Tonight I’m feeling uninspired. 

I sat down at this computer with some time to spare and hoped that I’d suddenly have this stroke of inspiration to write or create something really neat that would inspire all these people and be super great. But I sit at my desk, surrounded by remnants of uninspiring and unfinished tasks:

• A package of half-used dental floss whose label is rubbing off
• A charm off a necklace that I keep forgetting to put back on
• A box of blank Christmas cards I hoped to send to friends on campus
• A pencil with an eraser that’s completely gone
• An empty mason jar that’s supposed to be full of scraps of paper that have the things I’m thankful for each day written on them

Tonight I feel like my desk: messy, disorganized, marked with visible signs of unfinished business.

There’s a collage I made at the beginning of the semester that’s precariously perched on the bulletin board right above my messy desk. I’m surprised it hasn’t fallen down, actually. “LOVE WHERE YOU ARE” is glued at the center of the collage, words cut out from a magazine.

Those words kind of mock me tonight.

Tonight, I’m not loving where I am. I’m tired. I’m ready to be done with school. I’m weary from the weight of responsibility. I want to go home and watch television and walk my dog and sit at my kitchen table alone, unthreatened for hours on end by the prospect of running into someone in the cafeteria that I just don’t feel like talking to.

Tonight I couldn’t sit down at the computer and write an essay about my excitement to make dreams possible, or my nostalgia about the end of my second-to-last semester of college. Tonight I feel uninspired.

I sit at my desk, waiting for inspiration to come, but it doesn’t seem like will come. So I angrily close my browser, questioning why I even wanted to write a blog post.

“Who am I to think that  I want to or even could do this for a living if I can’t even think of a topic for one simple blog post?!” my own mocking voice chirps in my mind. It tells me to just give up, no one cares. It tells me to stop pretending that writing is even worth it. It makes me hate this desk and this computer, and the idea of my dreams.

So I listen to that voice and I stop. I sit at my desk and I stare at nothing.

But then I look up and realize that I’m not staring at nothing. I am staring at that collage, the one that is precariously perched on my bulletin board.

I can’t say that I’ve looked at that collage much this semester. It really has become part of the background, like the dental floss and the necklace charm and greeting cards; my “collage of inspiration” has become part of my collection of remnants of unfinished tasks. It’s been up there on the bulletin board for so long that I’ve grown to ignore it, to ignore the advice I gave myself at the beginning of the semester when I wasn’t so emotionally spent, tired, apathetic, and weary.

Reject apathy 

Lead with love

See the big picture  

Love where you are 

it reads.

I see words—words that answer that mocking voice inside of my head. Words that tell me that inspiration is right in front of me, I just didn’t see it until now, until I opened my eyes to see what I’ve been missing all along. Words that remind me of the hope I had at the beginning of the semester. Words that were true then are still true right now, even as I was feeling un-inspired.

I realize that I am not like the items on my desk. I am not a remnant. I am not someone’s ugly mess. I am not forgotten. I am not ignored. I am not someone’s perpertually-unfinished business.

I am full because I have been emptied. I am loved despite my messiness. I am remembered even when I forget. I am a work in progress who will not be abandoned mid-project by my Creator.

Tonight I was feeling uninspired.

It turns out that all I needed to do was look up.