Riot’s Casual Update
My post this week is not only late but will unfortunately be very short. It has been difficult to maintain any creative practices lately for a number of reasons. I have been struggling pretty mightily with health issues both physical and mental. The physical being an overabundance of stomach related issues. I’m no stranger to these, I’ve had them literally as long as I can remember. But even with an excessively adjusted diet, it’s a rare day that I don’t have some sort of gastric distress issue. Because of this, I have dropped a significant amount of weight, lost most of my muscle mass, and have struggled a lot with energy. The mental issues have been all anxiety related. Through therapy and meditation practices I have been able to regain some control, but it hasn’t been complete. Throughout my life, I have prided myself for being a fairly even-keeled person, so this is definitely a new experience for me. All this to say, the thing that has suffered the most during the last month or so, as I edge closer and closer to finally returning to work and hopefully some semblance of normalcy, has been my creativity and the motivation to pursue it. Progress on my novel absolutely ground to a halt. The multiple books I have been plugging through (I’m somewhere in the 15-20 range) has slowed significantly. And the prospect of reviewing new movies hasn’t been very enticing of late. I’m effectively stuck in a rut. Motivation comes in waves for me and while it might take a little extra effort this time around, I know I’ll get the ball rolling again.
The world has a lot of healing to do, which will be difficult because the s*** storm isn’t over. I would encourage anyone reading to get back down to the basics. Take care of your family, check-in on your friends, stay off social media and the news, commit yourselves to your work and find the joy in doing it. I’ve spent too much of this last year worrying about the things I can’t control and it’s done nothing but make a miserable situation worse. I think our society is losing sight of what’s really important and where true influence lies. There’s enough division out there without conscious effort to make it worse. Small increments of change will inevitably affect the larger picture. It’s better to be good to each other than waste days pointing fingers.
-Riot
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