A Burnout?
"It's really intense to discover your work doesn't matter to you anymore," he mourns.
This quote, taken from a work entitled Slump in Naomi Shihab Nye's anthology Honeybee, seemingly sums up what I've been feeling for a while now.
Nothing that I'm doing, aside from loving and taking care of my children and producing some seemingly ridiculous YouTube short, seems to matter to me anymore. I don't take joy in my job, I don't take particular pride in any of its work or outcomes. My life feels uninspired and dull. There is no genuine spark anymore … There is just me, plodding along, making it happen (whatever it might be) and completely losing myself in some repetitive, non-distinct fugue.
Oddities in my life come and go and, still, I feel as if life is continuing on without me … leaving me behind while others are inspired, joyously so, to produce their masterpiece. From a lonely, yet immaculately groomed, flower garden behind the fence to a skyscraper pieced together by steel beams and concrete, these grand things are put together by normal people inspired to create them … inspired in their work.
Right now, I feel inspired by little. My daily life carries on and I feel as if I'm being pulled along by a current I am powerless to stop and even more powerless to avoid. It's as if you're watching an avalanche from a distance. You see it happening, you know the cause, but you are completely unable to stop it from happening. That's how I feel with my life … as if I have no control over where it's heading and even less control over the outcome.
All this leaves me questioning: What am I inspired to create? Will anyone know of its existence?Will I ever be anything more than I am right now?
~H
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The Infamous Ms H
ART + PHOTO + INSPIRATION + LIFE
Hollie is a rural-born, urban-at-heart, artist, photographer, and writer, dedicated to creating and inspiring with reckless abandon!
Judge me if you must, but try not to make a mess.
Current Snapshot:
+ Documenting slightly altered, partially imagined, and absolutely surreal moments of daily life in a series of landscapes and portraits entitled Current Histories
+ Moving forward with The Fairy Story Field Guide conception and art
+ Finalizing working draft + story boarding for graphic novel The Mother.
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I’ve felt like that… especially back in 2001.
People often comment on how I seem to live what’s on my whiteboard at work, “Doing what you love is freedom, loving what you do is happiness.”
They often tell me how they can only wish about doing such a thing. I always tell them the truth – it took an awful lot of soul searching to get here.
Do you ever feel it’s time for a career change? Time to pursue your passion (and boy, they can be fickle sometimes)? It’s hard to narrow down what makes you happy into one, constant thing… like unraveling a shoelace to fine the one thread tying the whole thing together.
I did it. You can, too! It’s only a matter of laying into your own personal shoelace (or if you’d rather, getting to the middle of your own, personal artichike). Of course, it’s defining what makes us happy that’s sometimes the most difficult thing of all…
You’ll know it when you find your passion again – that spark is unmistakable! And you’re really full of talent, so watch out for an electrical storm of ‘em!
You’ll find it one day. I know you will.