I’m very much a learning-by-doing kind of person. I need a project to give me a reason to explore some new tool or technology. And I’m not that great at contriving projects or problems to solve (outside of this blog). I need the real thing.

Inspiration comes in spurts, and sporadically. My attention wanders. It’s hard to really get into something. Of course once I’m there, nothing feels better than that combination of creation and discovery. And when I’m not, I’ve got that wistful memory of what it was like to be really satisfied by what I was working on. And how my brain felt.

I wonder what it’s like for artists and poets. I wonder how they deal when inspiration lulls. I wonder if their inspiration looks like this: or this:

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again, if I could take a drug that would provide me with more inspiration I probably would. I sound like one of those characters in antiquity who’d trade some future happiness for a particular power in the present.

The problem with being a knowledge worker is that it seems I require almost constant novelty and intellectual satisfaction to stay interested in what I’m doing. And it’s not just that I require it, I expect it. But I start to wonder if these expectations for how I spend my working hours are a little out of touch with the rest of the world. What does it mean to work and be happy?

• On Inspiration
• return to justinsomnia
• the impression of a thought
• First They Came…
• This is how I sound

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