It's a strange feeling, looking at your own work. I've always found it quite hard to see the whole picture when it comes to things I've operated on since their initial conception. Like many of us, being in our own heads, I struggle with what I can only describe as sporadic depression. I wouldn't outright call it depression unless it was from a professional's mouth, but it is an ongoing, consistent pattern of behavior that has held me back for a few years now. When I graduated from college, I realized that I had made no progress towards bettering myself at all - perhaps I had even just wasted a lot of time fumbling around in the same "one-hand-on-the-steering-wheel" state. That headspace eroded my creativity slowly, like a virus, until I started wondering if I ever liked music to begin with.

Frankly, I have never liked a piece of music that I created; all I can ever really focus on is what I dislike. Small flaws can (and likely should) be powerful motivators, but I tend to drown myself in the bottomless pool that they exist within. I've always operated without a clear goal and with little control over my artistic output. Ideas come and go at a brisk pace, and I often fail to capture the essence of any idea I start with. Even worse, I didn't really feel like I contributed a voice, or any sort of unique characteristic that could only have come from me. My poor lifestyle likely contributed much of what I felt in that regard. My ego was poisoning something which should have been beautiful: art. I didn't really want to be around it when I felt that way, and so I started to burn out more regularly and for longer periods of time.

Now, when I should be looking forward, I'm looking to course-correct. I need to fix myself as a person before I can go back out and be a writer again. As self-indulgent as this whole thing is, I just wanted to make on thing clear: take care of yourself. When you better yourself, your craft will follow suit. :)