Which is it? Creative burn out or Depression?

As a photographer I belong to a class of people known as creatives. What this means is that the work that we do requires a creative mind to succeed. I knew this about my self years ago mainly because I realized that I tend to think and see things differently than others. Another clue to know when your a creative is usually when you realize you don’t particularly fit into mainstream work places. We can often adjust but ultimately we realize that we don’t quite fit in.

This isn’t a problem per say once a creative can find his or her creative outlet to express themselves then things tend to balance themselves out. Its when we cant find a creative outlet when things go south pretty quickly. For me I have found many creative outlets over the years, but few have stayed with me over time. In other words photography is something that I have kept close to me from child hood. Another creative output is.. believe it or not writing. Yes I like to write whats on my mind although these days no one likes to read. That can be problematic.

“These days no one likes to read”

So whats the problem you say? I seem to have more than enough creative outlets so whats all this talk about creative burn out or depression? Well I have experienced phases of depression coupled with insomnia over the years and i can tell you from experience neither have ever been good. Now however I’m faced with a new feeling that is similar to depression bu not as down trodding. Instead of insomnia I willing cant sleep or fall asleep too quickly.

After years of diving into photography now I have a feeling of stepping away from it.  This is actually scary to me. How can a photographer.. a creative photographer want to step away from a great creative outlet?

“How can a photographer.. a creative photographer want to step away from a great creative outlet?”

Yes I know its baffling to me as well. This leads me to believe its not depression just a creative burn out. Its when you hit a wall so to speak, when you find yourself repeating the same things over and over again and not being creative at all. The weird thing is that others will not perceive this wall as the work will still be amazing however actual creative person will feel it strongly. As I now do

The symptoms are quite scary for creative burn out. In my case I’m not motivated to pick up my camera outside of doing a job for a client. This is quite strange but as I looked back on my work for 2017 I did not take any series of images for myself, that being images that I would just want to capture either for my personal collection or to showcase to the public. These images are a representation of how I see the world. You can get a good idea of this by viewing my fine art seascape images, they are all a representation of how I see the world.

So now what am I to do? I’m not depressed I’m just going through a phase of creative burn out, or at least I hope so. This is so distressing will I loose my love of photography? This is another characteristic of being a creative and even worse being a multipotentialite.

Lets just see how this plays out. I will attempt ways of regaining my inspiration and zeal for the creative output of photography in my life and I hope I’m successful.

Stay tuned…