Hmm.
I’m pretty sure I’m too hard on myself. Creativity isn’t something you can force to happen. Some people fuel their creativity with their anger, or frustration. When I’m angry or frustrated, trying to be creative usually ends in me feeling even angrier or more frustrated, because I’m not pleased with what I’ve come up with or I can’t come up with anything at all. I don’t think I ever really learned to focus my creativity, it kind of happens on it’s own. Which all just means that basically if I’m in a slump, I’m in trouble.
I used to doodle all the time. I’d draw all sorts of things, on school notes, tests, scrap pieces of paper, on my arm with a sharpie, all over. I actually tried to force myself to doodle recently and came up with a couple of lines on a piece of paper. I’m trying to come up with a design for my new site, not to mention a design for this blog, and I just can’t think of anything. I must have been in the zone when I made Twice on Tuesday. And that wasn’t my first attempt. The first site was clean but boring. You wouldn’t believe the first design and the second were made by the same people.
Sometimes I think maybe you can make yourself be creative. All through my life I’ve tried to write poetry, or lyrics, to make good use of my feelings and make them pretty, or at least so descriptive as to be moving when they come out. But I was always stuck in that elementary school-ish way of rhyming. The set meter, the childish rhyming. Then one day I thought about it, looked at it totally different, and used rhyming instead of trying to fight it, and I came up with some pretty good stuff. I wonder if I can do the same with my designing. I know I CAN design things, and make them look good, I just can’t do it all the time. And that gets me down. Especially when I’m pressuring myself to make something out of nothing in an attempt to rid myself of an unpleasant portion of my life right now.
I feel like I wasted today, and I should be sleeping, but I don’t think I’m ready for bed just yet.