Crawling Out of the Dreaded Rut

I'd be lying if I said the last 5 months of 2017 weren't some of the hardest ever. It wasn't because I was failing at my business, I was thriving actually. I had a wedding every weekend, shoots almost every night, and was in the zone business wise. Yet I was in pain, physical pain, and had no idea why. I'm totally the person that won't go to the doctor. I can fix it myself, whatever it was. Self diagnosing myself with sciatica I knew where I had to go to get fixed. So, like in the past, I headed to the chiropractor convinced it was like before and would be that simple. The chiropractor and a little bit of essential oils that usually works, had no effect, heck sometimes it just got worse. After 5 months, I decided that it was maybe time to head to the doctor. 

I headed to see a physiatrist to see what was up. He gave me the dreaded "I think you need to get an MRI". ugh, I did not want to pay for it. Last time I had and MRI nothing came out of it, not worth the time or money. Not only did I need and MRI he wanted dye injected (one of the worst experiences ever, it hurts people) because he saw signs of arthritis in my hip and wanted to check for inflammation. Can I remind you I was about 7 months in with pain everyday, hardly being able to walk or stand for more than 20 min. I was done. I just wanted to know what was wrong. It finally came to have my MRI and ta-daa, I had arthritis and inflammation. You guys, I found out I had arthritis like two days before my 24th birthday (my mom works for a hip and knee doctor and he said I had the hips of a 40 year old, HBD to me!) It was off to a rheumatologist. Finally, he gave me a diagnosis. I had this thing called "SPA" (longer version is hard to say). It's basically inflammation of my SI joints & spine. This explains some of the back pain I've been having for a solid 5 years as well as some knee pain. I'm now on some mega anti-inflammatories and feeling great! Not 100% but SO MUCH BETTER. It hurt to get out of bed. It took me forever to take my first step after standing up because so often my leg would give out. I wasn't able to photograph weddings the best of my abilites, I had to postpone shoots. It was terrible. 

So why am I telling you all this? During these 7-8 months of severe pain, I slowly became so over everything. All I wanted to do was lay in bed, for good reason (it hurt to do anything else). I slacked with emails, staying on task, keeping up workflows. I felt bad but also could care less. I lost it. All motivation to do anything business wise. Even though I was telling myself, you can work from bed! You need to do something, naps ended up taking up most of my time. I don't know if a creative rut came from this slump or if it was my annual winter off time getting the best of me; but I wasn't wanting to go to shoots or even respond to emails. My mind was blank when it came to creating new images. About three weeks ago, I finally started emerging from my funk. IT TOOK 3 MONTHS GET OUT OF THIS. Things take time. Nothing happens over night. Now that I'm feeling better and more motivated I'm back to wanting to do all the things. I'm completely ok with how long it took though. I got to rest in a time I needed it. I had fought through that pain every single weekend in the fall, which was probably terrible but I had no choice. It exhausted me not only physically but mentally as well. 

So here's a reminder that we all have periods of creative ruts and wanting to do nothing. We all have moments were we feel like we are failing. It's how we recover that counts, not those moments of weakness. It takes time, sometimes a few days but sometimes a few months. I apologize for those emails answered days later or the galleries delivered late. Looking back, I'm not mad it happened. There's a fire under me now. I'm motivated to do even more and try things I'm afraid of. Don't be afraid of getting in a rut. Take it and then fight your way back even better than before.