There’s a certain amount of guilt that comes with not
following through with things. While I have no intention on giving up, I do
have to say the guilt and shame does cause demotivation at a fairly large
scale. This is the plight of my brain. Not only are there so many different
types of projects to work on (comics, novels, music, podcasts, ect.), but there
are different projects within each section to work on. More than one comic.
More than one song. More than one podcast.
It’s hard to stay positive and motivated when there seems
like so much to do. Everything needs to be done now, and five different ideas
are fighting for attention in my brain. Most recently, I’ve decided to take my
two-decade old stack of notes and finally organize them. That, added with
trying to talk myself into my friend’s new band and all of this game
development stuff begging for my attention, and I’m forced to make some tough
decisions. I have to refocus on just a handful of things, and stop trying to do
everything all the time. This is difficult for me.
I recently asked a friend how she was capable of focusing on
just one project and get so much done every week. She told me that I had to be
in love with what I’m working on. I struggle with this idea. I love the idea of
making a comic. But I’m not sure I’m in love with the material. I like the material. I like the idea of making a graphic novel out
of it. I don’t know if I love the
work. Forcing myself day after day to “find time” to get it done. I hate that.
It just seems… Wrong. And no matter how much I schedule, it always seems like
something comes up that eats up my extra time, and then there’s no time to
relax and enjoy myself. Which is important to me, because I’ve just learned how
to do that.
I also had a friend visit fairly recently that I shared some
of my work with. She seemed to be more impressed with my school work than my
creativity, more impressed with the effort than the actual material. I’m not
sure how I feel about that. And that last sentence is a problem in and of
itself. Am I doing these things to fulfill my personal goals and need for
creativity? Or am I doing it to impress people? Am I juggling plates because I’m
too spread out and need to refocus? Or am I showing off? How is it that things
go from being so important to just kind of being there? Is it my own
disheartened sense of the world, a stack of bad habits that are hard to break,
or am I just being too hard on myself? It’s hard to tell looking from the
inside out.
To be honest, there’s been a personal issue that has had me
on edge for weeks. On top of that, I’ve been fighting to stay on track in
school because everything seemed to just happen all at once. And there’s a
social aspect that seems to pop up when I’m supposed to be working that I have
a big problem saying no to. While all of these things might be perceived as
excuses, there is a viability to their importance. Balancing an activity as
important vs. being an excuse is difficult as well. Something I’m not sure I’m
doing correctly.
Of course, a part of me is screaming that I’m going through
a rough patch, and now that it seems to be calming down, I can get back into
things. But another fear I have is the idea of these rough patches constantly affecting
me. Going back to school is meant to alleviate some of these rough patches. But
that doesn’t seem to be the case. I have to again admit the difficult nature of
my brain and the way it works, and its inability to cope with things when they
come up. Are my reactions justified within the situations I find myself? Or am
I making things hard for myself by stressing so badly I make myself physically
nauseous? It’s hard to tell without outside input. And I wonder as well, am I
listening to the advice I get from my friends? Is it sinking in? Or am I just absorbing
words without any effort to adapt to the ideas shared with me?
No one has answers to these things. Or rather, everyone will
have an opinion, and it’s impossible to figure out who is right. It makes my
head hurt, really. There’s no guarantee that I would even change anything if
there were a clear answer to any of this. When the day is done, life is just
the way it is, and either I choose to work on this project, or I don’t. Even
now as I write this, I struggle with how to finish it, or if I should finish it
at all. My nihilism is high, and while my creative projects have always been a
good escape from the pointless world around me, they’ve somehow become part of
that pointless world. The idea bothers me a little, but I struggle with exactly
how much. I hope it will be enough to make me continue working. Experience
tells me it won’t be.
So what do I do about it at this point? Scheduling only
works when I have enough energy to force myself to work. Accountability from my
writer’s group hasn’t seemed to work. Self-accountability has been even worse. So
what does one do? Set it aside once again? Give up? Start over? Change mediums?
Change stories? Surely the biggest piece of advice I’m going to receive is to
keep pushing myself. Push through it. Keep working until it’s done. And clearly
I’m going to do that. Even if it takes me 20 years to defeat my demons and actually
accomplish this. But it’s not easy. It’s definitely not that.
I haven’t done anything with Dream Story for weeks. However,
I have been working on other things. And I think I’m going to continue doing
that for a little longer. At least until I get my notes sorted out. There’s
something about the whole idea that I’m not exactly sure about anymore. It’s
going to take some time and self-resolution to get back to a sure place. In the
meantime, I’m just not going to worry about it, carry the story with me, and
hopefully inspiration will strike.
Hopefully.
