Sometimes when I sit down at night to write an article, a paper, a poem, or even just to think of the topic that I am going to write about for the upcoming week, I am met with a wall of uninspired thoughts that don't seem to go anywhere at all. Usually, the way it goes is that Monday through Saturday is spent contemplating different ideas of things to write about, and then trying to force myself to be inspired by things I wouldn't normally be inspired by. My problem always ends up being that I am trying to find inspiration in the places that I think need it the most, when in actuality the inspiration I need is just right here in front of me. Inspiration is all around me, I just have been looking in all of the wrong places for it.
I usually will sit in the building before my class starts, thinking of all of the things I have to do that day, and how I can have such a go-getter attitude about it all. I like to think of the things that will make my article for the week the best one that I have ever written. I ponder all of my weaknesses, all of my strengths, and all of the weird or quirky things that I will likely encounter throughout my day. That's the thing though, you can't predict your inspiration and where it will come from, you have to experience life to find it.
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Instead of looking for possible creative outlets and trying to figure out what is going to be my "big win" for the day, I sat down today and decided to think of all of the things that actually inspired me. Not things that necessarily inspired me to write, but the things that inspired me to keep having such a go-getter, and an I-can-fix-this attitude. Normally, I'd want to write about something big and life-changing that happened to me. I'd want to sit down and think of all of the people that have influenced me, and I'd want to write about the front that I keep up, to make everyone think that I can handle anything that life throws at me. It's not that I doubt myself that I can handle anything, and it's not that I am uninspired by the important people in my life, but the fact is I am not perfect.
I am not perfect, and that is OK — that inspires me to be better.
Things, like letting too much of whatever I was baking slip onto the bottom of my oven, make me realize that sometimes things just happen, and the only option you have is to open up to the chance that you are given to be better because even though you can't bake cookies in an oven that is smoking like a freight train you can surely cook them in a pan with a lid (on low). I am inspired to be better, not because I now know that you can cook cookies on the stove, but because the person I was a year ago probably wouldn't have been OK accepting the fact that something was wrong. I know that the person I was a year ago wouldn't have tried to think of an alternative — I would have surely given up and given in to my frustration.
I am also inspired by the others that overcome the small struggles. It seems so very easy to talk about the bigger things that people battle with every single day, but yet, the little battles that we have with ourselves on the daily basis go seemingly unnoticed. I am thoroughly inspired by those who walk around celebrating that they even got out of bed that morning. I am joyous for those who aced the exam they thought they failed or didn't study for. The little things are most definitely a big deal and worthy of praise.
I don't think that my problem was ever that I was just flat-out uninspired, but rather that I spent my time trying to predict my inspiration, and trying to make a fanfare out of the things I thought I would encounter. Life though, is a series of candid polaroids just waiting to be hung in an art gallery, and my problem was that I failed to see it as such.
