fighting inspiration

Inspiration can be difficult. While I always crave it, always want it, and eventually find it...I also push it away, reject it, and ultimately ignore it.

Sometimes I just don't WANT to be inspired. I don't want to read blog posts like this one, or read magazine articles, or read at all. I don't want to look at recipes online or pictures of them on Instagram or even begin thinking about cooking. I don't want to write, I don't want to process information, and I certainly don't want to compile it neatly.

What it comes down to is convenience. I don't want to do any of these things because I know doing them will make me do MORE and relax LESS. If that even makes sense. I'll want to go buy this so I can make that, I'll want to start a new project only to never finish it, I'll want to read every book someone recommends but then there's too many and I'm thinking...WAIT. I can't keep up.

So then I do what I do best. I fall into a routine, a method of functioning, and rather than pursuing newness I thrive in oldness.

The thing is, inspiration requires energy. It requires energy to think and create. And when the energy isn't there, I leave inspiration behind altogether. And not for a little while, either...for a long while.

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I started this post two months ago, and here I am now...feeling back in the swing of inspiration but still thinking a lot about what it means to be inspired.

The thing is, inspiration is just as much a discipline as anything else. Choosing to read, watch, and browse the things that eventually become inspiration means you have to DO them. Even when you don't want to.

Especially when you don't want to.

I am, however, also a supporter of taking breaks. Because breaks can be just as important, and lord knows we live in a world that values productivity and busyness over rest and slowness.

It's a hard place to exist, between the two, and when I figure it out I'll let you know (that might be never). In the meantime, I'm learning that in order to stay inspired I need to stay accountable to someone. That someone is Mackenzie, and yesterday when I (once again) said What am I going to do with my liiiiiiiffffeeee he said to just pick a direction and swim. And if it's the wrong direction, that's okay...I'll just start swimming in another.

Right now, that direction is writing. What else is new. And I have a "right now" goal and an "eventual" goal. The right-now-goal is to write every day. Whether it's one sentence or five hundred, if I want to blog more I first need to write more.

The eventual-goal, then, is to blog once a week. There will be several goals after that, but for today, and tomorrow, and this week, that's where I'm going to stay. Getting words down and looking over them when the week is done. And that's the inspiration I'm going to work with.