How Do You Stay Inspired?

Inspiration is tricky. If you rely on it, it becomes like an addiction. I have had moments where my chest becomes so heavy waiting on the inspiration to fill me like a cistern waiting for rainwater. And it doesn’t come. So I have gone searching for it and it has run along the trail before me, hiding like a fox when I approach. When I moved to Chicago, I turned inward to draw on my reserves of inspiration from childhood in the Valley. Now, as I get older and my time in the studio outweighs my time out of doors, I don’t wait for inspiration and I don’t seek it out. I have to be my own inspiration, and I have to work without it some days. At this point I am not really sure what inspires me to create. I guess I am inspired by the desire to find a new inspiration.