Tag Archive | The Artist’s Way Reflections

The Artist’s Way Reflections – Week Seven: Recovering a Sense of Connection

Week Seven: Recovering a Sense of Connection

Listening

In this section, I liked the juxtaposition of thinking of creativity as “getting something down,” like transcribing, instead of having to think it up.

For writing, that comes pretty naturally to me. And maybe that’s especially true since I write a lot about real life, explore past experiences, and so forth. When I’m doing other things, especially working out on the elliptical, or listening to music, or walking alone, I often just have words and feelings I want to write down. I pre-write in my head a lot, always have.

Nowadays, I do less of it because there’s just so much other stress and noise, and I drown it out with too much podcast listening and pop culture consumption and social media distraction. But still, this notion of getting something down feels natural to me when it comes to writing.

That said, I don’t think what I’ve written has ever, in all my years, really lived up to what it was in my head. I wonder if that’s true for all writers? It’s something I’ve come to accept: that even though in my head I’m pre-writing in words, when I get to actually putting it in words, it never quite matches or captures what I thought it would.

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The Artist’s Way Reflections – Week Six: Recovering a Sense of Abundance

Oct15

Week Six: Recovering a Sense of Abundance

The Great Creator

This section strikes me kinda off. I hate to say that but it’s probably the part of the book I have the biggest problem with, and not in a grumpy, skeptical way as I do with other essays in the book.

A lot of the quotes are obnoxious and somewhat contradictory to things she writes. And I think things she writes contradict each other and the lack of internal consistency bothers me. So does the feeling that this chapter drives home, that yeah this is written for middle class people or above, SES-wise, and that bothers me.

But I also think about how AW came out in 1992, and given book publishing timelines and her own telling of how AW came together, she probably wrote a lot of it in the ’80s, which was a different time in terms of cost of living vs. wages, families being okay on just one salary, and so forth.

It just seems like it’s geared towards people who are depriving themselves of joy out of some idea of martyrdom equals goodness, and I get that, but there’s something glib about it that I don’t like. Like yeah, a lot of people would love to dump a drudgy job, or put art first and money second, but for a lot of people that’s just not possible because the money concerns are survival concerns. It’s like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. A lot of us would like to prioritize creativity more, but it’s hard to do if your basic needs at the base of that pyramid aren’t met.

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The Artist’s Way Reflections – Week Five: Recovering a Sense of Possibility

Oct8

whitepumpkin This was another volatile week for me. I think it’s just a volatile time. I had a hard time sticking to things like Morning Pages, after thinking I’d turned a corner on that.

The damn pages just aren’t letting me ignore feelings that I’d much rather ignore and it’s annoying.

In this chapter, she talks about wanting to be left alone, and I’m definitely feel that to some degree, and also in these quarantine times, the need for human connection feels paramount, especially as someone who’s living the quarantine life alone.

It feels somehow that this is out of balance for me, like I’d like to work in more connections in some ways and less in others and I’d like to think and write on that to re-center as it applies to in-person, virtual, phone time and social media.

Week Five: Recovering a Sense of Possibility

Limits

One thing that really spoke to me in this section was the bit about how we’re miserly with ourselves because we’re afraid of overspending any spiritual abundance. For me, it manifests as a fear of jinxing things, a fear of getting my hopes up, a fear of what horrible thing will happen if too many good things happen.

Does anyone else feel this way?

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The Artist’s Way Reflections – Week Four: Recovering a Sense of Integrity

Oct1

orkilapostcard

She says we might feel volatile this week and I…feel volatile. And pissy. I suppose that’s part of the process that happens when reading and doing this book and all that comes with it, the ways that you get more real with yourself and how you feel about things, a big theme in this chapter and in the book as a whole.

I hope doing this book will eventually bear fruit, and also that this post isn’t too volatile and pissy to read. I thought of erasing so much of it (and did some) but also felt like the realness of what this process is like is important to share.

Some part of me feels lighter for having written this and being real, and I’m reminded that as stagnant and persistent as the volatility and pissiness may feel right now, they aren’t permanent and eventually will become something else. To quote House in one of my favorite episodes, (the season one finale, where he’s treating his ex’s new husband and talking to her on the roof), “Something always changes.” But for now, here we are.

Week Four: Recovering a Sense of Integrity

Honest Changes

The meat of the chapter. In length and in topic, this feels like the crux of it. And it spoke to me.

First, the part about the kriyas, that physical manifestation of big change. I’ve felt that throughout my life at big moments. I’m reminded of a time, probably in the fall of 2004 but that might be off, when I read something I wrote to my writer’s group. We met and shared weekly but this week I read something that was more difficult and that felt like spilling secrets in a way that made me feel both ashamed and flooded with relief to say it, out loud, to people.

The next day, I got sick with a cold that hung on for over a week. And I always felt the two were connected, that somehow clearing out that writing by speaking it aloud cleared something out of my body too, the tension of having held something in for so long.

More recently, anytime I’ve taken a step towards leaving medical school, like writing to a dean about it, writing to my parents about it, and then most strongly after posting about it here, I’ve gone through a bout of is “Is this covid or an emotional hangover?” because I felt so worn down.

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The Artist’s Way Reflections – Synchronicity

Sep24

astronomy Synchronicity takes up a big section of Week Three: Recovering a Sense of Power (you can read about the rest of the chapter here). Enough that I thought it deserved its own post.

I can see why Julia Cameron put it in this chapter on Power, along with Anger and Shame and Growth. Synchronicity is the power of manifestation, of making things happen, of initiative and setting things in motion.

It’s also an aspect of this book that I struggle with. It goes back to my basic struggle with belief. With one side of me being the most hyper-rational skeptic and the other side believing (or at least wanting to) in magic and miracles.

There’s a task in one of the later chapters to record yourself (she was probably thinking tape recorders at the time) reading one of the essays in the book, and I chose this one because I struggle with it so much. (Next time, I’m picking a shorter section to record!)

Synchronicity, and My History Playing With It

When I was doing AW when I was younger, I believed in this synchronicity stuff more, and generally believed in things that could be believed in more. I was maybe a little skeptical but eager to try it out. And the results were…mixed at best.

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The Artist’s Way Reflections – Week Three: Recovering a Sense of Power

Sep17

MPjournal early fall In today’s column, I’ll look at all of the essays, exercises and tasks of Week Three in The Artist’s Way, except for Synchronicity, a fairly long section, which will be the focus of next week’s post. That’s a whole beast of a topic to tackle.

In thinking about this week and all its topics, including Synchronicity, it strikes me that this one line in the Detective Work, an Exercise section could be the topic sentence for the whole chapter. It reads:

“Many blocked people are actually very powerful and creative personalities who have been made to feel guilty about their own strengths and gifts.”

She goes on to say that:

“Made to feel guilty for their talents, they often hide their own light under a bushel for fear of hurting others. Instead, they hurt themselves.”

To my mind, all the little essays in this chapter illuminate more about these lines, and get at how we lose our power through shamings and criticisms, how we give away our power by ignoring the messages from our difficult friend Anger, and how to start to take it back with detective work, synchronicity, and finally, growth.

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The Artist’s Way Reflections – Week Two: Recovering a Sense of Identity

Sep10

brightcitrussunflower This chapter, like the name says, focuses on identity. It seems so simple, but I think a blurring of identity underlies a lot of creative blockage. It gets blurry because we get inundated with messages–family, friends, teachers, social media, TV at large–that tell us what we should want, who we should be. And there are parts of ourselves we give up for various reasons. It’s all too easy to get to a place where you’re going through life unsure of who you even are.

I definitely felt that in medical school; I saw myself going through the motions of doing all the things I was supposed to do, and all the things I had to do on top of that, and it all took so much time and energy that I felt like there was so little me left. I’ve also felt something similar in destructive relationships.

For whatever reason, it’s just so easy to lose yourself. At least, it is for me. So, I like this chapter and its tasks and how the focus on self-definition and sorting out the signal from the noise all around us.

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The Artist’s Way Reflections – Time Travel: Creative Monsters and Champions

Sep3

task7 Today’s column will cover the Time Travel tasks from Week One. Next week, we’ll move on to Week Two. You can find the full schedule for the rest of the year at the bottom of this post!

I decided to pull out the Time Travel tasks (Tasks 3-7, so most of them) from Week One in their own post for a couple of reasons. One was to be able to ease in, pacing-wise, by spreading Week One out over two weeks here.

Sometimes starting (or restarting) The Artist’s Way can feel a bit like thawing out something frozen, and there’s something painful and scary about that. It can be like melting something that solidified inside you. And it’s not easy.

To me, these Time Travel tasks feel like the first steps in that process. And they can be hard. Last time through, in March, I skipped most of them and only half-heartedly and incompletely did the ones I didn’t skip.

I thought they deserved extra attention in their own post as an acknowledgement that they’re hard, and a way of tackling them together.

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The Artist’s Way Reflections – Week One: Recovering a Sense of Safety

Aug27

MPs cover So here we are (again, for me, so many times over), Week One.

I’ve had a lot of false starts with The Artist’s Way, AW for shorthand as it’s known around my journals, so this chapter is well-trodden ground. So much so that some parts I know so well that I could give a good gist without reading it anew. Like knowing almost all the lines and all the music cues in a favorite pilot episode.

Technically, Week One in The Artist’s Way book will span two weeks here, since next week’s focus is on the Time Travel tasks from Week One (for the full schedule, check out the bottom of this post). So we’re easing in a little here.

Since this is the first post based on a Week chapter, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to structure the posts. I’m thinking I’ll go section by section through the chapter, giving a bit of commentary on each. I’ll pull out a favorite of the quotes scattered throughout the chapter, and then discuss or post excerpts of the tasks. I’ll pepper questions into each section. If you’re joining in, now or in the future, feel free to answer as much or as little as you’d like.

The picture on the right is a picture of my current Morning Pages journal, which is almost all used up.

Week One: Recovering a Sense of Safety

Shadow Artists

In this section, there are several examples given of how a blocked creative person can be a shadow artist. Sponsoring a creative person but not allowing your own creativity (there was an amazing story about a blocked billionaire who gifted an artist with a year’s living expenses so they could focus on their art, so I’m just saying that if there are any benevolent billionaires out there looking for creative people to sponsor, I’m right here). Investing in supporting a loved one’s creative career while never igniting your own. Representing artists, working as a critic, becoming an art therapist or a marketing exec instead of an artist, going to law school or med school instead of writing (ummm ooops?), all these ways of being on the periphery.

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The Artist’s Way Reflections – Preview Digression on Spirituality

Aug26

Orkila winter 2 This post is off-schedule, a day before launching the first post focusing on a chapter of The Artist’s Way. It wasn’t planned, but I went on such a digression about the Introduction part of AW that I decided to pull it out and make it its own post so it wouldn’t distract from the post about the week.