The backlash

This was unforeseen.  I don't want to do anything.  I have had two unplanned for snow days due to arctic weather.  Several times I have gotten out knitting needles, the sketchbook, a crochet hook, just to have my inner child stomp it's foot and say I don't want to!  Admittedly, the last three months or so I was forcing myself to be creative in some form.  I didn't want to, I'd lost interested and wasn't feeling fulfilled by the process anymore, but I made myself.  Now I am no longer staring down a "must do".  Now my creative self seems unwilling to cooperate.  I hold the knitting needles in my hands, poised to work on projects, and nothing.  The needles won't move.  I can't make them move.  Nor can I make the pencil move.  For years I did very little creatively thinking I was not a creative person.  I now have more confidence in myself and yet now I can't make myself create anything.  Have I tapped the well dry?  How does one replenish creative energy?  Over the past year I made creativity something that I had to do in the hopes that after that experience it would be something I want to do.  And I do want to do it.  At least a part of me does.  However there seems to be a larger part of me that is saying, "Enough!  Stop!  I won't do it and you can't make me!"  I have a temperamental toddler in my head who refuses to let me create anything.  It doesn't care how bored I am either.  How do you reason with your inner child?

February 19

Under this painting is a painting that worked in my head and absolutely did not come close to remotely working on the page.  I was so bad that I couldn't let it live.  So I smothered it in white paint and smeared in other bright colors.  Apparently I can handle and abstract mess a lot better than a failed concept.  By the time I finished there was so much paint that taking a photo was really difficult because the shine off the paint refused to cooperate.  This is why you shouldn't paint after an 10.5 hour day.