Inspiration

When it hits you, it hits you.  When it doesn't, you wonder how you did anything before in the first place.  It's fleeting, and can go away without a moments notice and come back when you either don't want it, can't use it, or just don't expect it.  Inspiration, in its many forms, is probably the one thing that has been plaguing me the most over the last few years.  I've had some great ideas, but haven't been able to act upon them for many reasons.  Whether it has been lack of resources, lack of information and knowledge, or lack of time, something always prevents me from turning a great idea into a physical form.  However, I have attempted to prevent those problems as time goes on.


When it comes to lack of resources, the first step I've taken is to acquire stuff.  Programs, nicknacks, usable trash pieces from other items.  It has at least helped for some of the smaller projects.  For instance, I had an idea upon seeing a nice wooden wine box to build a book shelf out of a bunch of them.  As we have emptied them, I snag the box and add it to the shelving.  I now have 18 of those boxes, plus a couple more and have managed to make a fairly decent book shelf.  Yet, it's not done.  Things I would like to add to it are lights, doors (I've added a couple, but they don't open smoothly), and possibly more permanent dividers in the shelving itself.  The last one isn't too hard, as I just need to go out and purchase some cheap crafting wood, which I did once as a test and it worked pretty well.  The doors are a bit more of a problem, but I think if I can get a thin piece of metal and shave off some of the box tops that came with them, and add a handle it shouldn't be a problem.  The lights are the hard one.  I don't have LEDs, nor do I have the knowledge to read and design a system that would work without running the risk of fire and/or shorting out the house.  Which leads the next problem.

The know-how.  Luckily, in the age of the internet, pretty much any question can be answered with a quick Google search (in case you missed my previous post on this, it's here).  Yet, even with such tools, there is always specific questions that hard harder to find.  For instance, in this case, LED wiring questions such as "How to I wire it to a wall outlet and allow for over 100 LEDs to be lit evenly?" or "How do I create connections that are detachable in case I decide to rearrange the order of the boxes?"  If I had money to burn, I would just experiment.  But without that luxury, I would like to know nearly exactly what I am doing before I start in order to prevent wasting materials.

The other way I get around my own DKS (don't know shit) syndrome is having a list of people that know how to do what it is I lack.  Character rigging, for instance, is not my strongest suit.  Neither is audio engineering.  Yet I have several friends that can fill those roles quite well.  However, since I can't pay them, I have to work around their schedule and hope that they work on it in their free time.  Which brings me to the next problem.


The last one is time, and it is possibly the hardest one to do.  Everyone has obligations in their life.  Work or school, food, sleep, and plenty of other things that I probably don't have to worry about myself but some would.  Work for me takes up about six or seven hours of my day, depending on the day.  Food takes up another hour or so in total.  Sleep is the one thing I can actually manipulate.  I'm able to function on four hours a day for about two or three weeks.  I prefer to get six hours a day at least, and tend to get eight hours just because I do like sleeping.  I am a night owl though, so my sleep schedule is usually 2am to 10am, give or take an hour here or there.  That's 15 hours of the day gone on average, which leave 9 hours of time for me to do stuff outside of obligations.  Since I am trying to get to a better position financially, I tend to spend at least two or three hours of that searching job websites.  Now we are down to six or seven hours, and admittedly, I spend a lot of that time catching up on world events, YouTube videos, and stalking people on Facebook.  On Saturday and Wednesday evenings, I write this blog which takes up about an hour before I go to bed.

Sprinkled in that little time I have, I do some minor things I'm inspired to do, such as Photoshop projects, working with people on ideas I've had for future projects, and helping other friends improve their own projects, usually through critiques.  Most of my friends know that if they send me anything, I may not be able to tell them exactly how to improve it, but I can tell them what it needs in order to polish it a little more.  Sometimes I just do it for them if I know how, other times I just tell them what it needs and where, and I let them go at it.  This is because I speak many languages.  Programmer, artist, technical artist, prop designer, costume designer, singer, actor...hell, I even speak as a life advisor to some people.  I know I'm not the best at any of those, but I have enough knowledge in them that I can at least talk to them in a way that they know exactly what I'm getting it, and it usually inspires them and they are able to improve their own work. It's actually quite satisfying when a friend asks me for a real critique, and when I tell them all of the faults, they know I am just trying to help them and take it to heart.  And when I see it improve, I feel a sense of pride knowing that I helped them achieve a higher level of quality.

But getting back to inspiration, I've had a problem lately with it.  The few times I have been inspired by something, usually it's nothing that I can work with in the long run.  Other times its just absurd and the only person that would get it is myself.  I've really wanted to be inspired to do something I can showcase.  Something I can show to others and impress them.  Have them come back to me and tell me the little things I can do to improve it.  I would like to be on the other side of the coin once.  But those little things that used to inspire me all the time, such as music, movies, and talking with friends about random things, they just don't inspire me like they used to.

So what inspires you?  What makes you get excited to work on something and forces you to forego anything unimportant in order to get it completed?  I'd like to know, so maybe I might have a few new things to try.