creative doldrums

I'm not feeling very creative at the moment... just one more reason for not writing anything here for a while. It's frustrating me a bit though. Life gets so busy it's easy to just go through the motions and suddenly realise that the year is nearly over and I haven't achieved half what I wanted to.

I'm doing heaps of graphic art... but it's all for church or work (which is for the church). I mean, it's cool doing little cartoons for the Sunday school or posters for the latest womens seminar, but I have a whole lot of ideas banging around in my head with no time to do them. I'd like to screen print some T shirts, make some crazy posters...

The same goes for photography. I have a nice camera but mostly all I take pictures of are things to go into posters for the aforementioned events. I did hang out at the beach the other day to try and get some (cliched) sunset shots which was fun. But I need to find some more time to put into this. If I could drag my sorry ass out of bed it would be awesome to sit on a cold pre-dawn morning and wait for the sun to come up.

Then there is my music. I look after my church music group and play guitar which is a lot of fun (although not without the occasional liberal dose of heartache!). But I really want to write some of my own stuff... something I haven't done in ages! Partly it's a time issue and partly my lack of creative ideas at the moment. I sit on the end of my bed with my guitar plugged into a pair of headphones and muck around... but nothing is really gelling together. I feel a bit insecure in this musical endeavour as my brother is really talented with a degree in performance jazz and composition and a fairly prolific song writer. I know I shouldn't compare, but my stuff sucks to my ears at the moment. I do at least though get to help record his stuff adn can at least use my technical ability to get his stuff sounding good.

So with Christmas fast approaching (btw whats the deal with having a Christmas parade in Nov? Seems to be earlier every year) I need to sort out some priorities. I'm not going to get any younger and I really don't want to have any regrets looking back on my life... so I've got to get off my butt and do some creative stuff. I'm committed to my work but i need to set aside some me time that doens't include watching tv or sleeping.

btw heres one picture I took at the beach.