The Thing I Don’t Understand

Where does it go when it takes a day off, my inspiration? And my motivation? The days when I wake up with my mind trapped between four blank walls with no door. The days when it's all I can do to open the curtains and look at the sky. The days when sitting at my desk is like being chained in a cell rather than paddling a raft of creativity. Where the hell is my drive, my interest, when those days come?

It disappears more effectively than anything else. Hell, money sticks around better than my will to be productive, which vanishes overnight like a whisp of smoke from a dying fire. I wake up and try to prod at the embers but it's just ash. We have a mutual disinterest, me and my creativity, on those days.

But really, where is it? That's what I don't understand. Because it can't be far. It always comes back. When I'm least expecting it, a couple of days later, it'll hit me in the back like a freight train barrelling through on its way to bigger and better things. I'll bask in the warm glow of my desk lamp, revel in the light reflecting off my room's four blank walls, empty with possibility. I'll sit at my desk, struggling to express everything it brings to be at once.

I always know it'll be back, eventually, my inspiration. And I always know it'll leave again. But what I don't understand is... where and why does it go in the meantime?!