Week 116 — Manufacturing Motivation

I’ve been struggling with motivation recently. I just haven’t felt the drive to go out and shoot for the last ~3 months. I’ve had days or sometimes weeks in the past where I’ve lost motivation, but never for so long. It’s a weird feeling, and it’s especially peculiar that this started shortly after my 30 Days with the Fuji X-T2 project ended. At the end of that project I was as excited about photography as I’ve ever been. What the heck happened?!

I haven’t been able to answer that, but I have started to claw my way out of this pit of demotivation. The key has been in reminding myself that it’s a mistake to rely on motivation. I’ve been waiting to feel like making pictures, and when that feeling hasn’t come from external inspiration I didn’t make pictures. But after forcing myself to make pictures even when I haven’t really felt like it, I’m starting to feel the motivation return. Motivation is funny like that. We tend to think of it as an exhaustible resource, but it can also be impressively self-perpetuating if you just get started. Once again, the do something principle proves relevant.

To help manufacture some photographic motivation, I’ve started working on another 30 Days With… project. This one is a little different than the prior ones, though, so I’ll be keeping it under wraps for quite some time. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy some more frequent updates on this site!