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Have you tried creating a masterpiece out of mud? Or walking right through mud and coming out unstained?

It's beyond difficult trying to create when you're in a muddled up state. It is almost impossible but with everything else in life, there's always an exception. When you're in the dark, there tends to be so much noise around which acts as massive disturbances to the creative process. With an unstable mindset, ideas tend to bounce from place to place without really settling in any particular spot thus creating further confusion. This confusion is further heightened when there's the expectation to put out something within a particular time frame.

It was nail biting coming over to Steemit everyday and watching the clock tick and time slowly pass without being able to churn out any new material. The head wasn't really blank, on the contrary, it had way too much stuff that there was no space to create anything new. This kind of phase is not the easiest to get out of because there's life and you have to keep moving on with it. So life keeps happening and you continue to keep up the appearances until you break and can no longer keep up. The funny thing is that breaking is not even a guaranty that stuff will clear up and everything will be fine.

But creativity can thrive in chaos still; you just might not like the outcome. Today I listened to an album that sounds very depressing and was made to help people suffering from depression. It felt funny to me at first; how do you cure depression with depressing music? Apparently though the words of the songs talk about depression and suicide and whatnot, they talk about the struggles and then the victories. The depressing tempo of the music draws in the depressed and when they get fully comfortable in the mood, the words hit them!

You don't have to kill you, there's a lot more to live for.

So if depressing music can help brighten up a depressed soul, could writing about your troubles help make things better?

As a writer, there are times I'm in "that zone" and the words keep flowing effortlessly, creating pieces that surprise even me and although it will be nice to have this as the order of the day every time, it's not always the case. The dark days are always around the corner waiting to creep in with possibly the creepiest smile ever. Shit happens and it's how life balances stuff out, yeah?

In the dark periods, almost every single reasonable thoughts left in my head are usually blocked out. It's super easy to not see a way out of the dark but what if we tried writing our way out of it? Would it be of any help? Err... I think so because I decided to try it on myself and this post is the result. So how did it happen and what were the lessons?

How To Survive The Dreaded Writers Block

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- Create An Outlet

It was hard at first to come up with anything (creative) to write about so I decided to just rant; so I sat in front of my PC and began to type the words "It's beyond difficult trying to create when you're in a muddled up state". It turns out that all a muddled up mind needs is actually an outlet. When you provide an outlet for this chaos, whatever that may be, you'll find out that they tend to just naturally flow out of your head, creating that much needed space for the more creative thoughts you need. The outlet I created or found for myself was writing and although I had no intention writing this post the way it has turned out, I just wanted to get words out of my head and on to the computer screen in front of me.

- Don't Think About It

At the point of writing this particular sentence, I'm on my second day of writing this post. The difference between this day and the previous day, in terms of mindset, is mind boggling! And it's funny because this point just came to me like "You know I didn't think about this issue since yesterday, yeah?". All through the "dark period", I was constantly bothering my head about how the clock was ticking and time was coasting by while I was lagging behind on putting out content. It turned out, the more you're bothered about the situation, the more muddled up the situation becomes. So if you really want to get out of it, don't be bothered about it (think about how you go about breaking up with someone).

- It's A Process

Recognize that it's a process! You know the muddled up mind didn't happen overnight yeah? So the process of getting out of it shouldn't be expected to happen instantly. Let's see the process of getting all muddled up as the process of building a house, what we're trying to do is clean out the house and not burn it down. It's very easy to burn or pull down a house without too much effort or time invested but in this situation, that isn't our goal. Identifying that this is a process will help you get through the period of waiting without giving up or running out of patience. So mine took two days, yours might take two weeks; it doesn't matter as long as you're in the process, you'll get out of it.

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Now that you're out of the dark phase, how do you prepare for the next one? Because there'll definitely be a next one and it might be sooner than you expect. I'll try to address this in the next post to avoid writing a ridiculously lengthy one here. Till then, keep keeping on!

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