Oddball Update

Inevitably, whenever I change my surroundings, my whole way of thinking changes right along with it. Somewhere, trapped just beyond the tenuous perimeter of my conscious mind, is an ethereal font of inspiration that can, at certain moments, be grasped and held onto. Sometimes it requires only that I use my mind in different ways, or do things differently than I’ve grown accustomed to.

Other times, a glimpse of the Muse is only as far away as a return to the creative things that I once enjoyed, but haven not recently indulged in. After posting a lot of content on this site yesterday, for example, I was hit with a burst of creative inspiration which I poured into six hours’ worth of work this Sunday afternoon. The result was a fantastic new design prototype for my company’s monthly newsletter, as well as a thorough test of a new email marketing system with which to deploy it. That project is now officially ahead of schedule.

But there are times when it just seems impossible to find your creative energy. Times when it seems like you have nothing left to give, nothing new to offer and no self-fulfilling reason for taking any of the actions you inevitably and mindlessly go through. In those circumstances, I find that the only way to regain that almost spiritual creative power is to get the hell out of dodge.

The simple aspect of “seeing somewhere new” is perhaps what I look most forward to about our upcoming trip to Thailand in the next couple of weeks. The last time we journeyed eastward, I was beset with creative ideas the likes of which I hadn’t had in years. I promptly started writing several new stories, filling them all with ideas and content of a quality typically outside my natural grasp. And for weeks after my return, I was filled with a wild, random energy that led me to post such irrelevant — but entertaining — nonsense as this. I want that again, and hopefully I’ll get it. God knows I’ll have plenty of time for the Muse to strike — we’ll be in Thailand for six weeks, easily making it our longest trip there.

Although it’s already after ten o’clock tonight, I feel like I’m just getting started. I don’t know exactly what that means, or what I feel like I should be doing, but I’m pumped. My email newsletter exploits this afternoon have ensured I’ll have something exciting to talk about at the company meeting tomorrow, rather than just sitting there yawning. Further, it demonstrates my ability to take the helm of a project, set a reachable deadline, and then proceed to get out in front of it — all single-handedly. I can only hope that it might inspire some of the people I work with, make them realize that you can actually accomplish things when somebody takes the initiative to just make the damn decision already.

I see a lot of story writing in my future.

Categorized as Randomness