THE END OF A BAD DAY

The last few weeks have been tough. There have been a few little victories and a lot of emotional lows. I've got a history with mental health so I know when things are starting to go a bit dark. I've come to recognise it and know what I need to do to pull myself into a place where I can see the light and breathe again. The problem is, I don't always do it.

One particular day last week was really tough and pretty traumatic to be honest. I was emotionally and mentally spent and drained and I just couldn't see what the future looked like.

Creating anything or thinking about creativity was the last thing I could be bothered with. It's always the first thing to go on my list when things go tough.

It's a great excuse to push creativity to the side because it's not helpful and it requires thinking when I'd rather put Call of Duty on, drink copious amounts of coffee and eat a ridiculous amount of biscuits.

This particular day I had organised to hang out with my good friend Pete, we've journeyed a lot of stuff together, trained for and ran a marathon together. He's a gentleman of great taste in design and a great photographer to boot. We decided to head out around our native Newcastle city centre to explore, cameras in hand to just shoot some pictures when the light was great (golden hour) and get creative.

It was the last thing I wanted to do. ' Default me ' probably would have cancelled because of a really crap day and Netflix was calling, but I really pushed myself to head out with the encouragement of my wife. It was the best decision! For the following few hours we hung out talking about photography, cameras, why he does what he does with his camera. He answered my questions, encouraged me and helped me gain more understanding of my camera.

I had to humble myself a bit because I'm not always comfortable being the beginner in a situation but what I realised was how much I could progress in something if opened myself up and was vulnerable about my lack of understanding.

We live in an age where we think we need to have the answers. We can think that the thing we're doing must be great from the offset and even when its not we're generally too proud to ask for help from more knowledgable people around us, because that means being seen as weak and vulnerable. Both things are deemed to be negative traits in todays society. They aren't. To be vulnerable and to ask for help in any context is showing strength. I think the people who progress in their creative endeavours are generally the people who are vulnerable, who aren't afraid to ask questions 'How did you do that? ' 'Why did you do that?'. I think this is essential if you want to progress your creative craft. It's the building blocks on which to learn and build your own style and creativity. Even from that evening with Pete I've started using my camera slightly different in certain situations from what I learnt from him.

By the end of the evening I had created. What I had gained was more experience and knowledge whilst hanging out and doing life with a good friend and even if just for a few hours, I had put aside the stresses of the day and forgot about them in the process of creating and learning!

Although it didn't help or change my personal situation I was mentally uplifted and felt great from the creative hormones being released. My head was lifted and a small sense of achievement in creating brightened what was a dark day. On the days when you're feeling overcome with what's happening in life maybe make the decision to push past the thought of escaping into Netflix and get the creative juices flowing to bring light and life to your day!