Somewhere Between the Rut and the Spark

I haven't picked up my camera in months. Not to create. Not for myself. To check if the battery still holds a charge. Maybe to move it out of the way. But nothing meaningful.

I used to start my mornings with thirty minutes—just me, the camera, and the quiet. No agenda, no endgame. Just creation for the sake of it. Lately, I've been starting my days in inboxes, meetings, calendars, and noise. Always noise.

I'm not even sure if I'm in a rut or just dulled by everything constantly coming at me. Depression, stress, burnout, whatever label you want—it's more like creative static. And I've been stuck in it.

The thought now is: Do I need to physically get out? Change my surroundings? Or do I need to force myself to find the greatness in what's right here? I used to be able to do that—see something special in the ordinary. There's still beauty around me. It's not hiding. I might just not be looking hard enough. I do have some ideas for my "digital disconnect", a hopefully annual trip where only my wife and daughter know my whereabouts and can get in touch with me.

The world right now? Loud. Anxious. Distracted. Everyone is overwhelmed, and most are convincing themselves that it's a normal reaction. I've always believed that if you want to escape negativity, you've to pull yourself out of it. You walk away from the noise. You shift your inputs.

But that's harder now—because it's everywhere. Doomscrolling is a default. Outrage is baked in. Everyone's shouting into the void, hoping it echoes back with validation. You can try to unplug, but it still hums in the background.

The thing is, I have a good life. A great family. Strong friends. A creative path I actually enjoy—when I'm walking it. I'm not living in a "poor me" narrative. I'm not a victim of circumstance. I've made mistakes, sure. But I own them. I work to fix them.

What I'm fighting now isn't external—it's inertia. It's the silence after too many skipped mornings with the camera. It's the resistance that builds when you stop feeding the part of you that needs to make something.

It may be time to revisit that. It could be thirty minutes again, no matter the outcome. Perhaps it's a walk with open eyes and no headphones. It could be seeing something, really seeing it, and remembering that the ordinary was never the problem.

The work is waiting.

And so is the spark.