Easy Peas Recipes

At the start of my blogging journey last year, I was excited – on fire – to write. My purpose in blogging was not to grow an enormous audience or make money. My purpose was simply to write and to share my cooking experiences. The more I wrote, I thought, the more affluent a writer I’d become. I couldn’t see myself stopping writing. I was kind of obsessed.

As fall arrived this year, and my life got busier, my desire to write dwindled. I started, stopped, deleted, restarted, and then shut my laptop. I had become indifferent to writing. The next day, the next week, I listed topics on paper, including techniques and recipes that I could write about. I again started to write, my mind wandered, and I stopped.

Each day, for weeks, I walked past my desk, avoiding eye contact with my laptop. I was frustrated with myself because to me, writing is fun. It’s like playtime for my thoughts. I believed that I would have some ups and downs as a writer, but never expected to become indifferent to it. I have always had a busy life and still found time to write and film videos.  I have plenty of  content, so what was the problem? What happened to me?

Indifference is passiveness.  Indifference is
not simply a rejection of something, but a void of feeling for it. It can come from a lack of knowledge, understanding or acceptance. For example, some people are indifferent to specific subjects because they
have had little to no prior exposure to them. Or, maybe the subject is not exciting
or interesting to them. Unfortunately, sometimes, we feign indifference, or pretend. This is usually a sign that we’re trying to cover up insecurity. We may be interested in a subject but pretend otherwise because it requires more work and study than we want to do. Maybe, we are not confident in our ability to understand it. In any case, pretended indifference causes other problems; lack of motivation, irresponsibility, and in worse cases, anxiety and self-depravity. 

Other times, especially during busy times, what seems to be indifference isn’t that at all.  Possibly, it’s a reordering of priorities; occasionally saying, “No,” to extra tasks when our minds and bodies need a moment of rest. That’s where I was at. Being creative, whether it’s blogging, painting or writing music, doesn’t only rely on ideas but relies on energy. I have what seems to me to be endless ideas, but not endless energy.  Being creative also takes time. Sometimes, content jumps out of my head and lands neatly on the page and other times, I need to struggle with it. Sometimes, I need to set my creative self aside and just be me, do the things in life I need to do, rest and recharge.

There truly is pressure on content creators to constantly be seen and be productive. Anything less can feel like failure. But pressure and unrealistic expectations can drain a person’s creativity and energy and can affect the quality of the content. There’s also the danger that the creativity becomes all about the content and is no longer an extension of the creator. Balancing life’s responsibilities and the time for creative play is important; this can help creativity to flow organically and remain genuine – unique. Creativity shouldn’t be simply a formula or algorithm or measured in Likes and Views.

My recent feelings of creative indifference turned out to be a signal that I needed to stop, breathe and prioritize. I stopped feeling guilty about taking the time to declutter and reorder and my mind. In doing so, I remembered what I love about writing and I was inspired to write again. Looking back, I see that the struggle to write was what I needed in order to be inspired to continue.