Inspiration

I'm a hollow, boring, dead man when I lack inspiration.

Growing up, roughly between the ages of ten and sixteen, I lived a world all my own, where my own inspiration came from deep inside my imagination. Daily happenings, movies, pictures, and nature were all source of inspiration for me. I would go to bed every night, reflecting on the day and my nightly dreams would bend and twist my world into colorful alterations.

What happened when I turned 16? Girls happened, mostly... I never really defined this moment, as I've always liked girls, but 16 was when I met one girl who I fell in love with pretty fast. Yes, her...

And all is good. Despite all the hard times we have been, are going, and will go through, I do truly love Lacey with all my heart. I should not let petty emotions get in our way. "Anger is just a temporary emotion," after all.

But back to my original point: since the age of sixteen, my inspiration has been on a steady decline, and I'm afraid that my latest "rut" of laziness may be more persistent than I'm used to. Oh, and I have no will to be creative. It's just not me, dammit. I'm Brandon Bruno... I've always been a creative person, from my Mario Paint Cartoons, to my 6th grade artwork, to my photography, to my Photoshopping, webpage design, programming, game modding -- I will die if I lose my creativity, and without inspiration, I can't be creative. HELP ME!!!

Part of why this is so bad... I can start a project (Meltdown, anyone?), but not finish it, mainly due to a lack of creativity, inspiration, dedication, and time. I can make time, I can focus to dedicate, and I can seek inspiration... but I can't be promised it'll come to me everytime, and lately, it hasn't.

It's easy to blame girls for all this... I spend most of my day thinking about/obsessing over the same girls over and over, and the last six years of my life have been about one girl. Now that I feel like I'm being forced to fill my mind with things other than Lacey (she's at a point in life where she needs to diversify to make sure she knows what she wants), I can't focus on being me, and by being me, I mean creative.

I'm considering taking a mini-vacation away from my house and Northwest Ohio in general this coming August -- perhaps driving out west for a few days to get away, see some of America, and free my mind from what I love and capture that which I miss -- the genuine creative mind that I once called my best friend.