Missing: Creative Spark, Reward Offered for Safe Return

Pelican feeding frenzy at Punta Lobos.

When my curiosity and creativity leave me, as they admittedly sometimes do, I usually try to ride it out. I tell myself that all creatives go through cycles, and that to attempt to force it - to push myself to create may only deepen the rut. It could even bring back the burnout I’ve tried so carefully to avoid. That my mind and body are asking for a break from the constant interrogation of the world around us - that I should just allow myself to exist and wait for that tingle - that spark to come back. This usually results in a period of deep reclusiveness before I eventually re-emerge to get back to business. This period can last days, weeks or months.

I think maybe all these years I’ve been doing it wrong.

If my creative spark is a lost cat, I shouldn’t just sit around and hope it comes back. I need to entice it to come home. Put a can of tuna and their favorite bed in the yard, put up some “MISSING” posters, go for a walk around the neighborhood looking under cars. Put in the effort to bring my elusive friend home.

My latest loss of motivation and spark comes from a confluence of schedule overload (something I do to myself often and it *surprise* never helps my creative process) and the unexpected: our dog is sick.

Flika at the beach in Puerto Adolfo Lopez Mateos in February.

Anyone who knows Dominic and I also likely knows Flika. A 9-year-old mutt we picked up from the side of a highway near Puerto Escondido, Flika has been our constant companion for almost a decade. In February, we took her and our other dog Gobi up to Puerto Adolfo Lopez Mateos—a town about five hours north of us, and where both Dom and I have worked on projects in the past. We went to visit old friends and also research a new project we are beginning. Flika seemed tired the whole trip but enjoyed her forays to the beach and seemed pretty happy to just be involved in the family road trip. At this point in late February, my creative juices were flowing and I was feeling fired up to start something new with my favorite collaborator in one of my favorite places.

When we arrived home after our long weekend in Lopez, Flika took a turn. In the span of 24 hours, her back legs stopped working, she refused food and water and she couldn’t seem to hold her head up. We worried that her cancer, which she received treatment for four years ago, had returned silently and taken over her insides. We thought we were saying goodbye.

We carried her 60lb body into a veterinary hospital in La Paz, sure that an ultrasound would reveal horrors growing inside her. Sure they would tell us the kindest thing we could do for her would be to let her go. But her tests all came back clean. It wasn’t until they tested her joint fluid that her diagnosis finally became clear: Flika’s joints had gone septic.

Flika in the hospital in La Paz during one of our visits.

We have theories about how this happened (the prevailing theory is a cut she had on her hock in January that got minorly infected may have been the culprit) but the reality is we’ll never know. Our girl spent 9 days in the veterinary hospital before coming home on plenty of antibiotics and painkillers, still unable to walk but in much better spirits.

Since February 25, my thoughts have revolved around little but her. When her next round of meds is, if her pain levels are decreasing, how she is doing in her rehab, how much weight she is putting on each foot, how many times a day she is going to the bathroom, when her next laser therapy appointment is, when I next need to change her bandage. I’ve left her twice since she’s been out of the hospital—once for my future sister-in-law’s bachelorette party in Cabo and once to shoot an assignment for three days in La Ventana. I’ve had to turn down two jobs during her recovery. Any excitement I felt about a new project with Dom and the dream assignment I was shooting and the ideas I had for future projects (and admittedly, ideas for pieces for this Substack) dissipated.

And I thought: “fine.”

Like waiting for my lost cat to just show up again, I let my spark leave me without a fight. I didn’t try to grab a wisp in the departure. I figured it would come back eventually.

But the inevitable (and hopefully relatable) frustration came back quickly. I wanted to want to be excited about making work. I had mapped our spring of 2026 out in my mind as a period of creative growth and forward momentum, and instead I found myself scrolling on Tiktok into the wee hours of the night and not even having the motivation to change out of my pajamas on the days I wasn’t literally forced to. I daydreamed about daydreaming about my creative endeavors, made documents I planned to fill in with research and story-planning that remained blank, side-eyed my camera gathering dust on my desk and froze under the enormous pressure of the sudden loss of something that had felt so steadfast just a month before.

Flika in our yard this week after a very successful, hopeful vet appointment.

In late March, we had a friend visiting us to shoot some footage for a pilot series he is working on. I, quietly, felt deeply inconvenienced by the timing. I was over the moon to see our friend, but I was also feeling at my absolute lowest creatively and energetically. I didn’t know how I would push through the week and dreaded the thought of perhaps having to pretend that I was the motivated machine I had been just a month before.

It turned out that week was exactly the lesson I needed. Our friend asked very, very little of us in terms of creative output–the pressure remained on him, not us. But the visit pushed me to re-enter the world. We went shark diving off of Cabo San Lucas and I brought my camera housing. We took a sunset walk at a nearby beach and I found myself genuinely excited to be photographing a pelican feeding frenzy. I found myself asking questions, feeling curious. It turns out that just being present in the outside world instead of retreating to my hidey-hole house was the tuna-and-bed-in-the-yard answer to coax the lost spark home to me.

A mako shark off the coast of Cabo San Lucas, my first time in the water with this extraordinary species.

One of my favorite quotes - by any photographer ever is - by Jim Richardson: “If you want to be a better photographer, stand in front of more interesting stuff.” It turns out that every period of creativity loss I’ve ever experienced has also coincided with a period of general isolation from the world around me. Moments where I have felt too overwhelmed to be out and about, so I just hide and let my frustration mount until something inevitably kicks my ass back out into the world of the living. The lesson I took from all of this was actually so simple: when the spark leaves, don’t chase it like a predator. But don’t ignore it either. Go stand in front of interesting stuff. See if you feel a tingle. If you don’t, leave your camera in the bag and just be in the moment. If you feel the tingle, reach for your camera. Don’t hide from the world because you feel like you have nothing to offer it. Just be in the world and your love and excitement for it will come home to you eventually.

An image of an osprey nest I took on a “bird walk” with Dom. No pressure, pictures aren’t for anyone or anything, just out making pictures.

I still don’t feel “back,” exactly. I’m not saying these experiences refilled my tank completely, and I’m not pushing anything. I’m, for the first time, just trying to encourage the spark to stay. I sure as hell haven’t finished the grant application I planned to work on this past week, I’m making some very mediocre images, and those research and story-planning documents I made still sit blank.

But I’m here. I’m writing, I’m making pictures, and for now the spark is home. It may leave again, but I know exactly what I’m going to do when I go looking for it next time.