Staying Creatively Inspired
Since beginning my job in social media and digital marketing, I have learned the vitality of staying creatively inspired. Working long hours, day after day, staring at a blue-lit screen while creating post after post and writing caption after caption, burnout is unavoidable.
It was tough and discouraging at first, but time was not going to stop, and deadlines were not going to extend for me to sit in my burnout. So, I began to search for ways to reignite my spark…
First, I went to every creative’s tried and true: Pinterest. Whenever I browse Pinterest, I always feel empowered, influenced, and motivated. The aesthetic nature of the app and its endless curated feed fuel a desire in me to create a life I’ll fall in love with. But in this case, it inspired me to draw! I’ll take inspiration from different graphic designs, art pieces, or photography and head over to Procreate and go crazy. I have learned my favorite things to draw are food and sea animals. Although random, finishing one of these drawings always left me sound of mind and eager to draw more.
Second, reading. This summer, I took an English course solely structured around reading different styles of writing, then having discussions and writing papers about what we read. I thoroughly enjoyed the class because writing has always been an outlet for me, and pairing it with reading and discussion was a recipe for creative success. While reading works like The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin and Cathedral by Raymond Carver in class, and books like The Secret Historyby Donna Tartt on my own time, I could feel my creativity seep into areas it had never been before. Due to the selection of different genres and styles of literature I was reading, it was almost like I had received an array of new pairs of creative glasses to look through.
Finally, here’s a rapid-fire list of a few other activities that have driven my mind out of burnout: cooking, whether that be from scratch or a box mix off the shelf; listening to music while going on walks and letting my mind interpret the story I believe the lyrics are telling; watching different types of content, including long form, short form, and even medium form, if that’s a thing. And just making creative content for myself. My own socials are a space where I have full say in what pictures to use, what filters to overlay, what captions to write, and what gets uploaded. I had fun!
All this to say, it is easy to get burnt out. And it is valid to feel burnout due to its inevitability, especially when you do it for work. But it is not okay to get complacent and abandon your work and your passion just because things aren’t feeling 100 percent. I have found ways to stay creatively inspired, and I know you will too!
