When your colors fade to gray

You want to do something, but don't know what exactly or where to begin. Yet all your fingers are thumbs and you can't do anything. The colors fade to gray and you end up scrolling time by surfing internet, sleeping or playing solitaire. The worst thing is you start feeling guilty for doing nothing. Here are a few tips that may help if you find yourself in such situation.

The key thing is to shake yourself from blues. This means no passive contemplation. Leave meditation for another case. Here we need some active stuff to do.

0. Stop scrolling time. Solitaire is addicting I know. Yet if you don't stop playing it you won't get any success. (By solitare I mean ANY time-scrolling activity you use).

1. Read and comment. Reading books is ok but not in this case. Find blogs, communities or forums where you will participate in communication. Read the topics and write whatever comes to your head in comments. Questions, ideas, your own experience, associations whatever. Just don't be silent. When I had writer's block - I started with minor comments on some social networks untill my creative juices flew again.

2. Meet your friends. There's nothing good as offline communication. Meet or phone your friends. Ask them the latest news, let them tell you some stories, ask if they got any new hobbies, visited some cool place or web-site. Give them your feedback. Hopefully the stories will make you think or even give you some ideas.

3. Get inspired with visual things like video clips, movies or pictures (Not depressive ones!!!). There are l-o-t-s of resources where artists place their pictures or photos and there are as many video services where you can watch stuff for free. Watch things and write down any associations that come to your mind. They may make you want to do something creative too.

4. Learn something new. If you can't do things you used to - than do something else. Learn a language, search wikipedia for some stuff you don't know and try to understand it, choose some weird field to study, or learn more interesting details about some common stuff. Then share your experience with that. My experience again: 2 years ago I though I'll die of boredom untill found an online guide to html\css that changed my life! Now I can make templates for websites or blogger! Hope to make a blog with my own templates soon!

5. If you can't make a whole thing - make a draft. If you're a writer or an artist - carry a notebad or a sketchbook with you. Write down any idea that comes to you. Yeah I know this one is an old thing. But it damn helpful! You don't need to write a poem in your notepad - just a phrase or two. I have a notepad where I write the ideas for this blog. Moreover, the idea of this post came to me about 2 weeks ago when I chated with my friend who told me the idea of the 1st 2 phrases of this post.

6. If you start doing something and it fails - don't torture yourself and the thing you do. If something fails and you get annoyed - the worst thing to do is to proceed. Better shift to something else. Like pp. 1 - 4.

7. If nothing helps - do something useful that does not require thinking i.e. housework. Not only it is a good thing to water plants or clean the house, but it will also make you head clear when your hands are occupied. I mean when you do some routine things you can think about whatever you want without actually being attached to a clear sheet of paper that makes you feel dumb.

Oh and don't think that I forgot to spoil your mood with some morality. Here goes my favorite one. Stop pitying yourself and start doing something. If you keep thinking that you can't do anything - nothing will ever change. Start doing something and as you proceed you'll have no chance to question yourself - cause you've already started!