AWAKE: Creative Headspace

We've all seen those inspirational quotes popping up on every kind of social media feed: "You cannot run out of creativity - the more you use, the more you have" etc etc. And yet, all of us who create in some manner or another (whether you write, paint, sew, build, plan) know that it is inevitable that at some point, for a period of time, you will be left feeling uninspired, and unable to create anything, no matter how much you want to. Well, that's how I've been feeling about blogging of late. It hasn't been that I haven't wanted to, in fact quite the opposite as I've sat down several times wanting to blog, but feeling like I've got nothing to say.

This isn't a post telling you how to get out of a creative lull - instead, this is a post about how taking a short break can in fact benefit you, and how a week long absence from Awake + Make has made me feel refreshed and refocused on what I want to do with this space.

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As someone who always has some creative project or other on the go, having a lull in inspiration or motivation isn't new to me. However, having trouble blogging is new - for just under two years, I haven't really had a long lapse in blogging, and have kept up my enthusiasm and consistency in posts since I started blogging. Perhaps there was a part of me that knew that eventually I would have to hit a slump of some kind, but that didn't make it easier when I did reach that point. I'm the kind of person that puts pressure on myself, and I felt like it was some kind of failure on my part that I didn't have ideas for blog posts, and that I wasn't applying myself enough in order to come up with ideas.

Perhaps that's true, and perhaps it isn't.

However, this past week I decided that I could do one of two things:

A- Continue pushing through the blogging slump, and to carry on creating content for the sake of it, in the hope that eventually it would pass and I could regain momentum.

B- Embrace the slump.

When put like that, it sounds odd that I chose to run with option B - I mean, at least option A sounds proactive. The truth is though, that not putting the pressure on myself to carry on creating content gave me more time and enough space to think about what it was I was currently doing with Awake + Make versus what it was I wanted to do. Two years is a long time for creative goals to stay the same, and I feel like I've slightly altered course since I started this blog. Which is fine, and to be expected, but I think I just needed a break and some space to realise that.

After a few days without even thinking of blogging, I worked through some of the brilliant resources on Jennypurr. I feel that spending the time thinking about blogging rather than blogging itself, was really useful. When I started, I never really defined what I wanted to do on Awake + Make in words - I knew I wanted to write about craft and lifestyle, but actually taking the time out to put it down on paper was worth it. As I was doing this, new ideas for posts started to come to me, and for the first time in a while, I felt really excited about blogging again.

So, what to expect in the weeks to come? Well, a facelift is on the cards - I've been wanting to redesign for a while, and I finally stopped putting off dealing with HTML again, and tweaking little bits. Also, in my blogging slump, I've actually been more busy making than ever (kind of ironic, huh?) and I've got a bit of a backlog of projects, tutorials, and photos that I can't wait to share here.

Have you ever had a slump of inspiration/motivation for something which you normally love doing? How did you get over it?