The Artist’s Way
Week 7 Reflection Week 8 Instructions
Done is better than perfect. Not yet done is less than perfect but suggests the possibility that the intention still exists?!
I find myself checking in on deadline day then rushing to finish everything I forgot or didn’t do! How about you? An imperfectionist who sticks close enough to deadlines can finish many of the week’s writing tasks in about 35-minutes.
Last week’s task “Jealousy Map” would be better called Admiration or Inspiration Map — I don’t think jealousy is useful as it encourages comparisons with others. If comparisons with others are useful at all, it can only be with one’s past, present, and future self. Writing a ‘Jealousy Map’ makes me feel secretive, naughty, and a little embarrassed to share what I’ve written with anyone on that list. On the other hand, If I’d included them on my Admiration or Inspiration Map, I’d feel more motivated to let them know of the special status they hold in my life!
This isn’t the first week we’ve been asked to display a message somewhere prominent. For me, this means tearing off a piece of paper, writing out the words, and leaving it somewhere around my current living mess. Pondering the mantra Treating myself like a precious object will make me strong has been enjoyable. As usual, my mum tends to dismiss such things as rubbish.
Solitude, me-time, and grief
I wholeheartedly understand the importance of silence and healing solitude; it wasn’t news that ‘me-time’ has decreased these months. One of my goals for 2020 was “Address the solitude-dependency balance” — I felt I had too much time alone in 2019. By contrast, living in other’s homes since March, I’ve had little time to myself. I meditated for 65-minutes today — only the second 65-minute session since my return to the UK four months ago. Recently I’ve been meditating 20-minutes in the morning but I’ve been off discipline with evening meditation. I recently chose to explore grief using the Headspace meditation pack because neither life, education, nor society has prepared me for it. Currently, I feel like I’m grieving the loss of my life that was and I wonder if others are going through similar experiences. Going to the beach with my sister’s family, I was struck with sadness — that spending time with my sister was so unfamiliar to me made me feel a sense of loss for all the years that have passed with this being normal. Am I grieving for the years that have passed with me so far away from family? It’s like the opposite of “You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone”…..in my case, “You don’t know what was gone til you’ve got it”. Now my family are sharing more time together than we have in decades. This feels right.
I did not complete the collage because no magazines are lying around this millennium, I didn’t find much in the store that attracted me, and I prefer to do a physical (non-digital) collage. Like last week’s postcard writing, I’ll try to get this task done in my own good time. Maybe.
Week 7 Check-In
How many days this week did you do your morning pages?
Five days out of seven — I am now up to 108-pages since I started numbering the pages on Wednesday June 3rd. Scanning pages at the end of the week I feel like I’m fruit picking in the jungle — there are thoughts which bear fruit amongst a whole mass of trees, vegetation, and noisy wild animals. Sometimes I remember that I wrote something important in the morning pages and refer back to them.
Have you allowed yourself to daydream a few creative risks?
Is rowing across Scotland a creative risk? That’s scheduled to move from dream to reality next month.
Are you coddling your artist child with childhood loves?
Buying the magazine with worksheets, a free brush pen, and competitions to enter fulfils the artist-child coddling criteria.
Did you do your artist date this week Did you use it to take any risks? What did you do? How did it feel?
I tried to combine a few of this week’s tasks into the date: I wore my favourite outfit, listened to music on the way, wore lavender oil, and tried to buy wonderful socks. This fit nicely around sitting in the sunshine on the waterfront enjoying a coffee and a scone. Overcoming my personal obstacles against shopping, I tried three shops — none had wonderful socks so instead I settled for three new pairs of underwear. I enjoyed the time and simplicity of the date though still struggle to carve enough time for this weekly leisurely pursuit.
Did you experience any synchronicity (coincidences) this week? What was it?
Having been on the lookout for businesses for sale, I just noticed that the shop which printed the birthday card I commissioned is up for sale. I’d also asked if they could help with me sending a postcard to every country and territory on earth. Does that count as coincidence/synchronicity?
Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant for your recovery? Describe them.
Not knowing where I’ll be living next month is taking away energy from creative exploration, risk, and fun discipline. I cleared about 50cm x 80cm as MY SPACE and placed my necklace and hoop upon it. If I could miniaturize myself to 10-cm tall, this would amply fulfil my living and hula-hoop space requirements.
Week 8: Recovering a Sense of Strength
A bunch of quotes, sentences, and paragraphs I found pertinent from the chapter. Skip down if you just want the instructions and tasks for week 8.
This week tackles another major creative block: time. You will explore the ways in which you have used your perception of time to preclude taking creative risks. You will identify immediate and practical changes you can make in your current life. You will excavate the early conditioning that may have encouraged you to settle for far less than you desire creatively.
All artist’s must learn the art of surviving loss: loss of hope, loss of face, loss of money, loss of self-belief. In addition to our many gains, we inevitably suffer these losses in an artistic career. Artistic losses can be turned into artistic gains and strengths — but not in the beleaguered artist’s brain.
Because artistic losses are seldom openly acknowledged or mourned, they become artistic scar tissue that blocks artistic growth. Deemed too painful, too silly, too humiliating to share and so to heal, they become, instead, secret losses.
If artistic creations are our brainchildren, artistic losses are our miscarriages. The unmourned disappointment becomes the barrier that separates us from future dreams.
Artists and intellectuals are not the same animal. Younger artists are seedlings. Their early work resembles thicket and underbrush, even weeds. The halls of academia, with their preference for lofty intellectual theorems, do little to support the life of the forest floor.
Just as a player who ignores sore muscles may tear it further, an artist who buries his pain over losses will ultimately cripple himself into silence. Give yourself the dignity of admitting your artistic wounds. That is the first step in healing them.
Art is the act of structuring time.
“Gain disguised as loss” is a potent artist’s tool. To acquire it, simply, brutally, ask: “How can this loss serve me? Where does it point my work?” The trick is to metabolise pain as energy. The key to doing that is to know, to trust, and to act as if a silver lining exists if you are only willing to look at the work differently or to walk through a different door, one that you may have balked at.
Whenever I am willing to ask “What is necessary next?” I have moved ahead. Whenever I have taken no for a final answer I have stalled and gotten stuck. I have learned that the key to career resiliency is self-empowerment and choice.
When faced with a loss, immediately take one small action to support your artist.
At the heart of the anorexia of artistic avoidance is the denial of process. We like to focus on having learned a skill or on having made an artwork. This attention to final form ignores the fact that creativity lies not in the done but in the doing. In a sense, no creative act is ever finished. You can’t learn to act because there is always more to learn. Focused on process, our creative life retains a sense of adventure. Fixated on the need to have something to show for our labours, we often deny our curiosities. Every time we do this, we are blocked. Our use of (old) age as a block to creative work interlocks with our toxic finished-product thinking. The grace to be a beginner is always the best prayer for an artist. The beginner’s humility and openness lead to exploration. Exploration leads to accomplishment. All of it begins at the beginning, with the first small and scary step.
Blocked creatives like to think they are looking at changing their whole life in one fell swoop. By setting the jumps too high and making the price tag too great, the recovering artist sets defeat in motion. Creative people are dramatic, and we use negative drama to scare ourselves out of our creativity with this notion of wholesale and often destructive change. Fantasising about pursuing our art full-time, we fail to pursue it part-time — or at all.
Creativity requires activity, and this is not good news to most of us. It makes us responsible, and we tend to hate that. Most of us hate to do something when we can obsess about something else instead. This is our addiction to anxiety in lieu of action. Work begets work. Small actions lead us to the larger movements in our creative lives.
Tasks
- Early Patternings — fill in the blanks
a) As a kid, my dad thought my art was …. that made me feel …..
Not Applicable
b) I remember one time when he ….
Not Applicable
c) I felt very …. and … about that. I never forgot it.
d) As a kid, my mother taught me that my daydreaming was ….
I think she was too busy to notice if I was daydreaming or not.
e) I remember she’d tell me to snap out of it by reminding me ….
Not applicable.
f) The person I remember who believed in me was …. mum.
g) I remember one time when …. she told me to submit my poems for a publication and they got published, in a BOOK!
h) I felt… and … about that. I never forgot it.
I felt excited and proud.
i) The thing that ruined my chance to be an artist was …
Not applicable. I’m still alive and lots of life to live.
j) The negative lesson I got from that, which wasn’t logical but I still believe, is that I can’t …. and be an artist.
k) When I was little, I learned that ….. and …. were big sins that I particularly had to watch out for.
When I was little, I learned that spending more money than you have and not being able to stand on your own two feet were big sins that I particularly had to watch out for.
l) I grew up thinking artists were …. people.
I grew up thinking artists were colourful people.
m) The teacher who shipwrecked my confidence was ….
Not applicable.
n) I was told …
I was told all sorts of contradictory information in my life.
o) I believed this teacher because ….
Not applicable.
p) The mentor who gave me a good role model was …..
r) When people say I have talent I think they want to …
When people say I have talent I think they want to be kind to me because they are nice people.
s) The thing is, I am suspicious that ….
The thing is, I am suspicious that because I carefully pick lovely people to surround me, that compliments are more demonstrations of kindness than indicators of truth.
t) I just can’t believe that ….
I just can’t believe that I’m good at anything that’s useful to anyone else.
u) If I believe I am really talented, then I am mad as hell at …. and …. and ….. and ….. and ….. and
If I believe I am really talented, then I am mad as hell at myself. As usual. - Pick 5 Affirmations — from below or your own — and work with them this week
I am a talented person
I have a right to be an artist
I am a good person and a good artist
Creativity is a blessing I accept
My creativity blesses others
My creativity is appreciated
I now treat myself and my creativity more gently
I now treat myself and my creativity more generously
I now share my creativity more openly
I now accept hope
I now act affirmatively
I now accept creative recovery
I now allow myself to heal
I now accept banana’s help unfolding my life
I now believe banana loves artists
3. Goal Search: You may find the following exercise difficult — allow yourself to do it anyway. If multiple dreams occur to you, do the exercise for each one of them. a) Name your dream. “In a perfect world, I would secretly love to be a …..” b) Name one concrete goal that signals to you its accomplishment. On your emotional compass, this goal signifies true north. c) In a perfect world, where would you like to be in five years in relation to your dream and true north? d) In the world we inhabit now, what action can you take this year, to move you closer? e) What actions can you take this month? This week? This day? Right now? Do it. f) Select a role model. Learn more about them.
4. New Childhood: What might you have been if you’d had perfect nurturing? Write a page of this fantasy childhood. What were you given? Can you reparent yourself in that direction now?
5. Colour schemes: Pick a colour and write a quick few sentences describing yourself in the first person eg. “I am silver, high-tech and ethereal, the colour of dreams and accomplishment, I feel serene”. What is your favourite colour? What do you have that is that colour? What about an entire room? This is your life and your house.
***Really? I’m currently lodging in someone else’s house and though I do love the colour purple and have a purple hula hoop, I’m not particularly interested in being in a purple room and doubt that my friend’s would appreciate a redecoration either.***
6. Not-to-dos: List five things you are not allowed to do eg. kill your boss, scream in church, go outside naked, make a scene, quit your job. Now do that thing on paper. Write it, draw it, paint it, collage it, put some music on and dance it.
7. Style Search: List 21 things you like to do (you can recycle from your earlier list if you feel like it). Answer these questions for each: Does it cost money or is it free? Expensive or cheap? Alone or with somebody? Job related? Physical risk? Fast-paced or slow? Mind, body, or spiritual?
8. Ideal Day: Plan a perfect day in your life as you wish it were constituted. There are no restrictions. Allow yourself to be and to have whatever your heart desires, your ideal environment, job, home, circle of friends, intimate relationship, stature in your art from — your ultimate dream perfect day.
9. Festive: Choose one festive aspect from your ideal day. Allow yourself to live it. You may not be able to move to Rome yet, but even in a still-grungy apartment you can enjoy a homemade cappuccino and a croissant.
Check-in
How many days this week did you do your morning pages? Have you been very tempted to abandon them? How was the experience for you?
Did you do your artist date this week? Have you been allowing workaholism or other commitments to sabotage this practice? What did you do? How did it feel?
Did you experience any synchronicity (coincidences) this week? What was it?
Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant for your recovery? Describe them.
