I’ve been hibernating. In all things.
I don’t know about you, but I have been feeling a real lack of creative motivation recently I think that’s because of the state especially of our country. Then of course the world at large is just messed up and I often don’t know how to break myself out of the media cycle, pity party cycle, etc. Actually that’s not true…
I do know how to break myself out of that cycle. I really like to walk, but it’s winter where I am and not just winter but it’s a pretty cold winter where I am and that makes it really hard to wanna go outside for a walk. Walking in nature really does inspire me as well as trying (yet failing) to keep consistent on this blog, I think it’s another way like forcing myself to be a consistent writer and creative in some fashion. I don’t feel very creative doing it, though, it kind of feels more like homework because there’s no real Creative reward in it for me right? Like no one reads this. I’m just kind of talking into the Internet ether because as much as I try to learn about it, I will never understand SEO and keyword search and what Google or the Internet overlords want so that my blog gets in front of people and the products that I sell.
But, then again, maybe that’s a good thing because then I can just say whatever I want on here (within reason). I can be as creative as I want. And I should, but again where is the motivation?
The other part of it is I work a hybrid job and although waking up and going somewhere is good for me because when I have the option of staying home, I stay home, like I will just mold into my couch. And as counterintuitive as it sounds because I pretty much hate my job, it is good for me to go into an office. I realize that, but at the same time I feel like I can’t live my life the way I always envisioned. I see several of my closest friends have remote jobs and their lives just seems so much more manageable as parents. And I really envy that and it’s what I want for my life and the life of my family because it gets exhausting, right? Dropping our son off at school and then going into an office and then working and then driving from the office back to a school and then back to school home—*screams internally*.
Anywho creativity, it’s hard for me. There are so many things I want to do and I can’t concentrate long enough to accomplish any of them. I want to write a novel, but I want to write a historic novel. I love the lessons that history can teach us, but it seems like the kind of writing that is the most accessible to me is contemporary, short storytelling, and so I don’t know how to write a historic fiction novel. That inability to see how I can translate the ease of which I can write a contemporary short story into a historic fiction novel, my inability to see how I can do that makes me very unmotivated and then I don’t do it. For example, I thought to myself, could I write a contemporary story and then just place all of the characters in a historic setting? I don’t know if that would work.
I’ll tell you what I really want. I think the other thing too is like that’s making me pretty creatively unmotivated is like I talked about this before. I just don’t have anything pushing me to create and I know what people say, “you should create for yourself.: That’s nice and everything, but first of all I live in a really small house so anything I create that I’m just creating for myself, where is it gonna go? Secondly, I want to build a business of writing and of art that will sustain me financially and so I don’t wanna just create for myself. I want to create for a profit and I know people are gonna be like oh my god that’s not why you create, you don’t do it for the money and while I can agree with that sentiment to a point…if I was a 22 year-old I would say the same thing, but I’m 35. I’ve been trying to make a creative life work for me now for 15 years and I have never been successful and it’s just really exhausting.
I’ll just admit it. I do need exterior motivation. I need a publisher to be interested in my children’s book for me to keep going. I need people to buy my stuff out of my store to make me wanna keep creating because I don’t really see the point. I also wish that it didn’t have to be. I wish all of our lives didn’t have to be dictated by money and profit. I don’t think I should be shamed for it. I don’t think we should tell people that that’s not what they want when they want a creative career.