Too much force

When I was in high school I suffered often from what I called "mental constipation". This was when I was working on a project and I had all kinds of ideas for things to be working on, but what I was working on at the time just didn't seem to flow. I would sit and look at the assignment and try to come up with ideas on how to complete it, but all of them were lame or would never work. I would day dream about all of these other great ideas I had but nothing would come for the task at hand. It was like all of these great ideas were clogged up by the fact that I couldn't use them on my current work.

These last couple of weeks I have been suffering again from this ailment. I have had a thrift store piece that has been sitting on my table forever and I have yet to come up with something to add to it that makes me feel satisfied. I sit there and look at the picture and try to force my brain to think of something. It is kind of like when Winnie the Pooh tries to think of something. (http://coub.com/view/2yrectc) It is square peg round hole moment where things just don't quite fit. At time it feels like the more I try to force something to happen the less I can actually think of. The harder I strain to think of something the more crap the ideas get.

I have made a goal for this year, to finish a thrift piece and a water color every month, but this thrift piece is holding me up. I am actually behind now on my goal, because things just don't seem to want to come together for it. It is horribly aggravating that my imagination seems to have stopped dead when it comes to this piece.

What I usually do when I get to this point is throw it aside and work on something new. I just take issue with that right now, because it was my goal to do this. I don't want to just leave this goal behind. I also don't have any other thrift pieces to work on. So in essence I have to work on this one in order to keep up with my goal. My other issue with leaving it for later is that I have a tendency to put things aside and never come back to them. The "while" I say to myself seems to mean to put it away and forget about it.

So I guess what I am going to need to do is, either be willing to commit to an idea that may not be great now and just put something on paper and hammer things into place the hard way and see how it turns out, or I need to figure out a way to set something aside for a while and put a time limit on how long I can put it there.

I just cannot allow myself to become caught up on things like this. I need to be able to keep working instead of becoming stalled on a single piece. This piece is not stronger or smarter than me. I just have to out think my thinking problem and move on.

When I get done with this pieces it may not be my best piece, but at least I will have figured out how to work my way around this "mental constipation" that I find myself with right now.