Why I'm Embracing A Creative & Inspiration Block [For Once]

Like anybody who is a creative when I feel myself encountering a serious mental block with ideas and my general creative flow I panic. And it's something that over the years I've encountered a number of times but for once I'm actually embracing it instead of desperately trying to get over it. Which isn't something that I'd ever thought I'd be saying but here we are and here are some of the things that I'm going to try and take away from my current inspiration block.

WHY?

When it comes to mental, creative and inspiration blocks there is typically always a good reason why we encounter them. And here are some of reasons behind the majority of mine;
- Tired.
- Overwhelmed [not the good type of overwhelmed].
- Stressed.
- Unhappy.
- Anxious.
- Not feeling happy with my work.
And also the fact that sometimes a bit of a block is completely normal. Trying to constantly think of new ideas and ways to shoot photographs isn't the easiest thing in the world. I'm sure we've all sat down at our computers opened up something that we need to be doing and gone completely blank and stared at an empty document for 5 hours.

GETTING THROUGH IT

Like I said before whenever I've felt myself in a huge lull I've done absolutely everything I can to get out of it as quickly as it came. I've read all the inspiration books, blog posts and quotes I can find and things like that can work sometimes. But this time I felt some strange sort of shift, I knew that forcing myself to get out of it would only work for a short time and maybe this rut was trying to teach me something. And it has, there are things that I feel frustrated with and want to change and most importantly I really want to push myself more with the content that I create. Unknowingly I'd got myself into a very comfortable little groove with my work and granted, it worked but it felt a little too comfortable and too safe. And I am somebody that loves to feel comfortable but it's something that I want to change. As well as making a change with work I want to make sure I get better with time management so I don't end up so overwhelmed by my to-do list. And probably the most important thing is to make sure I'm actually living my life and not put a tonne of pressure on all my ideas. If there is anything I know for sure that forcing yourself to escape a mental block never works in the long run.

THINGS THAT DON'T HAPPEN WHEN YOU HAVE A MENTAL BLOCK

I'm sure we all panic slightly when we feel ourselves approaching a mental block which is completely normal and often very justified. Especially if your creative endeavors are what pays your bills, then that's pretty terrifying. But here are a few things that never happen in reality;
- You lose your job.
- You've ran out of all of your good ideas.
- You're a failure.
- You aren't capable of achieving anything anymore.
- Everyone else is better than you.

THINGS THAT I KNOW HELP GIVE ME A BOOST

Usually, I can sense when a creative block is on its way, rarely does it come out of nowhere so there a few things that I know always give me a little bit of a boost when I need one as well as riding it out;