I've been feeling really blocked lately. That's the only word that really comes to mind (which is either ironic or proof). I know it's trite. I know every "artist" feels this at some point. But that doesn't mean it isn't true. And it doesn't mean it doesn't suck.

It seems that the genre or category or medium doesn't matter; I've been feeling uninspired across the board. Graphic design, photography, writing (when was the last real update on this or any of my blogs?), even listening to music (not singing, mind you- just listening to my iTunes)- I'm just feeling unmotivated or uninterested or unable to get wrapped up in any of these things which used to keep me going. And the truth is that I miss them all. So it's not that I don't want to being doing these things, it's just that I can't seem to bring myself to do actually make them happen.

The logical next question is, of course, why. After all, it's hard to treat the problem before you diagnose it and then seek out its causes. Transition has a lot to do with it, I think. I've always had a hard time with change (which is funny considering it's been a constant part of my life) and this round is no exception. I spent the last year and a half moving every three months, waiting and pining for some normalcy; always looking ahead to that wonderful, necessary, distant time in the future when I'd be able to move back to New York and get back to my "real" life. Then, I was sure, everything would be sorted out: I'd have money, a great job, an amazing apartment, my incredible friends, a solid relationship and, more than anything, the stability I'd been missing for so long. On almost every one of those counts, I'm feeling at a loss.

This is not to say that I'm horribly depressed or that I hate anything about my life now. It's just that I had wildly inaccurate expectations for what my triumphant return would feel like. Far from sitting back and reaping the benefits of two years of hard work and sacrifice, I'm still very much paying my dues. And that debt is pretty large. So everything is a work in progress. And, as with so many other "side" interests, all things creative falls to the bottom of the list.

I remember watching Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk last year and thinking it was moving, funny, accurate and helpful. [Note: I'm in the middle of her book Eat, Pray, Love at the moment (it was thrust upon be a friend who has read it several times and is a true believer) and I'm finding it mildly interesting. I think I get all I need from this seminar.] But also thinking, that doesn't relate to my life at all. It's fairly common to hear artists and creatives of all kinds speak to the issue of losing inspiration. But I think it's not something you can really understand until you're in it. Stuck in it. Mired in it. Engulfed, drowning, and lost, in it. Needless to say, I get it now.

The part that really speaks to me is her question about the impact our own creativity has on us. "The thing that I've been thinking about lately...is why. Is it rational, is it logical that anybody should be expected to be afraid of the work that they feel they were put on this Earth to do?" It's exactly that: we feel we've been intended to do this kind of work. It's so empowering to believe that we're destined to be artistic in this way. It's so vindicating! But more so, I think it's self-preservation. "What would I possibly do if I couldn't act or sing or paint or photograph?" "I'd be nothing without my art." "There is nothing else I can ever see myself doing." Think about the incredible risk we take by making (and believing! and living!) a statement like that. We have to believe it's our purpose or we'd never get out of bed in the morning.

But the other side of that is that we are afraid of it. We're terrified of it. It has such immense power over me that when it leaves I'm left with nothing. Without its inspiration, what am I? The inverse relationship is such that while I can't imagine doing anything else in my life other than being creative, when I'm not feeling creative I feel there's nothing I can do. And this leads to her notion that so many creative minds are "undone by their own gifts." She says that we've (collectively) accepted the fact that "creativity and suffering are, somehow, inherently linked". She talks about the likelihood that any work she puts out in the future will be judged on the basis that it came after her first, and incredibly successful, book. And thus, it's likely that her greatest success is behind her. And, as she puts, "this is the kind of thought that can lead a person to start drinking gin at 9 o'clock in the morning." So how, she wonders, can she keep doing this work that she loves?

That, to me, seems to be the crux of the whole issue. It's the struggle between doing what we have to (or need to) do and what we love to do. Often (hopefully!) they're the same thing. But frequently, they're not. And that is crushing. It's debilitating. And it's life. It's just the way it is. So in the midst of feeling this utter lack of inspiration, this absence of enthusiasm, this total apathy towards all things creative, I just have to keep on keepin' on. I have to force myself to fake it. I have to be inventive and prolific until I start believing it. And if I'm lucky enough to back to a place where that happens, I'll be thrilled to write about it, photograph it, design it and perform it. For now, I've got TV and cookies. Sigh.