As with any artistic endeavor, as a photographer you are forever striving to improve your skills and stay creative. Just learning how to work all the settings on your camera and watching videos that teach you posing and composing techniques will not make you a master of your craft. The greatest practitioners in any field are always striving for improvement, and stepping out of their comfort zones. If their craft starts to feel routine, they look for a new challenge. To lose the struggle and become complacent is to stop being an artist. Of course, you need to take breaks. You need to set your brushes out to dry, put your guitar in its case, and take a walk, or go meet friends, or watch TV. But, if the drive is really there, you get back to it. You keep the muscles in shape. You have good days and bad days, sometimes the creativity is there, sometimes it's not, but you keep going through the motions, putting yourself in a position to create. With photography, I can't always be hiking in beautiful mountains, or photographing a beautiful woman on the beach at sunset. Life gets in the way. I get caught up with all the "stuff" that occupies our days. But, if I'm away from my camera for too long, I can feel my "muscles" start to atrophy. I start to get out of camera shape. So, at times like that, I often just pick up my camera and go for a walk, like I did last Friday. I didn't have a lot of time, so I just walked in a loop around my neighborhood, on streets I have seen so many times they no longer catch my eye. The light was not particularly pretty, and their was nothing very interesting happening on the streets. So, I just took photos of random stuff. I went through the motions. I didn't get any "wow" shots, or have any creative breakthroughs, but that's OK. The road to improvement is a long one, so I'd better keep in shape.