Seeking out inspiration
For the past months I’ve been feeling a bit down, well that is probably the wrong word for it, uninspired is probably the right word. It isn’t a crisis of faith or anything like that, but I’ve been feeling that something has been lacking. Days became weeks and I realized that this problem wouldn’t fix itself. I got tired or waiting, so I had take action. If inspiration wasn’t going to find me, I was going to find it.
The plan of attack was to get exposed to new things. The conditions for this to work was that it had to be contextual to my profession, feel natural and last but not least, it should be fun. So this is what I came up with.
To get things off the ground, I simply set up a bunch of reminders for myself and made the tasks obligatory. Those far I have three semi-concrete action points that I want to do on a regular basis. Seeing that humans are creatures of habit, doing something repeatedly will eventually make it second nature. So the first thing on my list was, read an article. The subject doesn’t matter but read something, anything. I prefer Medium as my source of articles these days; I like the aesthetic of it, and they could be written by anyone from any field, writing about anything.
The second thing on my list is, check out new open source. The code doesn’t have to be new, but it has to be new to me. There are a thousand ways to skin a cat, looking at how other people solve similar problems that you face on a regular basis can be inspiring and fun. Knowing that there are more options than you can come up with yourself is never a bad thing.
The last thing on my list was to write something. As long as I can remember I’ve always enjoyed the art of writing, if it’s sharing a personal experience, giving someone praise or explaining the internals of a piece of code I just wrote. I see writing as an outlet for my thoughts, and if I don’t let them out, I start to feel “thick-headed,” and no one wants to feel like a hard drive with little disk space.
To conclude, the way I see it, my problem with not being inspired boils down to me waiting for it to happen rather than actively seeking it out. If you feel that your personal or professional life is lacking or you’re just feeling uninspired, try doing something about it. It might be easier than you think.
