:: Life on Planet Dan-E ::

:: Wednesday, June 29, 2005 ::

:: Trying to get over Creative Burnout ::

"This is incredibly good... I used to write like this. It was 10 months ago. I don't understand whats going on. I really don't. I've had slumps before, everybody does, but this is different... I don't understand what's happening. There's no blood going to it. I've never had to locate it before. I don't even know where to look. I'm the President's voice and I don't want him to sound like this. And there's an incredible history to second inaugurals. 'Fear itself,' Lincoln. I really thought I was on my way to being one of those guys. I thought I was close. Now I'm just writing for my life and you can serve the President that way. But if I didn't write I can't serve him at all." – Toby Zeigler, "West Wing – Season 4"

I'm just an ad student and writing a speech for the President of the United States is a magnitude of difference in terms of importance and implication than what I do. Or rather, am trying to do. But I can relate to what Toby is going through and that scene has stuck with me.

Suffering from creative burnout feels like writer's block except in this case, it's seems to be affecting aspects of my life outside of advertising. For example, I've been at a complete loss as to what to write about in my blog even though I have a myriad of thoughts going through my head at any given moment.

There are some projects for school that I've been trying to get to for the last few days but I can't seem to make any sort of headway on them since my thought process can’t get going. When I wrote about "shutting my brain down" it's not like it was some sort of purposeful, deliberate act like flipping a switch, similar to the way that Data twitched his head to shut off his Emotion Chip so he wouldn't be scared of fighting the Borg in "Star Trek Insurrection." You know how if you leave your laptop on for too long there's that energy saver feature that shuts it down automatically? That's kinda what I feel like my body has done except in this case, when I press the power button to reactivate it, nothing is happening. Oddly, my iBook has done the same thing from time to time.

Sometimes it's a dead battery. Sometimes it's just some fluke glitch that's remedied by fiddling with this or that. At times I've been tempted to apply the Han Solo method by giving it a nice whack on a panel like he did in "Empire Strikes Back" when he's trying to fly out of the ice hangar but it wouldn't work since 1. My computer isn't made by Corellians 2. It would probably make things worse 3. I'm not being chased by Storm Troopers 4. It wouldn't cure any creative woes and suffering through, which was the original point of this blog anyway.

See what I'm talking about?

I tend to put a lot of thought into my blog and sometimes, I compose it out on Word and proofread it over a few times before I post it. I don't know how many people blog this way but it works for me and I find that it sometimes help me when I'm brainstorming alone. Not always. Writing does help the though process get going sometimes any little thing helps but I wrote not too long ago, it's difficult to imagine life without blogging.

The suggestion to Toby to get over his slump was a long night in Atlantic City. I'm not a gambler or anything but I figured a few days of doing nothing but vegging out at the beach would be nice. Only, it's been raining heavily since I came back so that's out. Well, at least I still have my guitar. =)

:: Miscellaneous Ramblings by Dan-E at 5:12 PM [+] :: | 0 comments
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