— Listen, it happens to everyone. Life gets muddled. You blink and two months have gone by. And when you look up and take stock, you feel overwhelmed by all the things you’ve let slip while you were off distracted somewhere.
It’s especially easy to let things like creating art slip.
Unless you’re a full-time artist, creating art inevitably tends to be something you do only when you have time for it. And when life gets too busy, you just lose track of that time.
(Incidentally, full-time artists — or actively-aspiring-to-full-time artists — are largely immune to this. Not entirely immune, mind you, but largely immune. Because they MAKE the time. No matter what. “Life can just hold its horses,” is the order of the day. In fact, maintaining that kind of attitude is usually how they became full-time artists.)
But here’s the thing. Life gets in the way and the days run away from ALL of us. It happens to everyone. But what’s beautiful is that you can ALWAYS come back to it.
You can always shake yourself and wake back up to what inspires you and what enriches your soul.
And when you do, you’ll pick the camera back up. You’ll sit back down and open Photoshop again.
No need to beat yourself up over it. (There’s no sense in that.)
Certainly no need to think about throwing in the towel and quitting. (That would just be silly.)
So what that you stepped away from it for a while? Who cares? Things happen.
Just throw yourself back into it.
Just get started again.
Maybe look through some of the most recent magazines to get re-inspired.
Make a cup of coffee (or pour a glass of wine) and spend an hour revisiting your photo library and organizing some of your various digital content.
Or maybe just spend a night revisiting some tutorials, gathering various ideas there, taking some quick notes … And then go try out some of the ideas yourself.
Simply dive in and start working on a new image (or re-open an old one that strikes you afresh and see if you can carry it further). Don’t worry whether it’s any good. You’re warming up again, that’s all. So just throw yourself back into the delicious creative dream … and have some FUN with it.
See where it takes you.
Because truly, whatever has been happening in your life, whatever has gotten in the way of what you love to do — you can always take up your creative life again and pick up where you left off.
Your Muse won’t mind.
Trust me. She’s very forgiving.
And she’ll be happy to see you.
– Sebastian