Rob, I could counter with positives of my own but what's the point, it's not going to change how you feel about your yourself or your attitude towards photography and life in general.
Here's hoping you can find a more positive outlook in the near future.
I don't think it has anything at all to do with being positive or negative, as a mindset or person; it just is. Other aspects of life have little bearing on it, really. The act and value of making a picture is very much exaggerated as a thing, an action. (I'm speaking, again, from the non-commercial point of view.)
There's the notion that we are sometimes bursting with this creative essence that shrieks for manifestation in some image or another. But does it? Or is it, pehaps, just a sense of obligation that we have to pursue because of the fact that we've bought all this stuff and feel deeply guilty if we don't employ it? It's certainly true that when very young, life is new, you believe in everything being possible - my 1960s - and go out to discover if you were right or not. That doesn't last forever, that sense of excitement. Especially when you draw your pension and know too many hospital staff too well.
That's a time when, as Kent describes, you are inclined to look at the greater world and its very nature, and particularly at your part within it. Suddenly, your anima, your concept of what you and your life are shrinks to a microdot. I'll recount a little incident concerning my mother. She came to live here for a period during her 80s, and one morning I found her in the corridor in tears. I asked her what on Earth was the matter, and she replied, simply, I feel I've lost my identity. I didn't understand. In that decade myself, I do; only too well. The certainties of everything collapse at your feet, and you realise that that went before was mostly a fluke, a turn of the cards, and that in the end you are but another grain of sand on the beach or, if lucky, a cowrie shell instead. A funny irony struck me last week: about a year ago I found this stationery store that sells a large calendar with space at each numeral to allow notes: I snapped it on the cellphone and went off to the shop to buy a replacement for next year (you see? positive thinking!). As I showed the lady the image, I realised that many years ago I was handing out my own calendars at this time of year... now, I'm hoping that I can find one that suits my needs! Oh boy, let's go photograph some more dirty windows and headless mannequins, and play at Saul!
Today was a beautifully sunny day, so I didn't have to go out and look for pictures, and just had lunch on the terrace instead. Tonight it's freezing my ass off. There was a saying in Scotland about Edinburgh women being all fur coat and no knickers; well, that's how a good,
sunny winter's day is out here for the average retiree female: bikini through lunchtime, and layers of sweaters after four. I guess that was something worth working towards.
;-)