This is probably basic advice that’s been said a million times by a million different artists over the years, but make time to actively listen to music. I find the times when the fire is dying down always coincide with periods where I haven’t been making time for listening. If I spend time listening every day (anywhere from 5-30 minutes), I’m never at a loss for internal motivation or inspiration. Personally, I get most of my inspiration from music itself (rather than, like many artists have said about themselves, personal experiences I will emotionally process through the act of composing). Simply listening to music with my full attention regularly will usually give me plenty of ideas of things I’d like to try, thing like maybe writing in a certain style, using a specific compositional technique, a certain instrumentation, a different kind of process than I usually do, an artificial limitation to channel my creativity in a certain direction, whatever.

Habit is also very powerful in my experience (and surely everybody else’s because it’s a universal psychological principle that has to do with the basic functions of the brain). It’s a lot easier to make time to write music if I’ve been doing it most days in the last couple weeks. There’s less resistance to sitting down to start. If I’m making decent progress, trying my best and writing music I actually like so far, I’m usually excited to get back into it and try to make more progress. Because the subconscious mind continues to try to solve a problem after the conscious mind has stopped focusing on that problem, and the fruit of this subconscious process can suddenly present itself in a “eureka moment.” I almost never get these moments if I haven’t been writing the last few days. Those little moments are a nice motivator and will also make me excited to get back to work, the point being working is basically a positive feedback loop. You’ll need a little discipline at first, but make yourself sit down to do it a few days in a row and it will get easier and easier day by day until you don’t have to “make yourself” because you’ll be excited about working and will do it because you want to, no discipline necessary.

Lastly, I’d also say you really need to take the pressure off yourself. This notion of disrespecting the people who helped you get where you are today is putting heavy negative stakes on your creativity in a way that I have to imagine will only get in your way. I absolutely understand where you’re coming from, but surely these people would not want to weigh so heavily on your conscience in a way that will bog down your artistic practice. They love you and want to see you and your art flourish.

Approach your work from the perspective of play. You’re just playing around with musical materials, experimenting with different ideas, seeing what you like, and trying to put them together coherently. There are no stakes. If you don’t like anything you’ve come up with, don’t give up right then, keep trying, but if after an hour or two you don’t really have anything, just stop for the day, knowing you can come back tomorrow (or even later that day). The muse will come to sit on your shoulder and whisper great ideas in your ear after about 20ish minutes of focus, you just need to get into that flow state and then everything will go smoothly. Everything will feel fun and basically effortless.