On Inspiration

How to stop looking and find it.

The other week I confessed that I had run out of ideas.

It felt a lot. Drained, I had nothing left but a self imposed deadline and a commitment. So I wrote about what I felt at that moment. At the time, I felt like I had let myself down and written something a bit ‘bluergh’.

The irony of an elusive idea. Thinking that somehow it was somewhere to find. If I searched hard enough I would find it. If I spent time concentrating on that.one.thing. But I only found it when I stopped looking.

How do you have ideas? Why do you run out of them? What was going on? I knew exactly what was going on. I had, had too much on, my brain hurt from thinking and doing. Little time for much else. ‘All work and no play makes jack a dull boy’.

I don’t think it really makes Jack dull in the way you might think; as in ‘he is no fun’. More that he is dull as in he has lost his sparkle. His ‘raison d’etre’. What makes him shiny and happy instead of wrung out, exhausted and dull.

At those moments, you need to double down on what makes you return to you. Because that’s where the good stuff happens. Rest, good food, some fresh air, a good conversation and that something something. I couldn’t put my finger on it.

Being in the garden is good for me. It’s added a little sparkle but the breakthrough came on Saturday morning. I got that elusive flow. It had been M.I.A. for a while.