Inertia

Photo by Jeffrey Young
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Looking at it like it's a job, I can't change anything about how much I'm compensated -- that will always be the same, sometimes feeling like enough, and sometimes feeling like nothing. 

So I'll just have to change the amount of effort I'm willing to exchange for that return.

Obstructed

Photo by Joshua Davis
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At some point, then, this idea of practicing my writing and drawing voice, and creating stories and worlds of stories out of them, became insufficient incentive to keep moving forward.

Sabotaged

Photo by Andrew Amistad
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I started the blog to get more practice writing stories and drawing pictures, and to find out if there's a way that I write stories and draw pictures that is clearly mine.

Damaged

Photo by John Hult
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Do either of these characterizations apply to what happened with this blog?

I can answer that question with another question, why did I start the blog in the first place?

Unsound

Photo by Caroline Methot
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I think there are really two honest ways of looking at this kind of project: you can look at it as a job, or you can look at it as a relationship (unless these aren't two different things).

If it's a job, then you have to be compensated; maybe people stop blogging because they no longer feel like they're getting paid enough (usually nothing, unless asked-for attention counts), or because they realize they won't ever be paid enough to keep the work going.

Or if it's a relationship, then it gradually becomes one-sided; people who blog get to feel that they're putting more into it than they're getting out, and they get bored, and they get tired.

My question remains: how does one fix this?

Rickety

Photo by Hoshino Ai
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So what then, what fresh hell is this?

We’re not allowed to be happy being creative forever, and we’re not allowed to be happy avoiding creativity forever and just watching netflix and eating cupcakes -- what gives?

It seems like a kinder world would have allowed for contentment doing one or the other indefinitely.

Whining aside, it’s probably time to try and give a better idea of what I’m trying to write about with these posts -- obviously, as stated before, it’s no real mystery why blogs stop being blogs, and people stop updating them.

What I’m really trying to figure out is, when the steam runs out and the interest shifts, how does one shift it back again at will, is that possible?

It’s 100% possible to keep on working when you don’t feel it anymore, of course that’s true; what I mean is how can you re-discover the interest in a project like this after its worn through?

One of the people I’ve talked to about this suggested that blogs sometimes die because their authors “stop writing about life, and start living it instead.”

It’s pretty to think so, and I believe that that’s at least partially the answer, but I don’t think that’s the whole answer.

Tumbledown

Photo by Karsten Würth
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Obviously running out of ideas must have something to do with it; if one has enough ideas and is excited enough about them, it almost takes effort not to try and make something out of them.  

But I don’t think it cuts to the heart of the issue.

Part of the problem I think has to do with where ideas come from in the first place, which we dealt with in an earlier entry.

Time spent in a quiet, thoughtful attitude, free and regular research into any area that resonates with one’s interests, and above all patience, and diligence in trying to produce SOMETHING, whether it’s a good idea or not.

If you’re trying to come up with SOME ideas every day, or even just one idea, sooner or later the law of averages says SOME of those ideas have to be better than others -- I think.

I would imagine that when all of these fail, for the various reasons that they fail, then we’re probably getting closer to what changes in the blogger when they decide, consciously or otherwise, to  give up their blog.

Or, like we said at the start, it’s simple: interests shift, and what is interesting and rewarding at one point becomes tedious, uninspired, and ultimately actually detrimental to one’s creative spirit.

In some ways, the deck is stacked against those of us inclined naturally to be more creative at heart.

For one thing, I think creativity is a mark of at least some kind of intelligence; I’m not saying that anyone who feels creative or acts creatively is automatically more creative than someone who does not, I’m only saying that nothing comes from nothing, and that something genuinely creative has to come from somewhere.

What measure do we have for intelligence after all, if not results?

What I’m getting at is, one of the hallmarks I think of an intelligent mind, or at least an undisciplined mind, like mine for instance, is that it easily gets addicted to distraction.

Addicted might be too strong a word, but I like to use it because when one tries to give up television, video games, social media, entertaining websites, and the thousand other ways we can embroider our free time these days, I find that one goes through something not unlike a withdrawal: restlessness, and at the same time purposelessness, irritability, and constant cravings to turn the TV or music or whatever back on.

I have a suspicion, confirmed by many other people who have written about this over the years, that a certain kind of boredom and the creative impulse go hand in hand.

Not just any kind of boredom, I don’t think -- we can go into that more later -- but a certain kind of boredom, which is relieved by making something, is probably also satisfied, or at least quieted down, by entertainments of any kind.

Why quieted down, and not satisfied?

Because sooner or later, as in now for instance, the person who sought entertainment and distraction for as long as they pleased starts to feel just as restless and irritable and purposeless feeling about entertainment as they did before about not having the entertainment, and they are driven back to try and be creative again.