Meditation: When You're Just Not Feeling It ? The Styley

The caption above pretty much describes the way I?m feeling today. I?ve been going through my photographs from Brittany, from Paris, from New York and?nothing is speaking to me. Seriously. Nothing. I?m sure that will change, as that?s the nature of creativity, but for the moment I remain uninspired.

So I announced to my brother (with pride, because oh my god, I?m like totally listening to myself, instead of doing what I normally do, which is to exert my self-will all over the place) that I just wasn?t going to post today, because I only want to post stuff about which I feel good. And my brother said, ?Why don?t you take a picture of your feet and write about not feeling inspired? You?re a good writer.? According to The War of Art, a book he?s been really into and has promised to lend me, ?You?ve got to bait inspiration by sitting down and doing the work.?

Which is how I find myself sitting here, listening to Boniver and pushing myself to post even though I just don?t freaking want to. Which reminds me of a revelation I had a number of years ago, after a trip to Italy. I still wanted to be a Great American Novelist then (as opposed to being a Great American Photographer Who Writes and Uses Text in Her Work now), and I was about to leave Paris, where I was living at the time, to obtain my MFA in creative writing at NYU. I was on the cusp of this crazy creative adventure, and ?surprise, surprise!?I was really struggling with my writing. And I realized, in one of those crazy flashes of insight that you get to have sometimes, that being an artist requires blind faith: in order to continue, you have to believe, despite having no evidence to support that belief, that what you?re doing is worth something, and that you will, eventually, get out of whatever rut you?re in. So simple, and so easy to forget when you?re having a tough time.

Of course, the other revelation I had on that trip to Italy was that hiking is walking, nothing more and nothing less. Take from that what you will.

So, what do you do when you need to be inspired? How do you get out of your creative ruts?

Source: http://thestyley.com/?p=5161

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