You’ve Unlocked Level 2!

Week two toys, ideas, and my interpretations from The Artist’s Way, for playmates.

I’ve selected some of the messages I found important from the chapter on week two and listed the week’s toys for you to play with. I’ve included direct quotes from the book with my own thoughts in bold. All of week two’s 10 play-tasks are listed with the “Basic Principles” at the end. This week’s theme is recovering a sense of identity — a self-defined you. You may find yourself drawing new boundaries and staking out new territories as your personal needs, desires, and interests announce themselves.

Going sane

“You might feel and look erratic” — nothing new there.
“This erraticism is a normal part of getting unstuck…..going sane feels just like going crazy….as we gain strength, so will some of the attacks of self-doubt….just as a recovering alcoholic must avoid the first drink, the recovering artist must avoid taking the first think (self-doubt). Recognise self-doubt as a creative virus.” — perhaps we are in a pandemic?!
“Do not let your self-doubt turn into self-sabotage”

Avoid poisonous playmates & crazymakers

“Creativity flourishes when we have a sense of safety and self-acceptance. Toxic playmates can capsize our artist’s growth….Be alert….Often, creativity is blocked by our falling in with other people’s plans for us.” — nurture yourself.
“Crazymakers are those personalities that create storm centers….they like drama…feeding on the life energies of those around them…discount your reality…spend your time and money…are expert blamers….impose their agendas on others….and deny that they are crazymakers” — walk away, stay away, erect a security fence with patrol guards to keep these contagious toxic time-wasters away.

Skepticism

“We have our doubts about all of this creator/creativity stuff, and those doubts are powerful. Unless we air them, they can sabotage us….we need to explore them.” — how about scheduling ‘demon-listening’ into your calendar three months from today? When worries arise, you can postpone them or note them down briefly, saying “Thank you for coming by — it’s not yet your turn to speak, please wait until your appointment!”

Attention

“The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention…..The reward for attention is always healing….More than anything else, attention is an act of connection.

Week Two Toys

1. Write morning pages daily and one festive frolic of an artist’s date this week. *Write three chosen affirmations five times each day in your morning pages (see task 6).
2. Affirmative reading: Every morning and night, read the Basic Principles (at the end of this article) to yourself. Be alert for any attitudinal shifts. Can you see yourself setting aside and skepticism yet?
3. Time-eaters: Where does your time go? List your five major activities this week — how much time did you give to each one? Which were what you wanted to do and which were shoulds? How much of your time is spent helping others and ignoring your own desires? Have any of your blocked friends triggered doubts in you?
4. Circle safety map: Draw a circle, inside it write things you need to protect and the names of people you find to be supportive. Write outside the name of those you need to protect yourself from. Add, delete topics and people as you choose.
5. 21 awesomes: List 21 things you enjoy doing. For example, swimming, snuggling, snow-sports, pole-dancing, making love and so one. Next to each one, write (roughly) when was the last time you did each of them. An excellent resource for future artists’s dates. Choose two off the list of 21 awesomes — set a small goal connected to that activity and do it.
6. Check out week one’s notes of affirmations and which cause most reaction — the one that sounds most ridiculous is often the most significant. Choose three affirmations and write each five times daily in your morning pages.
7. Five more Imaginary Lives: following on from task 8 week 1, think of five more imaginary lives and do an activity they would do at least once this week.
8. Life Pie: Draw a circle. Divide it into six pieces of pie and label (1) spirituality, (2) exercise, (3) play, (4) work, (5) friends, (6) romance/adventure. Mark in each slice the degree to which you are fulfilled in that area (outer means “bloody amaaaazing” while inner circle means “shit”). Connect the six dots — this will show where you are lopsided.

Notice which areas feel impoverished and try to allocate tiny pieces of your precious time-pie to altering these. For example, I could spend 3-minutes playing Lego with my nephew to nourish the play area of my life. Even the slightest attention to our impoverished areas can nurture them.

9. Ten tiny changes: List ten changes you’d like to make for yourself, then put them approximately into order of their size (or effort?), from smallest to largest. For example, I would like to buy fabulous new underwear, I would like to wake without an alarm clock or I would like to sail around Croatian islands.
I would like to __________
I would like to __________
Choose one small thing and make it a goal this week. Do it.

10. Check in on day seven and look ahead to plan week 3. How many days did you do morning pages? How/did the morning pages work for you? Describe them — take a non-judgemental look back if you need to, for example “They felt stupid and pointless and I didn’t feel the need to write anything. I wrote total nonsense and disconnected garbage.” Were you surprised to find yourself writing about anything? This is like a weekly scan of your moods, not a progress check. What did you do on your artist’s date and how was it? What would you like more of/less of in future artist’s dates? Were there any other issues you consider significant? Describe them.

Basic Principles

Read these each morning and night for task 2 affirmative reading. This is all directly quoted though I have switched references to “the creator” or “God” to the banana. Feel free to change it back or exchange the banana with any other concept that feels right for you.

1. Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creative energy.
2. There is an underlying, in-dwelling creative force infusing all of life — including ourselves.
3. When we open ourselves to creativity, we open ourselves to the banana’s creativity within us and our lives.
4. We are, ourselves, creations. And we, in turn, are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves.
5. Creativity is the banana’s gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to the banana.
6. The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature.
7. When we open ourselves to exploring our creativity, we open ourselves to the banana: good orderly direction.
8. As we open our creative channel to the banana, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected.
9. It is safe to open ourselves up to greater and greater creativity.
10. Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our banana.

These instructions and writings are taken directly from Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way. My publications on the journey are but a Caro-fish’s interpretation and retelling of the whats and hows of the book, which I recommend you to buy, especially for the whys. Week one’s instructions and a call out to playmates to connect with me are published here. If you are Julia Cameron, thank you for writing your book and sharing your wisdom, which I feel compelled to share a little more. I’ll stop infringing your copyrights if you ask me to.

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