The value of taking a break: you’ll get the creative bolts that fuel your best photography

With Independence Day falling on a Wednesday this year, it creates a dilemma for those of us who don’t have someone else telling us what days we get to take off from work. Should I only take off  Wednesday the 4th of July? Tuesday and Wednesday? Wednesday and Thursday? Or just take the whole week as few clients will likely be making project decisions this week due to the confusion.

That leaves many creative people debating on how much time they should “goof off” surrounding such a holiday–especially when their photo marketing consultant has been urging them to create some new work for their portfolio or do some meta-tagging of their images. 😉

They start to feel ambivalent and guilty because, as freelancers, they feel that if they’d just managed their time better, they could have already completed those important but non-urgent business tasks on other days and be free to play. But, alas, they didn’t get those non-urgent tasks done. Yet again. (I totally empathize!!)

So they now face a holiday with twinges of guilt. “Should I just bagged it all and go on that long bike ride, to that baseball game, picnic, concert, parade, etc. or should I stay in and work on that stuff?”

I don’t know about you but I loved reading this article in the NY Times about the value of down time.

“The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done. “

 

Happy Independence Day holidays! I’m going to go for some bolts of inspiration. I’m outta here!