There are times when any person can struggle to be creative. If you’re of a literary bent, you get to say you have writer’s block, a luxury which isn’t normally allowed to electricians or plumbers…
“Sorry, I can’t fix your toilet today luv….got a bit of plumbers block”
The normal answer is to walk away, do something else entirely, and not to worry about it. If you force it, then it won’t be worth reading… Good advice.
You can always take some time to read something inspirational. For instance, the gapingvoid guide to being creative. The Gaping Void is always an interesting read, and the business card cartoons lighten the mood.I think creator Hugh McLeod is pretty much in the ‘A’ list of bloggers, and most web people have encountered something he’s done.
But….and I do like a nice but… I do have a slight problem/query/paradox about one of his rules of creativity concerning keeping your dayjob. While I agree it’s easier to make something valid and worthwhile if something else covers the bills, I would add the caveat that it depends on your job.
The examples of Hugh himself, running his blog and art away from the marketing day job etc works, as he obviously does a job that he can enjoy, and which can feed into his passion. Alternatively, if you work as a waiter/waitress and paint/write/act in the evenings, it’ll be relatively easy to forget about your day job once you walk out of the door.
But when you’re involved in a job like internet publishing, and you also run a blog, that’s where the balancing act becomes more difficult. If you’ve had a bad day, and seen decisions made which you don’t agree with, do you write honestly and risk getting fired? Do you keep quiet, and leave the blog empty? And with most media companies offering contracts which own your thoughts as soon as you think them, should you be blogging anyway? What happens when your day job is eating away at your net enthusiasm?
For the record, and for the moment, I’m committed to blogging. I’m going to take the step of declaring that I won’t be refering to the specifics of my day job, but that I may post lessons I’ve learned from what happens. I’ll happily post in more detail about projects like Disposable Media (New issue should be online tonight), as they’re in my personal space, and I’m fully aware of everything that goes into the decisions made for that project. And, at the moment, the idea of reinforcing my positivity is rather attractive, as I do have a lot of options to explore at the moment.
