The Art of the Personal Project, Part III

Overcoming creative block and getting unstuck

The following is a bonus post for Art + Math’s paying subscribers, the generous souls who keep the lights on and the Bustelo brewing. It’s the third piece in a series on the importance of personal projects in the creative life of a photographer. (Read parts one and two here and here.) You can join this exclusive club and become a patron of the arts with a paid subscription. But don’t worry, most Art + Math posts will remain, as ever, “dedicated to art and free to all.”

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Just Do It

A decade and a half into my commercial photography career, I settled into a deep, years-long creative block. It might be more generously called a “stagnation,” but either way the result was the same: I was uninspired and unfulfilled.

It took me a while to realize what was happening, and even longer to figure out why. It was the unfortunate side effect of a single-minded focus on defining my brand and building my business. Years of shooting a narrow subject matter meant I had successfully “niched down,” and while it was good for business it was bad for my mental health.

If you spend all your time on the jobs that pay best, you pass on the jobs that broaden your horizons. Next thing you know you’re sleepwalking through assignment after assignment.

If you’re going to do a job only for the money, I can think of a lot better businesses than commercial art. If you’re not loving it, what’s the point?

Unfortunately we can’t will ourselves into loving something. I realized I needed a passion project to rekindle my spark. Trouble was, without an ember already glowing, I was uninterested in personal projects too. It was a catch 22. I was stuck.

Until one day I wasn’t.

It happened a few months after I began writing this newsletter. I’d gotten my groove back without even realizing. Once I did, I understood a valuable lesson: When you’re feeling creatively blocked you need to do something creative.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

You don’t have to do something “important,” you don’t have to do something big, you don’t even have to do something meaningful. You just have to do some creative thing.

In my case, while I was anxious to get started on a personal project in my primary medium (photography), I got the ball rolling on this newsletter. And I enjoyed it. I was writing, which counts as being creative. Next thing you know my juices are flowing and I’m feeling more energized, which spilled over the creative impulse into every aspect of my life.

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I’ve long believed that work begets work, but I’d viewed that idea through a somewhat cynical, entirely commercial lens. What I didn’t realize was that creative work begets creativity. Instead of being stuck in a catch 22, the opposite is true—you’re in perpetual motion, doing the creative work that makes you feel more creative which makes you want to do more creative work.

It’s like karma. Put it out and get it back.