The Journey of Creation

We all have those weeks.

The weeks where we look at our journal, or our consoles, or cameras, and just think to ourselves, "Maybe tomorrow."

Which becomes the next day. And the next. And the next. And before you know it, it's been about 6 months and you can't even find where you put a pencil to start writing.

But before I talk about just what that means, let me indulge you with a little bit about what I do.

I do photography and run a small Youtube channel in my spare time. Mainly gameplay footage, a tech review, something like that. I also work odd jobs and part time jobs as well just to keep myself afloat.

But in the last few months, it's been hard. I find myself walking out the door without my camera more and more, and I find myself looking at my console and thinking, "I should make myself something for the channel", or hell, even, "I should play some Overwatch." But I shrug and just go back to doing whatever it was that I was doing. And in this case, it's not that.

But, what I failed to realize, and what I failed to try and do, is face the fact that something like that will happen. We all have those days. One or two in the span of a month is okay.

But when it was negatively impacting my work. When I haven't done a decent upload to Youtube, or even opened Lightroom, in over three weeks, that's when something like that becomes more of a problem than just 'an off day'. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We all need to take those days that we have and embrace them because they will come. You might not want them to be there, but they will come and they will hit you harder than you even hoped for. So let them happen.

Let yourself have a bad day or a day that you just don't do anything to give yourself some R & R. If you're feeling run down, or if you're just not finding the drive to do something, or to create something, if that's a story, or an article, or a video, then let yourself do nothing. Treat yourself to a lunch or a dinner at a new place. Go for a walk. Order in from a new place and just watch TV all day.

Just give yourself that time to rest, relax, and recharge your batteries. And if you have to take more than one day, then take more than one.

But if you notice that you're spending more time 'giving yourself time to rest and relax' than you are at doing what you should be doing, that's when you have to sit down and make yourself do something. And it's going to suck if you're not ready to do it. You'll be grumpy. You won't like it. But you need to get it done. I mean, even at the time of writing this, that's what I'm doing. I still haven't really been able to sit down and do what it was that I needed to do to make myself feel better, but I know that I need to start getting more articles out. And that's what you might need to do for yourself as well. Sit down and push yourself to do it.

You might not complete it. You might not get a major portion of it done. But you sat down and got yourself to work on it. And that's a step in the right direction. All you have to do is repeat it tomorrow. The article might take you a while to get done, but you'll have taken your time to get there, and before you know it, you'll be done.

Just remember folks: just because the passion isn't as strong doesn't mean that it's gone, it just means that something bigger is trying to get your attention.