Inspiration needs expiration
I kept looking for inspiration over the last years. I kept breathing in, breathing in, breathing in. But so rarely ever I breathed out.
Is it why I often burnt out? Many times I felt distressed by my inability to create anything worthwhile. It looks a lot like I've been breathing in too much and forgot to breathe out.
Inspiration is not just passively consuming information, but digesting this information and Taking Action MoC upon it, applying in your life, work, and art.
If all you do is consume without creating, you're not getting inspiration.
Consumption and creation
Consumption and creation are akin to yin and yang. They feed on each other, but the more time you spend on consuming, the less you spend time creating (and vice versa).
Only, in our era of noise and information overload, it's too easy to fall into passive consumption mode most of the time. You must Flip the switch.
Here's something I wrote on January 20th, 2022
It occurred to me that most of my waking time is spent receiving or analysing data passively. But I'm not interacting. I'm not actively doing things. My output is tiny compared to my input. I'm not being proactive.
Reference
I'm thankful for Derek Sivers having written this article.