The Artist's Way - a peek inside this creativity counseling course

[idiosyncreant]

I've been working through this book, which was a gift from fabricalchemist some time ago.

Long overdue for some kind of structure to push through a dry spell, and not finding anything in my usual avenues, I cracked it open at the same time I decided to cut my Internet entertainment way back for a while.

I hadn't looked at it at all, but finding out it was going to involve journaling a significant amount, I was okay to try it. I would have time freed up anyway.



It's got a pop-psychology tone, but at the same time it jives with what I know already about the creative pursuit:
If you don't make yourself sit down to it, nothing happens.
If you sit down, but you just live in a state of criticism about what you do, it doesn't go anywhere.
Using your creativity is a mandate, not a luxury.
And most importantly, if you don't take care of your own soul, your own self, you are fighting a deficit from which to try and create.



I'm in the middle of week three, continuing to be surprised by how relevant it is to me, and how much a little attempt to change my attitude can lighting things up.

I think just whining into a diary for a while every morning let's me start thinking about something else the rest of the day, for starters...



✰ The amount of negative things I say to myself are not exactly lessening, but I'm more aware of them. And I think aware in a helpful way.
We were having some discussion of how much I eat in the course of a day, and my sister Becka said, "You know, you kind of talk like an anorexic" which was silly, but then when I scoffed my mom said, "You may eat a lot at one meal, but you don't eat enough during the day for bird" which was also silly, but as I made some negative comment about how much cellulite I'm carrying around for a bird...
I realized, to have both my mostly unconcerned sister and skinnier-than-me-ever mom say that, maybe I do have a wrong attitude about food.

Resolution: don't trash myself over eating like a human beings.
Maybe I'll start carrying around less guilt-weight when I start viewing it something a person's got to do to live.

✰ The amount of project-guilt I'm carrying around is likewise ridiculous. The very first week I started doing this discipline, I started feeling the pace of how much work I could do in a day (without the set-back of taking a long break for entertainment, and then scurrying around trying to make up for it) and also ran out of things to do before 9:30.
I started getting extra things done, but also just being able to cap off a day saying, "I've done what I could. I'm tired now."

This has meant being able to pick up things I've been meaning to do for AGES, just little things, and getting them accomplished without feeling beholden to them or things I didn't do instead.
Resolution: remember it's impossible to do everything, create instead an environment of feeling accomplished in what got done