I’m in a slump, but it’s not any kind of normal one. My writing is as good as ever, my health is looking up (save a nagging earache), my romantic life couldn’t be better and I have a job that allows me a lot of freedom, but there’s something off about my life.
I’m uninspired and I don’t know why. For the longest time I thought that inspiration was achieved externally, through meeting people, visiting great art or even reading a book. I tried these things, and they didn’t work. Then, I assumed I had inspiration inside me, so I did my best to run a lot (I think a LOT when I run) in an effort to take my mind to some zen-like state where everything made sense.
That didn’t work either.
The search for more interesting is a tricky one, as it always comes back to being more so. Simply put, the more interesting I was, the more interesting I would find everything else. The more I delved into new and original ways of thinking or acting, the more I’d get back and be able to use it in my work and play.
But that kind of transformation doesn’t happen overnight. This summer has been a series of constant events that seem to hold less interest for me than ever before. While I KNOW how to fix my problem, I also realize that there are too many other things in the way, like making sure I have enough clients (pretty bare at the moment), doing my best to support Katie Charland at Gangplank (we don’t always see eye to eye) and finally writing a book (mostly because then I can go by TD Hurst officially) that I can be proud of.
But something is holding me back and I couldn’t quite place it. Then I realized, I was in a dip. I wasn’t imagining this feeling of loss or confusion, I was actually in the middle of a huge dip in my professional life. To combat this, I decided to actually attend some of the other cool stuff my colleagues are doing, starting with TEDxPHXDC. I applied, and under the section about why I wanted to attend, I wrote: “I want to bathe in awesome.” Mark Dudlik rightly called me out on that piece of shit response and I shrugged it off. Fuck Dudlik, I thought, he’s just being an ass and copying my idea of having people apply to attend the event (totally untrue, as I had copied the idea for All Out from TED itself) and I didn’t need to deal with him.
I was wrong. While I’m sure plenty of people want to fuck Dudlik, I do not, and I also realized that my entire approach to attend the event was wrong. If I really wanted to get something back from it, I needed to attend for REAL reasons. And those were selfish ones, as evidenced in my second attempt:
“I’m a critic, I’m a doer and I’m also a cynic. For months, okay years, I’ve been searching for something more interesting, like a better job, better way to work out or even better options for entertainment, but the search has always resulted in me being more so.
So that’s why I want to go, because I want to be more interesting. Design has always fascinated me because my mind doesn’t work that way and I’m envious of those who can think in 3D images.
I also will steal all the good parts of the event and use them when I have CenPhoCamp or Podcamp.”
Though I realized as I applied that I’m going to be out of town for the event, at least I was truthful in why I wanted to attend. I felt better about my effort and knew that approaching it for selfish reasons was absolutely the best way for me to learn from the event and make the ones I run better, which in turn helps everyone else get better, which ensures they, like Dudlik, will be willing to call me out when I’m not up to snuff.
The search for more interesting always ends up in being more so. Time for me to take my own advice.
