On Creativity

‘Trying to force creativity is never good.’ – Sarah McLachlan.

Creativity is not something I can turn on like a tap when required. It waxes and wanes naturally, fluctuating periodically and is largely influenced by external forces on my life, such as my situation at the time, my general happiness and what I’ve been doing.

For those of you who have read this blog for a while, you may have noticed that there is a significant period of time during which I wrote nothing. Not one single post was published between October 2013 and July 2014. I have touched on this period of time briefly before, how my life felt stuck in a rut and I ended up quite unhappy with my situation. As a result, I found I had very little I wanted to write about, so I just didn’t. Back then, my blog was less of a priority anyway – it didn’t really have any direction or purpose other than for me to occasionally ramble about something that was playing on my mind.

This was where the title of my blog actually originates from. I like to think that although the majority of my posts nowadays are travel inspired, I can still branch out and write about other topics if I so desire, such as my post about the refugee crisis in Europe. My mind does still wander, all over the place, and I like the fact that my blog title continues to give me the freedom to write about my meandering thoughts when and if it feels right to do so.

When you read other blogs, you are constantly reminded that to make yours a successful blog, you need to find a niche. I don’t particularly think my blog has a niche – maybe this means it will never become successful in a financial sense, I don’t know. I’m not sure if that’s even the direction I’d like to try and take my blog eventually. I like to think that my niche is my wanderings – both physically (the travel) and mentally (my thoughts). I am a wanderer and a wonderer.

I am writing this post today because if I am totally honest, I have been feeling a bit less inspired lately. I haven’t been feeling very creative – perhaps I’ve even been suffering from some writers block. When your creative juices stop flowing, they (whoever they are!) suggest that you just write something, anything, to try and clear the blockage. So this post is both an offering in an attempt to get my creative juices going again, but also to explain what might have caused my writers block in the first place.

I can put my finger on two key reasons for my lack of creativity of late and the consequential struggle to publish posts as frequently as I have done in past months.

Firstly, I was becoming very settled in Wellington, perhaps even to the point of beginning to get bored again. Luckily, I’m now in the Philippines (I arrived this morning – I am knackered, more to come on my time here soon!) and I am going to the UK in three weeks as well for Christmas. I can’t wait to spend Christmas in the Northern Hemisphere again, especially after such a lovely hot holiday beforehand (it is steamy here in Manila!).

Secondly, I am putting an increased amount of pressure on myself to produce more in-depth and thoughtful posts that capture a moment in time in my life and share it more intimately with you, including as much detail I can. In short, my focus has shifted from the quantity of posts I put up to improving the quality of my posts I share on this blog. This will mean fewer posts in the future, but the ones I do put up will be of a higher calibre and I will be prouder of the piece I have written for you to read.

So there you have it. I want you to enjoy posts that come from my heart and tell a story. I want to engage with my audience and get you to feel everything that I felt when I was having the experience I have chosen to write about on that particular day. And now, with Wellington behind me for six weeks, and lots of exciting travel coming up, I should soon shake the stale feelings I’ve been harbouring and have lots of new and exciting tales to share with you in the coming weeks!! Keep an eye out for new posts!