All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.
I’ve been thinking quite a bit about photography lately.
Mostly because I haven’t really been doing anything significant with regards to it. The odd phone photo here and there. A quick and dirty photo in the morning – usually just before I get to work. My ‘Apartments’ project has halted at the moment. I think the last time I went out and took some photos were last month.
Then I look around me. Photographers killing it in my mind. I see photographers developing rolls of photos. I see photographers posting their work. I feel jealous. I start feeling angry at myself. Why am I not going out, taking photos? When I do go out with my camera I capture but I don’t feel excited about the photos.
I’ve felt like this before and I’ll probably feel like this again. It seems to be a natural cyclic thing. A wave pattern for creatives. Up. Down. Down. Up. Rinse and repeat.
Despite this being the N-th time of me being caught in this I don’t really know how to get out of the funk. More photos seem to compound the problem. Staying online is a big contribution to the problem.
Of late I’ve been drowning myself in YouTube shorts. I tend to find myself scrolling them for much too long. It’s not the content I’m seeking but the distraction. I remember this feeling when I started out on Instagram. Same thing with X / Twitter.
Perhaps the problem lies with my consumption. Too much Substack. Too much YouTube. Not enough IRL. Perhaps my problem is with my perceptions around a platform.
I like Substack, it’s a great platform. But…for someone not in a good mind space seeing success [while not having any] can be difficult. I don’t hate on those who are achieving their goals or successes. Hard work needs to be rewarded. Constantly being subject to the success of others tend to make you bitter.
Outcome?
A simple way to stop this kind of consumption is to not go online. Avoid the pitfalls completely. A sabbatical. A hiatus. This points to how easy it is to become misaligned in the age of the internet. We only see a few things and based on this we paint a new picture for ourselves.
Based on this new information we put ourselves down. Paint ourselves into a corner. And if our escape (the internet) becomes our prison, where do we turn?
Thanks for reading : )
Hi, Richard. After my last night’s Instagram reel binge, I completely understand what you’re writing about. I consider myself a decently disciplined person, but we live in a world where the internet addiction has become way bigger than ourselves. Waking up the next morning after a binge brings in so much shame for me because I know I could have made better decisions for my sleep, my health, and my time. I consistently try to change this addictive tendency in my life, but some nights I give in. When we passively fill ourselves with distractive content, nothing arises in us. No inspiration, no joy, no will to create. And this is despite all the digital minimalism efforts I’ve done in my life. But we must keep at it! We must break out of this prison.