I started several different blog posts this week, all relatively good ideas in my personal opinion,
but today I am so excited that they will just have to wait. Today, I feel like I’ve reached a place in my life that I never thought I’d feel again. Today, I received my inspiration back.
It sounds silly. You might even be thinking, “How can one lose inspiration?” Take intense art courses full-time, work for a studio that cares more for money than method, along with two other jobs, one of which you do not enjoy, and you’ll see how easily it can happen. The summer before my senior year of college, I was dragging in my creativity. I felt spent. Empty. Then I had a spark of an idea, a pinch of creativity. But soon after, my grandma, who I was very close to, passed away and I stopped caring. The sewing project I was working on was thrown in the closet, out of sight, as sewing was one of the special activities we shared and looking at that unfinished material wrenched a knife in my heart every time.
So I finished senior year (err, semester), I somehow pulled off my senior art show, literally days before I had to hang it (making your own frames…not easy). And…that was it. I was done. No more mandatory assignments, no more rushing to get a certain amount of quality images by a certain date, no more racking my brain for ideas. I’m fairly certain I didn’t touch my camera for months. I was burnt. Out. Apathy, table for one.
The apathy did not get the best of me. There was a part, buried way, way down that longed to be creative again, longed to get excited about a shoot. I looked at other photographer’s works and thought “well I can’t do that so there’s no use trying.” Wrong way of thinking. Very wrong. But I couldn’t get past those thoughts. I felt like I’d never be creative again, in any capacity, and that made me sad.
I had lunch not too long ago with a friend from my high school days. He discussed how he lost his drive to practice his music, after studying and performing for so long, and the journey he took to get the desire back. All of a sudden, I began to study my own situation and realized that I was finally ready to pursue my art again. I was past the grieving, past the dried-up “idea box,” ready to get my hands dirty.
I am glad that I wasn’t alone in these feelings and am forever grateful not only to Michael for giving me that final push back into my element but to everyone else who put up with my lack of motivation and helped to guide me through. He will be back in the area on May 23 to perform a concert; if you go, I promise you won’t be disappointed.
I can’t wait to get back to the project I started two years ago.