I was honestly really scared. And then another thought came to me “turn a crisis into an opportunity”. Maybe this is a chance for me to find something else I love. Maybe I should let it go. I was almost halfway in a state of giving up. But somehow, my body followed through anyway. My hands kept moving—on their own. Somehow, I knew what to do, how to do it. and naturally, without stopping, the flow didn’t break. So maybe I want to stay with music for a really long time in my life. And I think this process of slowing myself down a bit was part of that. Looking back now, the pace had been way too fast, and I couldn’t control myself. I’d pushed myself to the limit of what I could create, and after that, there was nothing left.
🐨: At that point, I was kind of cruel to myself. I blamed myself for everything… It’s a really bad habit, I think, but it just happens reflexively. So I was really hard on myself. That’s when I realized I needed to take a step back, give myself some distance, and look at things over a longer period of time. Yeah… if you just move at your own pace—not faster, not slower—you can do something for a long time. So I think if you want to spend your life with something you really love—whatever it is—you can’t go too fast. If your passion just burns up too quickly, it can cause problems. That’s why pacing yourself matters. If you manage your pace, you can live your life alongside the things you love for a long, long time. I really felt it this time. And because of that, I was so happy. Being able to do what I love again brought back so many memories, and it felt like I’d returned to those days when I used to enjoy it so purely. That made me incredibly happy.