The Oatmeal’s “Some thoughts and musings about making things for the web” really captures a lot of the joys and sorrows of working in a creative field in the age of the Internet, especially the toxicity of spending too much time reading nasty comments, and the difficulty of maintaining self discipline. My one quibble — and it’s a major one — is the business about “inspiration.”
For me the major turning point in my working life was when I figured out that the work I produced when I felt inspired wasn’t any different from the work I produced when I felt uninspired — at least a few months later. I think that “inspiration” has to do with your own confidence in your ideas, your blood sugar, the external pressures in your life, and a million other factors only tangentially related to the actual quality of the work. If creative work makes you sane and happy (and if it supports you financially), it’s terrible to harness it to something you can’t control, like “inspiration” — it sucks to only be happy when something you can’t control occurs.
Some thoughts and musings about making things for the web
(via Neatorama)