sigelphoenix

I haven't been very creative during the past couple of weeks - I wrote one fic after the previous Warmakers adventure, and barely drew a thing. Not that I'm normally all that productive, but there's a difference between not producing much because I'm working on something particularly involved or difficult, and not producing much because I just don't have the mental energy for it.

Instead of doing anything like writing or drawing, lately I've been coming home from work worn out and just DSing the night away. If I've tried to write or draw, it hasn't gone very far, and I would just give up. That's fine every once in a while, if I really need to unwind without any pressures. But when you're doing it night after night ... well, at least for me, that's a bad sign.

I've also been using retail therapy as a way of getting ... shall we say, cheap thrills? I mean, I haven't spent more money than I can afford, or bought things I don't want. But I have been indulging in materialism more than I usually do, and more than I need to. I think at least part of the reason is that, since I'm in a mental rut, I'm looking for a brief flash of excitement, and buying shinies can provide that.

So. After looking at my lack of energy and productivity, and determining that I'm suffering some sort of block, I'm trying to figure out what to do about it. It would be easy to get lost in the 8-to-5 grind and not fix this, of course, but I don't like who I am when I get blocked like this.

So I won't. That's the easy decision to make.

Beyond that ... well, I'm not sure. I don't think this is permanent or anything. (And ratzeo, ever my support, is there to remind me of that in case I forget.) I've had little flashes of my mental energy back: I wrote some drabbles during my lunch break today, and last night during a brief conversation with ratzeo about women of color feminism I felt my brain rumbling back into gear.

I want to nurture this progress and make it stronger. To that end, some goals. Not as specific as previous goals, and not for a particular time frame. Just some gentle pushes in the right direction.

- Keep writing drabbles. They're a little less demanding than full-fledged fic.
- Start new drawings. My current sketches have been sitting around so long that they look stale and ugly to me, so it would be best if I just started fresh, and (maybe) came back to the old ones later.
- Limit mindless DSing/web-surfing/TV-watching to an hour a night, if that.
- Start reading some feminist theory again so that I can start work on ... oh yeah ... the proposed roundtable discussion that my old classmates and I put together and which got accepted for the annual National Women's Studies Association conference this June!!!!

So yeah, I definitely need to get myself back on track! And am I gonna? Hell yeah I'm gonna!