Last week was rough. Instead of sitting in front of the screen and typing another newsletter, I sat in front of my screen waiting for words to appear. And unfortunately, they didn’t just pop up on the screen.
No matter how hard I tried, nothing was coming to my mind. Which was odd to me, especially because I had been coming up with a lot of ideas in the last few days. They live in my notes app, my bullet journal, and even in the Google doc with my drafts of the newsletters. And yet, none of the ideas were catching my eye or spurring any thoughts.
Should we wait for inspiration?
As I was journaling last week, I asked myself if I should be so dependent on the inspiration to create. Especially since it could lead to situations like this- sitting in front of a laptop with no words to write. And it is the worst feeling (for me at least) to just sit here with no thoughts to process or any real passion to write about any of the ideas that I had stockpiled.
In Liz Gilbert’s Big Magic, she writes that we owe it to the muse what she brings an idea our way because that idea could easily move to the next person. And maybe we lose the opportunity to explore the idea when we don’t chase it down. So I have been chasing ideas (for the most part) to lead me to the thing I’m supposed to make. And it’s worked for me. What I didn’t expect was for the muse to stop visiting me, even if it is temporary.
So, should I write when I’m uninspired?
Even though there weren’t any ideas calling my name, I still tried to get myself to write something. Anything really (and all I got was this newsletter idea). But I couldn’t get any words down on the page, and when I did, I didn’t like any of the things I wrote. Everything just felt wrong.
It actually made me think about when I would kinda force myself to write “content”. When I’d sit to write for a blog and a specific topic, it would feel like I wasn’t writing authentically. And trying to write without any ideas in my head kinda felt the same way. Like anything that I would put onto paper (or the Google doc, in this case) wasn’t really honest. So I just stopped forcing myself to write.
So then what?
I figured the better use of my time last week was letting myself be bored. I watched Youtube videos, got into different crafts, and started to explore other things that I had in my head. And while it didn’t solve any problems around my inspiration, it did give me a break.
The thing I learned from this momentary lack of inspiration is that sometimes we just need a break. That we can’t always expect our brains to connect ideas and create something. Maybe it was a result of being overwhelmed, or maybe it was just exhaustion. Whatever it was, this break made me really grateful that I have been able to chase ideas and let myself rest when there weren’t ideas to chase.