It’s been a tough 12 months for creative professionals across the board, and photographers have had it no different.

In the beginning, 2020 seemed like it was looking up. I had helped found a semi-successful creative agency; we were seeing rapid growth in our business, gaining clients, and making money. Even as the pandemic crashed down on the American economy and forced us to re-orient our lives, my business managed to stay busy working with small businesses who were bravely weathering the storm - we even acquired new clients during that time.

I was busy, and looking back it seems insane.

2020 took our loved ones, our friends, our relationships. It took jobs, entertainment, our very sense of how life is supposed to be. Life seems fundamentally different in 2021.

I write this in February, my least favorite month. I’ve been bored out of my mind for weeks - by the time Thanksgiving 2020 rolled around I was exhausted, drained of creativity, and at my wits end trying to keep up with the sheer volume of work., and getting paid almost nothing for the work I was able to complete.
My mental health was in shambles, my marriage was struggling, and I had no idea how the rest of the year, much less the next, would unfold.

Creative work is a different kind of difficult, and something that I’ve had to learn is that inspiration is an unsteady foundation for a career. Creativity is a muscle, a skill to be honed - yes there are periods of time where artists can enter a fugue-state and crank out incredible work all at once, but the less glamorous and much less dramatic side of creative work is the long spaces in between inspiration - days spent staring at walls, struggling to get out of bed because you simply don’t know what to do.

No wonder so many creatives struggle with depression, and so many depressed people are creative. We get sad when we aren’t making things.

I hope I am learning to overcome this. Instead of moping around my house and eating to fill the creative void, I’m sitting at my desk writing this stream-of-consciousness blog. I’m trying to imagine a new photograph or video that I can make today.

I guess the takeaway from this exercise is that even if you don’t feel like doing anything, do something. It might be shitty, but it’s better than nothing.