How to Keep Being Creative When Life Feels Dull and Meaningless
By: Jason Gutierrez
Tags: Inspiration, Creativity, Motivation, Create, Self Improvement

Baltimore Orioles first baseman, Chris Davis, was once one of Major League Baseball’s most-feared juggernauts in the batter’s box. In both 2013 and 2015, he led the majors in home runs and held batting averages of .286 and .262, respectively.

But by the end of 2018 and extending into the 2019 season, Davis led the league in another statistic, one far less dominant than the number of times he blasted a baseball out of the park — most at-bats in a row without a single hit.

Yep, starting September 14, 2018, and ending April 13, 2019, Davis went 0 for 54, marking a historically abysmal stretch of his career and setting the worst hitting streak record in all of MLB history.

On the day his slump finally ended, Davis rejoiced, finishing 3 for 5 with two doubles and four RBIs, raising his batting average from .000 to a whopping .079.

Still abysmal, but on the rise.

Slumps of Any Kind Are Humbling

During the 210 days that Davis went hitless, no doubt he felt humbled and (almost) as human as the rest of us.

Switching gears from baseball to creativity, “slumps” are something we all run into as humans, and they’re certainly hurdles I’ve struggled with for as long as I’ve been a writer. I have stretches of days, even weeks, when life feels uninspiring and it’s damn near impossible to type anything worthwhile onto the computer screen.

Each subsequent slump I fall into, I can’t help but wonder how many more hints life needs to send me before I finally hang up my cape. I’m repeatedly plagued by the thought that:

“Maybe this is a sign I should just quit.”

Yet every time, I persevere and break out of the slump, usually with a piece of writing that surprises me and surpasses my wildest expectations.

This begs a couple of questions — how do you continue to stay creative when life feels boring or monotonous, and how do you keep moving forward while battling through a massive slump?

1. Remind yourself it’s not the challenge you face but how you respond

This holds true with everything that happens to you in life. Sometimes it’s a creative slump, other times misspelling a word in your grade school spelling bee, or reading the rejection letter from your dream college, or being broken up with by your significant other, or suffering the death of a loved one.

Challenges come and go, some far more devastating than others, but each time you face one, remind yourself that, though this challenge is different from the others, it’s still just another obstacle in your path. It doesn’t matter what it is — you can’t change or control that. But you can always control how you respond to it.

Don’t give up. Keep pushing. Life repeatedly tests you. It wants to try and knock you down, but the strong persevere. They get back up. They keep climbing higher.

2. Get back to the basics

Too often, humans like to make things far more complicated than they need to be. Look no further than your own email inbox to prove my point.

But let’s look at another example — lifting weights. Or more specifically, let’s look at my dad lifting weights. He’s just over 60 years old, and I’m proud as all hell that he’s keeping himself in shape. Looking at the guy, you’d see that he definitely has an above-average fitness level for a male his age, however, in his own world, he struggles to reach his goals in the gym.

He’s one of those guys that reads tons of fitness magazines and articles online, always learning new tips, tricks, and fads for building muscle. He tries putting those complicated routines and obscure exercises into practice. The first week usually goes great — he feels sore and like he’s making progress. Shortly after, results halt and he’s right back in Slumpville.

Feeling the frustration of his failures, he gets demotivated and skips workouts.

“I’ll get back to it when I’m feeling more inspired next week.”

And that’s the root of the problem right there.

He tries to make his work too complicated and ends up breaking the cardinal rule of muscle gains — consistency.

The same goes for writing and other creative endeavors. When you feel yourself lacking motivation, in a slump, or struggling to produce anything worthwhile, it’s usually a sign that you need to get back to the basics aka creating consistently.

Don’t worry about what you write, or how good whatever you’re writing is. You’re not trying to be the next Ernest Hemingway during a slump, you’re just trying to survive through it.

Schedule a time to write and just write. Whatever you do, don’t skip a session. Treat it like religion. Get back to the basics and put in the reps.

Will it be boring and hard work? Yes, but it’s necessary to remember where you started and keep up with what got you to where you are today.

3. Consume similarly creative content

Every time I find myself lacking creativity, it’s almost always because I’ve stopped ingesting similarly creative content. After all, creativity begets creativity. Other pieces of creative art act like food to fuel my own inner creativeness.

But it doesn’t work when you consume just any content.

For example, binge-watching an anime show on Netflix or playing Hades on the Switch rarely inspires me with new content ideas in the realm of non-fiction writing. Will I sometimes surprise myself and stumble upon an idea I can use? Sure. Does it happen often? No.

If I were a screenwriter or video game developer, these might be viable ways to generate creativity, but for me as a writer, they’re traps — ways to distract or unwind more than anything.

What I need to do as a writer, and what you need to do as a creator of whatever it is you create, is to consume similar pieces of creative art.

I do this by reading non-fiction books, listening to podcasts, answering questions on Quora, and reading other articles on Medium.

When you consume other creative pieces of art, it gets your own creative juices flowing, and ideas start erupting out of your mind like a volcano. Write these down. Write them all down. Before long, you’ll have more ideas coming to you than you’ll be able to launch out into the world.

This is where you want to be as a creator — infinite backlog land.

Above All, Keep Slugging Through

At one point during Chris Davis’ record-breaking slump, he considered drastic action. He thought about walking away from baseball and a massive contract worth millions of dollars.

To be honest, that probably would’ve been the easy way out. Easy to give up that much cash? Ok, maybe not, but for a guy who, at one time, was the best in the world, quitting the game would’ve been a surefire way to end the tormenting boos of once-adoring fans and repeatedly striking out at the plate.

But as English theologian, Thomas Fuller, once said (though more recently popularized in “The Dark Knight” Batman movie):

“It’s always darkest before the dawn.”

And though a creative slump can sometimes feel like a lifetime of struggle and misery, it’s during those dark, monotonous times that you find out what kind of person you really are.

Don’t give up. Keep slugging through.