After a brief (ish) foray into the world of WordPress, I
have decided to return to this, my old blog and see if I can’t resurrect my
blogger muse. I’d be happy if any
creative muse would grace me with her presence these days. Sheesh!
I can’t knit. I can’t draw. I can’t write… It’s like I’ve had a secret
creative-ectomy.
Not good.
So I’ve been pondering… Where does inspiration come from?
And I’ve come up with a few answers:
Sometimes it’s spontaneous.
It just happens. An urge
overcomes me and I just do. It’s not thought
out or planned. This is relatively
rare. And getting rarer.
Sometimes it is a response.
In my case it’s often been a response to resistance that I interpret as
a challenge. When someone says “you can’t”
or perhaps just poses a negative attitude, I feel compelled to push back
against it.
Three and a half years into my independent life I just
realized that I no longer have that resistance to push back against. There is nothing challenging me. (Not that life is without its challenges;
there are no shortage of those!) I can
do whatever I want now, and, weirdly, that has led me to a state of complacency
rather than the freedom I had anticipated.
I don’t have to prove anything.
So I don’t.
How freaking sad is that?
The very thing that made me absolutely nuts it seems was the
very thing that fueled my creativity. I
cut off my muse to spite my art!
Well, damn!
There is no longer anyone in my life to bounce ideas off of
either. Thankfully, I still have tons
(and tons) of ideas floating around in my head.
There simply isn’t anyone around anymore to play devil’s advocate with
them, no one to build excitement for them with and no one to collaborate
with.
With neither a naysayer nor a champion around my creative
energy has grown stagnant. I still want
to do the things I love to do, yet doing them isn’t happening.
So what do I do? How
do I get my muse back? What will whip what has grown torpid back into
a tempest? I need a generator in which
to plug the tools I create with back into.
I need to find the magic again.
When I don't know what or why I should shoot. I force myself to use just 1 lens for a whole day sometimes 2 days.
ReplyDeleteThis makes me adjust how and what I take pictures of.
You could try something along the same line by trying to do some of the things you like but not using what you would normally use.
I find it makes me rethink how to get the end product that I'm still are proud of.
I hope you find this aMUSEing. or at least thought provoking .
Thank you, Simon! That was very kind. And inspiring!
DeleteYou can always bounce ideas off of me!!! But I hear you - there's so little challenge, that it's easy to just not DO anything! I like Simon's ideas
ReplyDelete