How to get motivated?

I've found that whenever I'm put on... anything, I am instantly a useless lump of decaying human flesh. Rotting on the couch becomes my soul desire. Now there was a time I wrote novels. I used to paint portraits. I had talent. I had interest and hobbies and even goals. But I have had none of those for a long long time. And medication is mostly to blame. That and chronic illness. But still is there a way to counter the motivation sucking effects of the horrible horrible drugs we are to depend on for the rest of our days? Anyone? I was looking at herbal whatnots but it seems so risky. Hypnosis? My mania is not potent enough to get anything productive accomplished.

I can empathize with you. I used to be quite creative in the fabric arts. It has been years since I have wanted to create anything. However my daughter is getting married in 18 months and she wants one of my beautiful quilts. After I finished panicking, I came to my senses. I am taking this one step at a time. I started with looking at patterns. That helps the juices start flowing. Then I picked a pattern and sat with it for a couple weeks......Whatever, my point is just one baby step at a time. Get your paints out where you can see them, enjoy that step. Tell your self that you are enjoying seeing your paints. Try to do that with each step. Whether you want to or not. And then at some point you will feel a twinge, the beginning of the creative juices! Keep going!!! A body in motion tends to stay in motion. It will work, keep trying.....good luck

 

  I also lost alot of my creativity over the last few years. It seems the farther i got from the swings of BP, the farther away i got from the creative side of me. And im not on any meds at all. I think its all about living in the middle, not letting our minds go wildly from extreme to extreme.

  Losing this was a huge hit to my sense of "self".  It has been a constant battle, i see my pile of models and im not motivated to build them at all. It really sucks.

  But then i realize that ive had almost 4years of "sobriety" as a BP person. That i have enjoyed having that calm stability in my life and feel better way more then i feel worse.  I still build models, just at a very slow pace, about 2 a year now. But thats life. Everything in life involves compromise. Taking more from Side A means that Side B will not get as much. Thats how i  view my life with BP. Ive given up a huge part of me, but i also feel like i have gotten back so much also.

  Here is a teaching that i feel is appropiate.

   A man comes to a river, its too wide and too swift to cross.

   He looks around, finds materials and builds a  raft.

   The raft helps him safely cross the raging water.

   When he gets to the other side he is tempted to take the raft with him

   Carry it the rest of his days since the raft had served him so well.

   But that would be the wrong idea.

   The raft served him when he need a raft to serve him.

   By putting it down he has now left himself open to use the next

   tool he will need in his journey of life.

   Had he carried the raft, along with whatever things in life he had found that had helped him

   He would no longer be able to move under the weight of all those things.

   Your pain is caused by wanting to be the old you, the creative you. But wasnt that old you also the out of control you also? Are you willing to go back to all that was bad also to gain a bit of what was good? Its a decision we all must wrestle with, since many of us feel the same way. Do i miss my old self, heck yea, but i also enjoy the peace i live with now.

  I hope this helps in some small way. I truely understand what you are missing, i feel the same hole in my life each and every day. But i have instead concentrated on different things in my life that even if they dont allow me to fill that hole, at least allow me to look past it to other things.

Bill

Thank you everyone. I appreciate your answers. I was especially fond of Happy Bills proverb there. Very Buddhist. And it makes good sense. Perhaps my days of painting and writing are done and I am simply a new person ready for the next task... Though it worries me. Honestly I never grew up with the idea "I want to do this when I grow up!" As a child I never had dreams or ambitions. In fact I didn't believe I'd live to adulthood. I was not a smart kid (according to hillbilly cesspool dubbed a school system in which my sentence was served) and college, I assumed, was never an option. My father was the type who jumped from hobby to hobby, blowing all his money every few months on some new musical instrument or game and I always thought, "I hope I'm not like that." And I am. Sans the money. My interest is constantly wavering from one pitiful hobby to the next yet never quite gaining any ground. But for that one span of time between the ages of 20-23 when I started writing. I was absolutely dedicated to something for the first time in my life. I kid you not, in that span of time I sat down and wrote 4 full length novels and 3 novellas. Then it was gone. Zap! Gone! The ideas were still there. Still are but I can't write. I don't want to. Now the thing is that during those three years I felt so great. So accomplished. Very shut off from the rest of the world. A bit depressed. But like I was doing something that would make me immortal, so to speak. It gave me purpose. I want that back!!! You may be wondering what spawned this writing extravaganza and I'll tell you it wasn't the lack of medication but the application of it. That and a loving home. Prior to this fury I went quite mad, absolutely loony, and landed myself on Zoloft. Then my mother kicked my out of our filth strewn tin domicile and my aunt took me in where I for the first time in my life experienced a real nurturing loving family. I was still a bit nuts. But I was a savant!
However all good things must eventually come to end and the zoloft stopped working. I moved out of my aunts. Adult life and the escalating madness that is my curse began to take its toll. Medication doesn't do what it used to. My body, which cannot stay healthy for more than a few months without relapsing into a weak, malnourished state is speeding up the decay of my mental stability. And so, like my mother, her sister, her mother before her and her grandmother I am gradually succumbing to the bleak world of hereditary insanity, where writing won't matter because I'll believe all the stories I tell. Where the only painting I'll do is upon my bedroom wall in a fit of stubborn rage against the betrayal of my own mind. Sigh. But then I am a pessimist.
If I could just stay healthy and focused long enough to accomplish one small task... Maybe even a puzzle. That would be something. I just get tired of whetever I'm doing after a few hours and toss it aside. Maybe I need to find shorter hobbies. Baby steps.

Oh I absolutely love your writing! What was that...a filth strewn tin domicile...a savant! Cool. I know you are hurting but from one writer to another I sure do like your style. Not trying to be trite...what I'm trying to say is...you still got it going on! Have you tried just accepting where you are and who you are without judging it as more or less....that it just simply is this way now.....just today?

Another one came...



I am not my work
I am not defined by exercize
Or what I eat or what I buy
I am much more than that
I am a spark of Divinity
There is nothing more I need to be

Red your first poem really resonates with me. Small steps are still steps!

Ah! Poetry, how lovely. And I love that you keep little notebooks around to capture them. A good poem/idea is a lot like a butterfly. It appears, a brief and dazzling dancer at the corner of your eye, and if you don't swat it to the floor quickly and jam it between the pages of a nice firm book it where its gossamer corpse will be preserved for generations, you might lose it for eternity. lol

I will pay for a novelette or novel you have written!