English content Originally posted on ELLO

The up and down
It’s very common for a creative to have up and down phases. Anybody who has been involved at least once with the creative process encounters this phenomenon and you can find a thousands of « incentive sentence » from various literature explaining how it’s required to go down to rise again.

It’s another thing to recognize it.
Very often, when it happens to me, I just feel bad about something without knowing exactly what it is. I just want to come with new ideas, I miss shooting, I start questioning my work without any real direction. I just ask and never try to answer. It’s more a global feeling than a precise moment, it’s vaporous, very elusive and intangible. But with time and experience, this feeling sounds more and more familiar.

And yet it’s another thing to admit it.
Maybe I understand what happen faster. But it doesn’t mean I’m able to overcome that feeling, only that I know what is involved. Just like a pain you understand: you know why it happen but only time and evolution can help to release the suffering.

It will sound a bit disappointing, but I don’t have any real solution, great word or process to end the descent. Writing helps a bit, close friends who understand the issue and help quick identification of the symptoms help a lot. Take the time, take a break seems a good idea but I didn’t find a way to really put that into practice cause it’s pretty impossible for me to clear my mind when this occurs.

My reason says I should go and have a coffee, but all I want is shooting … Even if I don’t know what and it will end with frustration :)

This article has been published on the Ello platform, see original article here.