For me, creation is a solitary voyage. It’s difficult to unburden myself from the distractions of fatherhood, work, and other responsibilities at length, and so I often find myself in a slump of inactivity as far as my more personal endeavors are concerned, and that’s when the seeds of doubt truly begin to germinate in me. More and more often I’ve found myself putting off writing or studying and drawing. I’d chalked it up to boredom or disillusionment with what I’ve been able to produce, but that’s not entirely true. Of course, there’s fear and self-doubt, but that’s not precisely it, either.
No, the chief reason, I think, for my inactivity and demotivation is that I have stopped seeing a reason to continue in the first place.
There are a great many days when I get home from my day job and fall asleep until nine or ten o’clock at night, briefly wake up to eat a cold dinner or snack, and pass back out until the next day comes along with its mocking drudgery and swallows yet another piece of my already shriveled will to live. I’ve always wondered if our souls appear as our idealized selves, a true inner picture of who – and what – we are. If I had to guess, mine would appear desiccated and gaunt, a gray-skinned shade with no real face or defining features, just sucked dry of vitality and vigor like the husk of an insect trapped in an abandoned cobweb in a condemned house; haunting and unnatural, but too frail to cause harm, merely a silent shade haunting the wastes of nowhere, alone.
I brooded over this idea for some time, and it dawned on me that, in spite of it all, I need to keep going. Even if it’s just to kill time, I need this for my sanity, and inactivity here has done me more harm than trying and failing has. And so, if you’re reading this and you’re in a rut in life, or feel trapped, isolated and downtrodden, just keep trying. Even if you never get anywhere close to where you want to be, at least when all is said and done you will be somewhere new. For better or worse, keep trying.
Towers of Rust 