Sunday, March 23, 2008

Leaning on air

Lately, I feel as if my momentum has been flagging. With work steadily digging toward a bedrock of misery and the job market looking more and more like a desert, my working life feels as if it is grinding toward a total sense of futility. School is school, and I am still glad to be doing it, but things look bleak economically, so I am putting my graduate school plans on hold. And the graphics/design market is looking particularly weak right now, given that new design and graphics work typically start disappearing when the economy begins to slide.

I find myself struggling for motivation. All the time and effort has begun to feel like a mass of granite I am dragging uphill. I am thoroughly tired, both mentally and physically. Of course, once that sort of fatigue begins to set in, it becomes easier to be distracted and lose focus. More than once I have found myself staring at an image I am working on, holding a pencil or brush, and not doing anything. Eventually, I get up and do something else, knowing that these images are waiting to be dealt with. The pace of things seems to be accelerating beyond manageable levels and burnout has been setting in.

In times like these, you start to realize how nice it would be to have someone to lean on. The value of human relationships becomes readily apparent, and I start to really wonder what effect all this time alone has had on me. I cannot say the experience has been positive or negative. All I am sure of is that it would be nice to have an external source of inspiration and reassurance. That is not to say I plan to fold up shop and pack it in, just that it would be nice.

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Posted by Erik @ 3/23/2008 09:18:00 PM