Inspiration Needed

I was out for a walk this morning before settling down to work. I was mentally mumbling to myself about feeling uninspired about taking my walk - it felt like just so much work. 

I haven't written any poems to finish out the set that I've started to accompany my mediation book. I have felt just uninspired. I know that if I force the words that the poems will be stodgy and clunky. I haven't even felt like continuing to edit the ones that I have written. sigh.

Am I trying to hard to be inspired? Do I give up too easily when I don't feel inspired? I know that inspiration comes in different ways for people - it is most likely rarely exactly the same for everyone. What gateway to inspiration should I be trying right now when the voice in my head says: "I don't want to. I just want to play."

I have read Elizabeth Gilbert's book, Big Magic, twice. Even it isn't providing me any inspiration right now. Sometimes the inspiration merely needs to be the discipline to sit down and do the work. But I truly seem to be in a space right now where I'd rather go for a walk, watch a youtube video, or something similar. sigh.

Maybe I just need to see this as a bardo period for any creativity. LLama Surya Das describes bardo in his book, Buddha Standard Time. Bardo is a Tibetan Buddhist concept of the life between human lives. Surya Das says that, to him, bardo can also be a period of, for example, illness between periods of health. Fields have fallow periods. I suppose I can see this as a fallow or bardo period and not try to force creativity. 

I know that some would say that you need to do whatever it is for you every day. But, it just never seems to work for me that way. 

I just hope that I can begin to harvest creativity again soon.

First photo by jebshoots.com
Second photo by Matthew Brodeur