Hello everyone!
The past month admittedly hasn’t been as productive as I hoped it would. For the majority of the year I’ve been struggling to write and draw consistently. I’m not too sure what it was, maybe the exhaustion from the pandemic or the more isolationist lifestyle I’ve found myself in, but I found getting the willpower and motivation to start was difficult. It’s hard for me to explain it correctly, but I found myself in a state of inertia that was oddly comfortable. It felt easier to do nothing, expect nothing and just kind of exist. While it isn’t exactly a bad thing, especially in the current situation we find ourselves in, the fact that I haven’t made as much progress in my writing and art that I wanted has felt very detrimental to me. It’s strange how deeply my emotional state has been connected to my ability to write and draw consistently.
I feel like I say this constantly after coming back from hiatus, but I need to hold myself more accountable to the growth I want to see in myself. To continue reading, writing and drawing, I need more goals and deadlines to adhere to on a regular basis. I’ve started to use my agenda more frequently to try and schedule my days better and it’s been hit or miss how often that works. What has worked though was setting more obtainable and shorter goals. For instance, one of my drawing goals originally was ambiguous, just saying “draw”. I thought it would be easy enough to encourage me but it did nothing. Then I wrote “draw background” and that worked a little better but still felt overwhelming. What ended up working best was a more focused goal that I could easily focus on. When I made the goal “draw books on the bookshelf” in reference to the background, I was able to finally complete it. As insignificant as it seems, it really helped to boost my mood and self-confidence strangely enough.
I want to continue writing book reviews as it helps to read other stories when trying to improve my own writing. But simply reading books and writing reviews doesn’t quite feel like enough anymore. I always add a bit at the end of my reviews writing about what authors can learn from the book as I believe a good writer learns from books they’ve read. But I’ve started to wonder if maybe expanding on what the lesson from those books could be. Not only could it help anyone trying to improve as a writer but it would also force me to really think about the story I had just read and what I learned from it. It’s small baby steps really, but I’m hoping to regain the momentum I once had.
As always, thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts and my blog. I really do appreciate it. 😊
– Raphael
Raph's Cozy Musings 