Finding motivation to be creative is exhausting. I’ve been writing for Odyssey for almost a year now, and some weeks are a lot tougher than others. During the school year there’s so much going on, so it’s not too hard to find something interesting to write about. But some weeks, especially during holidays and summer vacation, inspiration is scarce. I’m around my friends less, staying in more, and it’s much easier to find a pool to sit by or new Netflix show to watch than it is to conjure up enough intelligent, coherent thoughts to write a high quality article once every seven days. Don’t get me wrong — I love writing, and the Odyssey has been good to me. It’s just that when deadlines roll around, lately, I’ve been struggling.

I don’t want to write another listicle about Brooke Davis from "One Tree Hill," or another piece on summertime, or college advice for incoming freshmen that most incoming freshmen don’t actually care about. I’m in a bit of a writing slump, and I have yet to pull myself out of it. Further compounding my frustration is the fact that I’m also feeling stifled artistically. This summer I’m making a sculpture to turn in as the application of sorts for a third-level Advanced Sculpture class that will be taught in spring 2017. It’s a totally open-ended, self-directed project, which, most of the time, would have me jumping for joy. But I’ve had a lot of issues with it because, with so much freedom, I’ve been unsure of what to do. I’ve found myself second-guessing all my ideas and artistic choices, as well as being overly worried about what other people (mostly my professor) will think about the final product.

So, here I am, having found myself with two days left of summer vacation, faced with an article to write and an art project to finish (on top of packing up all my junk to move back to campus). After about half a day’s worth of hemming and hawing and procrastinating, I finally got the sculpture finished. But, I have mixed emotions about it. Objectively, I think it’s a successful piece. But it’s so different from my original design, and every time I look at it I find myself falling back into the cycle of second-guessing my decisions and worrying about the opinions of my peers and professors. In an effort to keep being productive, though, I tore myself away from the art supplies long enough to sit down and write this article… only to realize I had no idea what to write.

Ideas flipped through my head as I flipped through Facebook, Odyssey, Instagram, and even digressed into reading Total Frat Move and Total Sorority Move (Rice doesn’t even have Greek life, what the heck am I doing?). Things like “the end of summer,” “in defense of ankle socks and sandals,” “what it’s like to watch my little brother grow up,” “Hillary Clinton and the 2016 Presidential Election,” and “growing pains with roommates” all came and went — not all bad-sounding ideas, to be sure. I even thought about writing about "The Bachelorette." But no. None of these topics felt right. Maybe I’m stressed about packing and moving back to school in a few days, or maybe I’ve just gotten bored and lazy over the summer, but today I’ve had a hard time putting my heart into any of these things enough to write about them well.

I think it’s important to acknowledge that, sometimes, inspiration leaves us. Even the most creative, productive people can be left high and dry with nary an interesting idea. But, hopefully, being in a slump doesn’t mean we should stop writing, painting, building, thinking, creating. In fact, I believe that what gets us through these creative dry spells is continuing to produce, no matter how unsatisfied we are with the outcome. Even if I write a crappy article, I’m still practicing and honing my writing skills. Even if I’m not totally happy with my art project, I’m still trying to think creatively and build an interesting object. The hope is that, by forcing myself to keep trying, to keep writing and making, I’ll be able to break on through to the other side, as it were, and find a well of inspiration and creative thought I hadn’t known existed. Guess we’ll see how it goes!