Posted by Peg in South Carolina
Yesterday I wrote about mud. The color, mud. What I did not write about was that I myself was dragging in the mud. No inspiration, no enthusiasm, no energy. True, it was a dreadfully rainy and bleak day, but never has that kind of weather elicited such a reaction from me.* I was even beginning to think that I might be coming down with swine flu.
This morning I woke up. No swine flu. Energy pretty much back. And an absolutely fantastic and to-the-point piece popped up in my blog reader, a piece, of course, which I must share.
MARKING MILESTONES
It is called “How to Defeat Burnout and Stay Motivated” and can be found here. It is perhaps the best essay I can remember having read on the subject. One of the things that got my attention was the author’s discussion of marking milestones along the journey. Marking them, not just in your head, but in a journal. Create them, if you have to.
I had a voice lesson yesterday. The 30 minutes usually feels more like 5 minutes, but it felt more like an hour yesterday. Nevertheless I noted that one of the things my teacher does is to mark milestones for me. The milestones she marks are quite small, but they are clear and well-defined, they are important, and when she marks one I smile. I smiled yesterday.
I don’t have a weaving teacher. So I have to take over that function for myself. Right now I don’t know exactly how I will do it, but I will figure it out.
TRAINING INSPIRATION
Also interesting is his discussion of inspiration. Inspiration seems to be a wispy kind of thing, a now-I’m-here, now-I’m-not kind of thing. But it doesn’t have to be. It can be trained. Go read the piece to learn how…….
A QUESTION REMAINS
One thing he does not talk about, however, is how to deal with the inevitable down days, how to survive them, how to believe that this day will pass, what to do when you are in mere survival mode.
*This is probably not a true statement….(grin!)
Related Posts:
Distracted and Out of Sorts
Get Back to Work
“Mud, Work, Inspiration“ was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on October 13, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.
4 comments:
Are you aware that the RSS subscription button doesn't work? Neither does manually adding your blog into Google Reader. You have a setting on your blog for "no auto update". I would love to read your blog on a regular basis but I never get a notice that it's been updated. :-(
Kimberly, I am sorry you are having trouble subscribing. I checked my feed settings and they are correct. I can find no setting on my blog for "no auto update." I then clicked on the RSS subscription button and it raised the feed subscription option just fine. And Google is one of the options given. If you could be more specific about what you are doing, maybe I could help?
I have learned to just ride out the down days with light activity of something that doesn't demand much, telling myself this feeling won't last for the rest of my life! Doing what you have done is good-read up about how other's deal with it and then soar when the wings are full!
Thank you for your insight, Delighted Hands
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