To ask you to help me find my creative passion again

[Peppapigforlife]

I lost it about a year after DD was born. When I moved into a council house that had the most disgusting dog poo brown peeling walls, dirty skirtings, no carpet and concrete floor, no furniture, fleas, slugs and cigarette butts all over the garden. Was left to get on with decorating my the council with an 8 month old baby.
My family helped with painting a couple of the rooms sporadically over the space of 10 months and I attempted the bathroom and then they lost interest. Before this I used to draw every day, write a blog, paint, make things with crafts, help people, choose nice outfits, take photos, put on creative events and I even had a vintage clothes store at one point. Now I just feel nothing. Just flat. It's like the state of the skirting boards have taken all my passion away from me and I don't have time to tackle the decorating properly because I have to work to get dd's nursery funded which she has really needed with lockdown.
The other things I used to love doing don't take up half as much energy or time and I can put them away when not working on them but i just have no enthusiasm for anything creative when I'm at home. Its get me really down. Not really looking for the magic answer but wanted to rant and ask for some motivation and positivity to get past this.

I don't think I really see the connection between the decorating/state of your house and the creative activities you mention. Can you analyse it a bit more to try to work out exactly why the one is affecting the other? What I mean is that if you loved doing craft-type things, I would think you would want to keep doing them even more as a displacement activity from thinking about the decor! Do you think that if there was a magic wand you could wave to transform your home, that the creative urge would come back? If so, why? And what would be the minimum list of practical things you would have to do to the house to make that happen? Could you make that list and tackle just those things in order to get back to where you want to be with your creative projects?
If you think that wouldn't do the trick, then I'd suggest that it's something else that's causing you to not want to do the things you used to do.
I hope you don't mind the questions! I'm just thinking that working through those sorts of thought processes might make things clearer.
On a more practical note, maybe you could simply pick a small-scale project that you know you would like to have done in the past and 'make' yourself start it - treat it like a job or chore to begin with, and hope that just maybe the momentum will build and you'll start to get the same thrill and satisfaction out of it that you used to.
None of that's a magic answer I know!

Haha thanks you for responding I appreciate it. I guess it feels like such a big creative task that I cant get it out of my mind when I try and do other things and just looking at the ugliness of it all day long seems to dry up my creative inspiration and juices. Plus how much time we spent on it already has burned me out. It needs so much work. So many rooms need painting and skirting needs doing everywhere and bits of the windowsills are crumbling away. Sometimes I do a little bit of something creative in the one decorated room and as soon as I come out and see the ugliness and how dimly lit the flat is I feel so deflated at the thought if being stuck here for all eternity. I literally only have a half an hour free here and there to work on it which doesn't even make a dent in it. I guess I feel torn between using that time to work on my house which I dont want to be in in an area I want to move out of, and using that time to do something I do enjoy but which I cant relax doing anyway because I'm in such a horrible environment.

Maybe it's my neighbourhood killing my creativity...

I get where you're coming from. You can't do anything creative in the environment you're in, feel guilty you're not working on said environment, but then can't even summon the creativity to improve the environment.

You say you don't want to be there, how realistic is moving out in the near future? Because that might influence it really. If moving in maybe 6 - 18 months is realistic, grit your teeth and just ignore the state its all in (except any health hazards).

Give yourself permission to not think about it and find your muses elsewhere - what sort of thing do you do? Painting / drawing - pack up your stuff, go to the country park, sit by the river, coffee shop whatever, anywhere pretty. Sounds like time is a constraint, so maybe even paint one wall all white, put your desk in front and set up a collage of beautiful photos for inspiration. Knitting / sewing - similar - set up a space for it, comfy seat, throws. Card making or scrapbooking - again perhaps set up a desk area, where you can ignore the world behind.

If moving away soonish isn't realistic or you just can't ignore it, then really you need to improve it. Make lists of what needs doing, really be detailed. Work out what can be done in half hour - even if that's choosing and ordering paint. What needs more time (and can't be stopped once started). But also, stop thinking of it as a creative project - yes its awfully boring...but you can paint everything magnolia and gloss, basic clean carpet and basic skirting. Getting it to neutral might be a chore, but you might find it more inspiring than ugly.

Thank you yes I think I need to just stop seeing it as a creative project and just get it neutral. I wish I could set up some creative spaces but not possible with a toddler. I tried making the one bit of storage space here into my creative space but even that is so ugly and dirty inside it would need weeks of work just to look appealing when I open the doors. The other issue is I live at the top of a hill with nothing nice around me to inspire me. Anywhere nice to walk to would take a long time and I'd have to rush back straight away to pick up dd from nursery. Don't drive either. No coffee shops here either, not even a shop. It's all very bleak and uninspiring. Just diggers around whilst they put up newbuilds. I do really want to get out and I can in 18 months if I buy the place off the council and then rent it out and rent somewhere nicer but even then I'd have to have it sorted out for renting standards. It's really so disgusting I even had a deep cleaner come round and there were decades of dirt she couldnt get off the skirtings and the taps leave yellow stains all around them even after scrubbing, the next few days the yellow returns. Bleurghhh.

I had a little meditate last night and I decided that I'm going to treat the house experience as though I've just moved in and it isn't super nice, but it will do for now for the purpose of being creative and spending time with my little girl. I just want to be able to make nice bracelets and do fun things without the walls putting me off, and then if I find time further down the line, I can decorate, otherwise move into a place which actually comes decorated. And then if I do end up buying the place and wanting to rent it out, I can just save up for painters and decorators by then, or give the tenants half price if they're happy to decorate themselves. This knocks the pressure off wanting to get it all sorted for the future.