When you work to survive, it’s easy to be motivated by that. If you stop working, then you won’t have income, and therefore, you won’t have the means to live comfortably. But when you’re working toward something that isn’t driven by income, but for creative or intellectual reasons, it’s a lot harder to stay motivated by it.
At first, the creative/intellectual energy will be intense when you start a project. You’ll work day and night on it, putting everything else aside. It’s as if that’s all you can think about, and nothing else matters except to finish the work–to see it through to the end.
But eventually, that tunnel vision focus, and that zestful energy you had, will begin to fade. The novelty of the project–the enthusiasm it inspired–will wear itself out. And then you will return back to where you began: back to normal. Back to the grind of surviving–making it through each day.
And with each day that passes, it becomes increasingly more difficult to reinvest yourself back into that project–which feels like lightyears away. Without a practical reason to pursue it, there seems to be no reason to continue working on it. It was just out of interest anyway.
Besides, no one was telling you to work on it. No one was encouraging you to finish it–to bring it to fruition. Even if someone did encourage you, they didn’t work on it like you did. You were there from the start. You were involved in each step. You know all the ins and outs like no one else. To work on it again, you have to tell yourself to keep working on it. You have to find a way to spark that interest again, to start up the engine of your inner spirit.
For being self-motivated, it can be a lonely place. Like you’re deep in the woods, and no one is interested in going with you on the unmarked, treacherous path that you’re on. It’s easy to turn around and head back home, to call it day and return back to normalcy. But you have to stay motivated. You have to keep telling yourself to not give up, to keep going, to believe that something great awaits you at the end.
Fallton Havenstonne 