The Creative Slump

I am finally starting to emerge from a creative slump that I've been in for quite some time. I'm talking months, not just days or weeks, so in a lot of ways I feel as if I'm re-learning techniques and starting from scratch. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that my progress has stagnated a bit.

It's been a year since I've posted anything to this blog. For a long time, I stopped watching art videos on YouTube and would only occasionally dip my toe into the art waters by watching a streamer's show over on Ustream, but never for more than 30 minutes. They've all migrated to YouTube now because of the changes that IBM made to the Ustream site, so I've clearly missed some things.

For me, all things go in cycles. Most nights I have insomnia, but every few weeks I'll have a short period of time where I can't sleep more than four or five hours a night. My depression and anxiety are constant companions, but there are periods of time where they are more severe and they shift in and out of my day as if they play some fated part in the cycle of my existence. Yeah, that was deep and totally cheesy, but I had to go there.

Anyway, I've been feeling stuck. I uprooted myself from Washington state and moved to Oregon, so that's been a big change. I traded in one small town for another, a town that still has no art store or Michael's, though this city does offer a lot more options than my little town in Washington could provide.

My art therapist left the practice for a few months before I moved and that was when I really noticed a change in my art habits. She was always around to push me to use my art to work through my feelings, to put my self-critiquing inner dialogue into physical form and confront it. Without her pushing, I kind of felt hopeless for a while. Things got dark. Where art was once a way to push through, or at the very least, keep myself afloat, art became a chore and a struggle and I fell back into old habits.

Those habits were mainly judging my worth and value based on how my art looked when I was done. We've all been there, but it's even more detrimental for someone experiencing mental health issues. It took a long time for me to work my way through those feelings and reclaim the attitude that everything I create is something that moves me forward rather than something that holds me back. I will struggle with those feelings every day for the rest of my life, but it's times like this that I need to celebrate the good days.

So, I'm back. It won't be forever and I'll probably disappear again at some point, but I'll strive to post for as long as possible. I do post more frequently on my Instagram feed, so follow me over there to see snippets of what I'm working on.