Sometimes I have feed burnout. Reading blogs in my feedreader gets me down. I get a hangover from reading all this news. Yes, I am a news junkie. But occasionally, like this morning, I want to read something creative. Nothing is all that creative in my feed reader.
I set out on a hunt for something creative. Something that would awaken the passion for ‘the other side of the blogosphere’. Normally in these moments I would turn to Robert Bruce, Ashley Cecil, or Jessica Doyle.
But alas fatalism had overcome me and my usual places for inspiration only turned me to sadness and heartbreak. No offense to these great sites. I was just searching for the fountain of inspiration to revive my poetic ways and drive me back into my feeds.
I attempted to meet some great people at the hotel bar last night only to find myself sitting alone gazing across an empty room drinking an 11 year old Charles Krug Cabernet. Sometimes when everything is going right you still can’t write. But when life is horrible you are driven to write from the innermost parts of your life.
Then I was driven back in time to moments when life was not so grand. I read about one David Lewis tortured in Mexico at the age of 21. And inspiration was again revived. For the last six months the thing that has motivated me the most was what almost killed me a few months earlier.
Sometimes I wonder where all the drive has come from lately. Where is the passion from? Who am I blogging for? Then I realized the favorite part of my life is sharing stories. I remembered Darren Rowse wrote an inspiring post over on the b5media blog:
My Vision – A friend recently reminded me that throughout all history people have clustered together to have conversations. Over the ages a lot of these conversations happened at the end of the day around a campfire where extended families would come together to tell stories, debate issues that impacted them and to entertain each other.
Over the centuries the locations of where these conversations took place changed with in more recent history us moving towards methods of communication that relied upon paid centralized experts to inform and entertain us.
I realized just now that sometimes just being quiet sitting around the fire while other people talk is just fine and dandy. Sometimes the best you can bring to a conversation is a listening ear. So blogging burnout isn’t a bad thing. And reading blogs in my browser vs my feed reader isn’t bad either. Sometimes I need to see the designs to capture the meanings. It’s like watching the crackle of the fire on a midsummer night around the campfire.
I was once a blog network junkie and to be honest I don’t really follow them much anymore. I chat with friends in various networks because they have fires burning to and it’s fun to wander over to their fire now and then.
Do you have something to share? Where is your campfire? Comment below and share a blog even if it’s yours that might inspire me and expand the conversation….
Originally posted on February 13, 2007 @ 7:43 am
Music. My one thing to kick me in the balls and get up and get going again is music. No matter if I’m playing it myself, or just listening to great albums and band, I get going again. Sometimes it can get you down, get you low and make you hit bottom, make you wonder why why why. For some reason it always turns around after that. Goes up, makes me want to create again.
I love to listen, to read, to digest. Campfires are great, David, I totally agree with you there. But for me, the one thing that can pick me up is myself.
A single malt with me, lying on the couch, rain pouring outside and the stereo pumping out lovely tunes… Shutting off the world is necessary sometimes.
That’s my inspiration and my way of rekindling creative fires.
I also cure headaches with 70s hardrock on a very high volume, by the way. But that’s a different story.
Haha,
Thanks for sharing. Yeah I’m stuck listening to this enchanting Ana Free on Youtube the last few weeks.
She seems to lull me into a deep depressionistic state. Sometimes that’s good.
Music is the lifeblood of inspiration though. Rock on Thord. That 70’s hardrock wont cure this morning headache sorry dude.
Here’s my campfire story:
Hangin’ With James Dean
We’ve all been there–that little diner where you go for coffee and breakfast sometimes.
We had breakfast there this morning, and it was a lot of fun. Everybody at the counter was ‘on stage’, and I mean really ‘on’. All the waitresses knew their lines, and delivered them on cue. I love that.
Everyone had ‘their’ part, and played it to perfection. Even the eggs were right, and the coffee was supremo. Every word was spoken in the accent peculiar to the area–I never liked it much before, but it sounded good today.
That kind of effortless repartee really defuses the existential tension, you know what I mean? They wouldn’t, but it doesn’t matter.
I loved it when we walked into the place, and the gang said:
“Welcome back, gentlemen. Yeahhh!!!”
Hi David
I can feel what you are saying. Needing new, maybe not so new, but different ideas and outlooks on life to read, listen or look at.
One Blog I travel to regularly to read is Wagonized. Her drawings and short commentary to accomany her drawings and illustrations are warm, humorous and inspiring. She illustrates many old vehicles and gorilla’s of all shapes and sizes.
And secondly there is a man by the name of Dr. Masuro Emoto from Japan who has been studying the effect of human emotion on water. Look him up and say I love you to the water you drink every day.
His work was featured in the movie “What The Bleep”. Rent that movie. Seriously the ideas expressed and those touched on in this film significantly adjusted my outlook on life. It puts the whole into perspective rather than just the one.
I watched “Frieda” the other day. She was a female artist who came of age in the 20’s in Mexico. As far as female heroines and those of us with addiction and pain within she truly enjoyed life and said
“At the end of the day, we as humans can endure much more than we think possible.”