From the Desk Of: On Creating When You’re Overstimulated
Introducing a new series: personal entries on process, perspective, and the creative life.
Welcome to From the Desk Of, a new series within The Maxwell Edit that leans a little closer to the personal. Less archive, more honesty. These are the notes that don’t make it into pitch decks or portfolio captions. The thoughts I come back to between campaigns, while scrolling endlessly, or when the inspiration engine feels stalled.
Let’s start with this:
Lately, I’ve felt overstimulated. Not in a glamorous, overbooked kind of way, but in the low-level, quiet kind of burnout that’s harder to pin down. Too many tabs open, too many images, too many reference points, and not enough space between them.
It’s the paradox of being a creative right now: you need input to make anything, but too much of it and your instincts get buried. What started as a moodboard becomes a vortex. What should be inspiration starts to feel like comparison. And suddenly, you're not sure if your ideas are even yours anymore.
When that happens, I try to return to fewer, better things. A book instead of a feed. A walk without a podcast, a shoot with no brief. It’s not always productive, but it helps me remember what I actually like, not what’s trending.
If you’re here, maybe you feel it too. That creative tension between consumption and clarity.
This series is for that. For all the in-between moments, the subtle revelations, the questions that come up when the scroll stops.
Thanks for reading. And if you’ve been feeling it too, I see you.