Are you happy, well-rounded? (dealing w/ depression/lack of motivation)
lionhearted: When I get into a funk, I travel. It always snaps me out of it.How much are you spending per month, in what country? Because it's actually cheaper, including airfare, to live for a couple months in somewhere inexpensive. You can live an extremely nice in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand for between $150 and $500 per month. It's $5 a night for a crummy room, $10 for a pretty nice room, $1 per meal for decent local food, $2 or $3 for higher end Thai food or Western food. Massage $5 to $10. Fairly cheap to go swimming, free to visit temples, short taxi ride $1. $20 for the weekly Thai boxing match if you're into it.I spent three weeks in Chiang Mai, and think I spent $500 all-in. That's $200 for my room, maybe $10/day for food and tea is another $200 (was having lots of really nice tea and lots of fruit shakes, the actual meals and snacks weren't expensive, a bag of roasted peanuts is like 20 cents for instance), then maybe $100 for a few taxi rides, a boxing match, and a few massages.Traveling breaks me out of a funk, helps me get a perspective. It's good because just being in another culture I feel like I'm "doing something" - learning some of the language and customs, constantly doing math for conversions on the currency, and so on. It carries pretty well into work and is good for getting inspiration to do more creative/speculative work that's not on a deadline or straightforward.Most inspirational places I've been, not in order - Tokyo, the rest of Kansai, Taipei, Barcelona, Amsterdam (if you like art or a party scene, and can handle bad weather), London, New York, San Francisco, the more remote provinces of China, Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand, Dubai, Toronto, Florence, Southern France. Some of those are cheaper than others. If I had a gun to my head and absolutely had to get something creative done in the next 30 days that was important, I'd head to Barcelona or Taipei I think.Different places appeal to different people, but hitting the road's frequently been the answer for me when I've been confused. I usually buy a one way ticket and just work my way around a part of the world, taking trains and boats whenever I can instead of flying, eating where local people eat, trying to stay away from tourist areas, getting into nature or the local art/culture, making friends, and so on. But the best part of all is you can actually save money while doing it if you don't mind slumming it, eating cheap, living somewhere not nice - I'm fairly simple, so I wind up spending less money when I'm in most places than I would've spent living in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, or London, which are the main cities I've hung my hat over the last five years. If you're somewhere a bit expensive, it's pretty cool to save money by subletting or ending your lease, and then spending a lot less somewhere else. Feel free to drop an email or post here if you've got questions - I recommend kayak.com for flights, and hostelworld if you're looking for cheap accommodation. Get a private room if you can afford it though, it's bloody miserable when you've got people who are drunk/sick/coughing/oblivious in a dorm room with you, but hey, I did plenty of that when I was younger, and you'll still survive...Edit: I'll also second the recommodations for cleaning up a diet, exercise, and martial arts, all of which are good. Inspirational books are good too - I just finished "Open", Andre Aggassi's autobiography, which was pretty incredible and highly recommend. Easy, very exciting reading.