This experience isn't unique to post-grad youngsters like me. Life is hard. There is a whole lot of world out there, and sometimes when people tell you, "You can do anything," it sounds more scary than reassuring. The overwhelmingness of life alone is enough to make anyone absolutely miserable. And when you're miserable, you don't want to work, even on the personal projects that you really enjoy. You might not be able bring yourself to even think about work.
First things first: being miserable is perfectly understandable. It is totally okay to be pessimistic about life for a few days every once in a while, especially if you just want to be upset. But when you have work to do, or you don't want to be upset, it can seem almost impossible to do either of those things. A good friend of mine, Julia Quirke, who is much more eloquent than I am, describes this problem in her own way in her most recent youtube video. When you're ready to be done upsetting yourself, what can you do to motivate yourself?
My suggestion: just do something. For the past few weeks, I've thought about telling the story I've been meant to tell since third grade. Thought about it. Until a few days ago, I have been so depressed about the overwhelmingness of life that I didn't work on it. I thought it was a waste of time, just like everything else, so I sat on my butt and watched TV.
However, this past weekend, I sat myself down in front of my computer and MADE myself work on that comic book. I couldn't tell you why. Perhaps I just ran out of things to do, or maybe I thought that doing something pointless would be better than doing nothing at all, or maybe I remembered that I used to like doing this, but either way, I did it. I knew I didn't have my plot completely solid, and I knew there were holes, but I made myself start mindlessly laying out panels. During this ridiculously mind-numbing task, something magical happened.
I fell in love.
In just sitting down and forcing myself do even the worst part of the process, I also forced myself to think about the process. Thinking about the process did two things: it made me remember why I love making comic books, and, possibly the best part of the creative process, I filled in some of the holes that were bothering me.
[That was ridiculously, fantastically, absurdly exciting, by the way. It was a lot like finally understanding what that weird fetal Voldemort is doing under the bench in King's Cross.]*
If you need further motivation, talk to other people about what they've been doing, or what you like to do, or why you like to do it. Other people are fantastic sources of inspiration and ideas. It may even be helpful to go do something you've never done or rarely do (like go to a bar, park, coffee shop, etc.) just to watch people. Find people you don't like and wonder why they act that way, or why you don't like them. Find people you think are a fantastic addition to society. The existence of people is a wonderful tool for getting over that overwhelmingness of life. Billions of people are dealing with that overwhelmingness, and they're not all doing the same thing.
The way I see it, although there's a lot of scary overwhelming world out there, you can be sure that enough of it is so overwhelmingly good that it's worth pursuing.