It’s been almost 2 months since my last post. I gotta say: most of that time just slipped right by me. August was A MONTH. None of it fun. I would not want to be me right now.
I can’t quite pin down what motivated me to post today. The idea has been shuttling back and forth in my head for a while. An article I read about blogging and the freedom of self-expression it gives created a twinge of… envy? guilt? I’m not certain. But it made me start thinking about my motivation to write and why I haven’t been doing… well, anything really. I’ve been in a holding pattern on almost everything, mostly just keeping track of news and generally just shying away from anything related to creativity. Probably not my longest slump, but enough to make me worry that the creative spark is flickering.
I also started to see articles about the suspension of online language research, because the researchers can no longer rely on the contents of blogs to contain actual human communication, just “AI slop.” I find AI ubiquity to be exasperating and the fact that’s it’s being used primarily to supersede human creative expression, instead of freeing humanity from corporate drudgery, is irritating enough to make me want to write as a small act of defiance. So this blog post is an AI protest.
I have never really felt called to do something. There are things that I’m good at (or, at least, okay at), but which I’ve never felt driven to do. Not in the way seriously prolific people are. There are things I’ve been motivated to do out of fear, obligation, or guilt. There are things that I love to do that I find begin to wear thin when it becomes repetitive or when I can’t get into a flow state. And there are things that I despise but that simply must be done. Writing finds its way into all of those categories.
I guess the fact that I haven’t really been doing anything means I haven’t had much to talk about. I have been reading but unmotivated to note down ideas. “It’s just a slump,” I tell myself. But the de-motivation leaves a void and that leads to further de-motivation. A vicious cycle.
I’ll hope that this post represents me trying to crawl out of the slump. A glimmer of the spark reigniting. Autumn has always been my favorite season. Perhaps I can find some motivation in the brisk days and fall foliage.
