The drop in the stomach returns — I sit down at the keyboard, pick up the guitar, or sit at the drawing board. Either way, it all feels the same — ugh.

The resistance is coming from a long stretch of, well, stretching. After my move back to Texas, I was eager to continue learning new things across all the disciplines. This always starts out as really thrilling, but eventually a few symptoms arise after going strictly on that path in the practice for a while: blank page syndrome, procrastination, and frustration.

Alas, still learning this one! Something that continually takes defining is how much new and how much familiar to keep in the routine.

I'm not a great adherent to the 50% rule from drawabox. There's a reason it's hard. It's almost a comforting thing learning new material; the payoff is clearly defined. There's more courage required to goof around. Hoping to make this my written reminder to adhere more closely to keeping a balance!

Maybe it's just my style. Having spent most of my life in school eaither as a student or a teacher, I'm pretty hard-wired to the rhythm of the academic calendar and the release that comes with summer break.

Speaking of, a helpful connection: I played Super Mario 64 to death as a kid. I still do — I come back to cruise through 100% it somewhat annually. Part of what makes this game special is how open it is. You are in levels, and there are objectives, but you're given a lot of freedom in what order and how to accomplish them for the most part. Today, I can play it with clear targets. But when I was a kid, it was more about exploration.

And what made it so engrossing for long stretches of time, and why I don't really remember burning out from it, is that I approached it the way that a kid would. I played the game wrong! I would take in the scenery. Sit and enjoy the music. Make up my own goofy games within the game. (e.g., climbing slides backwards.) When hitting a wall, I found other ways to lighten the load to keep playing.

So I'm searching for ways to do this in my mediums. Playing familiar pieces. Drawing favorite subjects — flowers, people, and little ghosts. Simply enjoying the production of sound and line. Playing my own goofy games of "what if I improvised with only these three strings?"

A lot of that requires doing things that don't end up on this site. It has to happen off stage. More on this another time.

Shifting the goal has helped so far. The question isn't how I can hit a target, but how I can keep playing. That's what it's all about at the end of the day, anyway.