The Artist's Way: Week 4
Previous entries: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3
Unfortunately I am growing so, so sick of writing. Is that what Julia was going for?
The reading
I'm going to be honest. I don't remember a ton of the chapter, except for thinking that she was repeating a lot of what she'd said in earlier chapters. So clearly nothing really stuck with me.
The morning pages
For most of the week I dutifully wrote my morning pages, but god. I can't say this is having any positive effect beyond what my previous regular journaling did for me. I think writing regularly is good, but trying to decide what to talk about for 3 full pages every day is like pulling teeth. And then it takes so much time and energy that I don't want to write anything else. I haven't felt inspired to write a blog post in a few weeks, which is unlike me. Writing this right now feels like a slog, and I procrastinated doing it.
Thankfully it hasn't affected my composing because, for me at least, that seems to pull from a different creative well thanfrom writing. But man. I was really enjoying getting into blogging as a hobby, and this program seems to have actively harmed that. I was also planning on starting to hand write letters to some of my long distance friends, but I simply have not had the energy due to having to hand write 3 full pages of pointless nonsense every day.
There's a mindset I see among some creative types, especially a lot boomer-aged ones, that quantity is key when it comes to creative work. That if you want to get good at creating, you have to do it every day, and you have to do a ton of it. But I also know a thing or two about creating, having been a professional composer for 13 years now, and I have a different take. Of course I agree that the way to get better at something is to practice, but I also believe in not burning out. I believe that rest is a key factor in allowing your best self (creative and otherwise) to flourish.
So I'm calling it. I'm not doing the morning pages anymore. I'll still try to journal when I can, but I can do it at any time during the day, I definitely don't have to hit a minumum length, and it's no big deal if I have to skip a day or two. Which is good, because I actually do need to skip a few days for another reason, a physical one:
The artist's date
I got my wrists tattooed. I've been wanting these particular tats for a long time, so I would say my inner artist is very, very pleased! They look cool as hell but they also hurt like hell. The healing process is going to be rough, I think. Worth it!
The exercises
So the main thing from this week she suggested was a "reading deprivation." Where she wanted us to read... nothing? At all? She even suggested coming up with "creative excuses" to get out of doing any reading you need to do for work or school. This is obviously so, so stupid.
But I decided a social media (and Reddit, I never know if that counts as social media or not) break would basically get at the heart of the challenge: to give ourselves more free time by getting rid of something mindless that takes up a lot of our idle time. Social media has been especially stressful for me lately, for reasons I'm sure you can all relate to, so this was honestly a huge relief. A lot of my ambient stress was gone, and I found myself with a lot more free time. I decided to continue not to use Reddit going forward and want to figure out ways to limit the rest of my social media use.
Some of the other exercises straight up did not apply to me. There's one where it tells you to find a space in your house to make completely your own, which was irrelevant to me, someone who has an entire room dedicated to being a home music studio. I did not have a "low self worth" outfit to throw away because I've done a lot of therapy, so I have high self worth even in my rattiest clothes. (I did tend up making cleaning rags from a shirt that I noticed had a hole in the armpit, but let me be clear! It was not a "low self worth" shirt!)
I did like the letters from my 8-year-old and 80-year-old selves. It was a nice way to realize that I'm mostly happy with the way my life is going. Like, 8-year-old me would be absolutely stoked to see what my life is like now, and I feel like I'm mostly on the right path for being who I would like to be at 80. So that was cool. It made me a little emotional. But it was yet more writing. It did not help with the writing burnout I've been starting to feel.
When I started this program, I was hoping the exercises might be suggestions of ways to explore different ways of being creative that I maybe hadn't tried before. Like maybe it would tell me to make collage art, or try drawing an object on the table in front or me, or buy something from a thrift store that is not at all my usual style and try to style an outfit around it. Maybe I just need to do these things for my artist's dates. Because mostly Julia is just having us write essays and lists of things we like to do. And that is, frankly, boring.
Conclusion
One thing that has consistently been going through my mind throughout these 4 weeks is that maybe I'm better off creatively than I thought I was. Sure, I have blocks sometimes, and there are times when everything I'm making feels stale. But overall I really like what I do. And I'm obviously not afraid to pursue a risky creative career. Or to be my true self or do the things that make me happy. She talks a lot about being trapped by the expectations put on us by society, and of course I feel that sometimes, but overall I'm not afraid to just do my own thing in cases where following societal norms wouldn't make me happy.
In stopping being strict with myself about the morning pages, I suppose you could say I'm not really doing the program "right" anymore. But as much as I would love to be able to say I did the whole thing just to say I did it, it's not worth making myself hate writing. It's not worth burning out. I will continue the program, because I want to see this thing through, but I'm just going to take the parts that work for me and discard the rest. And the morning pages don't work for me anymore.