Week 14 — Nothing

Each week on this blog I release a new thing, a creation such as music, poems, photography, etc. These creations are usually paired with a blog post which tackle difficult topics that have contributed to my previous creative hiatus. To learn why I have chosen this challenge, read my first post here. This week I release nothing. Read below to find out why.

This week I have not released anything and I’m posting this late. This is the first week in 14 weeks where I’ve not created and released something, but I feel ok about this change. I’ve never set a timeline for how long I planned to do this (for example, I never called it a year’s challenge) because I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to get over the feelings of being stuck creatively. I do think that this has helped me to open things up and I do feel like I have more power over my ability to create and release and be my old self.

So I’m writing to say that I’m not sure if I’ll keep this up any longer. I will take it week by week and I might stop at any point or I might find a new burst of energy and put a lot of effort in for a while. But just know I’m still creating on the other end, I just don’t know if I need to pressure myself to release a single thing every week anymore.

For example, I have actually started writing a new song this week, but sometimes the normal process of writing takes some time before things come together. I felt uncomfortable releasing a half formed idea, which would involve recording it, uploading it to Soundcloud and then posting it here. The amount of effort it takes to post that half formed idea then takes away from the time I could have spent trying to further progress the song. I quite like the song too, but sadly I can’t share it because it’s not in a stage where it’s shareable.

So it’s for these types of reasons that I might be posting less. I’m not sure where this is headed now but I do know that it helped a lot for the 14 weeks I did it. I suppose another 14 would be beneficial in different ways, but I don’t want it to interfere with progress either.

All music, lyrics, art, photography, drawings and blog content written by Nicole Andrews unless otherwise specified. Please see her website to listen to or buy her studio produced songs: https://www.nicoleandrewsmusic.com/