Tag Archives: Check In

The Artist’s Way: Week Eight Check-In

24 Feb

Today’s check-in will be short and sweet.  Sarahphina’s got lots to do this beautiful Sunday!  So let’s hop to it!

Question One:  How many days this week did you do your Morning Pages?  Have you been tempted to abandon them?  How was the experience for you?  For the first time in weeks, I did my Morning Pages ALL SEVEN DAYS.  Over the past three or so weeks I’ve been very tempted to abandon my pages, but this week I had some fun with them.  I wrote weird abstract-y stories and poems and meandering trips down memory lane rather than anything that resembled a journal entry.  And that seemed to be the right choice for this week.  I’m not sure if I found any answers in them.  But it was a new way of writing them for me, and I was interested.

Question Two: What was your Artist Date this week?  Have you let workaholicism or other committments sabotage this time? What did you do and how did it feel?  Ok.  This makes me feel giggly and dorkly.  Many exercises in The Artist’s Way talk about “other lives”–professions you might take on if you had several lives to live.  One of mine that keeps cropping up is makeup artist.  Similarly, whenever the book has me list things I enjoyed as a child, playing dress-up and playing with makeup are always on the list.  But I wasn’t taking these seriously, for some reason.  So last night, I did.  I had the whole house to myself for over an hour before going out for the night.  So I put on some music and DID MY FACE UP RIGHT. It sounds like the lamest Artist Date ever, but I had so much fun.  I gave myself permission to go as over-the-top as I wanted–and also the permission to tone it down before I actually left the house–so I went nutsoid.  I looked like an 18th century fop.  I drew stars over my eyebrows with liquid eyeliner and had a bright red tiny-heart mouth.  Big eyes with tons of liner and fake lashes.  So fun.  Alas, I had already washed my face before it even occurred to me to take a picture.  Which really is too bad, because I looked fucking awesome.  In a Queen of Hearts type way.

Helena Bonham-Carter Queen of Hearts.

Question Three:  Did you experience any synchronicity this week?  What was it?  You know, this week I think I stopped looking.  I’ve been quite discouraged about certain things (sorry for being vague–you know how it goes) over the past few weeks, and I think I got tired of getting discouraged about synchronicity so I stopped looking.  I’m not really sure what that means right now.   More thought is required here.

Question Four: Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant for your recovery?  Describe them.  This week had a great sense of promise and opportunitity for me.  My decision last week to calm down for a few weeks and let things come to me rather than attacking them full-force seems to be a wise decision.  Also, as soon as I took the pressure of myself to be Polly Pro-Active, I started having more ideas for creativity and collaboration.  And I was able to go after them in a gentler, more positive way.  I had some possible future career opportunities appear.  I made some strides in my future as a writer.  I had a great conversation with a friend who I admire sooooo much about a possible collaboration.  Things are happening.  I just have to wait and watch….and rest.

Until next week, Artists.

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The Artist’s Way: Week Six Check-In

11 Feb

Sorry about the delay, friends. But this week was a biggie, and I needed extra time to organize my thoughts.  The theme of the week was “Recovering a Sense of Abundance.”  The topic?  Money.

Money.  The old bitch herself.

My fear of poverty is a huge driving force in my life.  It has its benefits–I’m really responsible!  I don’t live outside my means!–but it’s also my primary block.  And it’s more than just the fear of not being able to pay  my bills and having all my possessions repossessed and being hungry.  Not being able to support myself will mean that I have failed at being a responsible adult.  A responsible person.  A person.  I don’t want that shame.  I want to be self-sufficient, and to me that means financially self-sufficient. I obsess about money and I’m paranoid about losing it and, friends, it’s no way to live.

This week’s message was not that you should ditch all your financial responsibilities or accept poverty as part-and-parcel for being an artist.  Far from it.  The message of this week was that if you do what you’re supposed to be doing (you know, by following your heart or your bliss or whatever the fuck it is you follow) the money will come.  Keep your eyes open.  Look for abundance, look for ways to make money that you enjoy that you maybe haven’t thought of before.  Live the creative life first and let the money come.  Do not wait to be creative until you have money.  Money-or the lack of money-is never a creative block.  It’s our fears and attitudes around money that block us.

Friends, I wish I could tell you that I did a total 180 and blasted the shit out of my fear of poverty and from this moment on will step forward as a braver, more intuitive version of myself and before too long will be diving into a pile of money (Scrooge McDuck-style) that the Universe saw fit to bestow on me merely to reward me for my awesomeness.  I wish it was that easy.  But this fear is so ingrained in me that it’s going to take more than willing myself to change my attitudes about money and work and responsibility.  But this week I took the first steps.  I named my fear.  I took some tentative baby steps to act in spite of that fear.  And I think about the future day when I can look back on where I stand now and think, “that is when it all changed.”

Check-In time.

Question One: How many days this week did you do your Morning Pages?  Have you used them to think of creative luxuries for yourself?  How was the experience for you?  I did my Morning Pages ALL SEVEN DAYS this week.  I made some adjustments to my routine that seemed to help a lot.  First off, I stopped doing my Pages the very first thing when I woke up.  Getting up before six is hard enough, but to get out of my warm bed only to sit on the couch to write was not helpful.  So now I wake up, shower, get dressed, brush my teeth and THEN write my pages.  Then I do my makeup, gather my stuff, and leave.  It still feels “first thing”-y, but it gives me the chance to be a little more alert and focused, which makes my Morning Pages feel much more satisfying. Also, in the last chapter Julia gives  tip for making your Morning Pages work for you. Ask questions at night before bed, and then “answer them” with your Morning Pages.  I didn’t do this every day, but three nights where I was feeling anxiety over whatever, I wrote it down as a question and then let my Morning Pages answer them for me.  Awesome.

Question Two:  Did you do your Artist Date this week?  Have you considered allowing yourself two?  What did you do?  How did it feel?  Hell yes I did my Artist Date this week, because Artist Dates are my favorite.  I took myself to an impromptu movie.  Snuck sandwiches in my handbag and went to see Silver Linings Playbook.  Going to movies alone is one of my great pleasures, and something I haven’t done since I moved in with my boyfriend.  When you live with someone, you tend to do stuff together–which is awesome–but on Saturday I treated myself to a solo movie.  I don’t know how much it did for my “development” as an artist, but it was fun and relaxing and that’s good enough for me.  As to allowing myself more than one Artist Date…well, I sort of already do that.  I do many things throughout the week that function as “sort-of” Artist Dates.  I just don’t call them that because I reserve my “official” Artist Date for Saturdays.  Maybe it’s time to call a spade a spade.  This coming week, I will name every Artist Date I do and see how many I can come up with.  CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

Question Three:  Did you experience any synchronicity this week?  What was it?  Well, this might not be synchronicity (BUT IT MIGHT BE), but I had a date with a friend that really got my head on straight.  I’ll not elaborate further, but each time I’m thisclose to reaching a breaking point and freaking out and giving in and giving up, someone says something to me that re-focuses me and keeps me going.  Sorry to be Vague-y McVaguepants here, but you know how it goes.

Question Four:  Were there any other issues that arose that you consider significant to your recovery?  Describe them.  I’m gonna let Julia take this one.  Take it away, Julia!

“Most of us harbor a secret belief that work has to be work and not play, and that anything we want to do is frivolous and must be placed a distant second.  This is not true.”

Week 6

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The Artist’s Way: Week Three Check-In

20 Jan

Whew.  It was a WEEK, my friends.  It was a week.

The Artist’s Way really threw down some shit for me. More on that in a mo.  But first, I wanna share some notes I took when reading her chapter on Week Three.  Normally I don’t share my  notes and thoughts on each particular chapter, focusing instead on the Check-In questions at the end of each week.  But Julia was laying down so much brilliance that I have to share some of her thoughts before moving on.  Week 3 focused on Anger, Synchronicity and Shame.

  • Anger is fuel.  But we block it in order to be nice.  (And FUCK NICE, amirite?  Thanks, Julia!  -S.)
  • Anger is a map.  It shows us where our boundaries are.  Anger is a loyal friend who will always tell us when we are feeling betrayed. (In addition to mentioning this in my Rules to Live By, I said it to about 15 people this week–S.)
  • In the recovery of a blocked artist, anger is a sign of health.  Sloth, apathy and despair are the enemy.  Not anger.
  • Anger is meant to be acted upon, it is not meant to be acted out.
  • The universe is prodigal in its support.  We are miserly in what we will accept. (As someone who has a hard time accepting help, I super appreciate this.–S.)
  • The act of making art exposes a society to itself.
  • Not all criticism is shaming–useful criticism gives us the A-HA feeling that tells us where to go next.  Useless criticism makes us feel bludgeoned.
  • Don’t tell yourself “it doesn’t matter.”  Tell yourself, “I will heal.”

I know.  She also goes through a guide on how to best accept criticism so that it helps you and doesn’t leave you with that helpless feeling.  Even if you’re not doing The Artist’s Way in full force, pick up the book in a bookstore and read through Chapter 3.

Alright.  I could go on and on about this for pages and pages and pages, but it’s time to get my Check-In on.

Question One: Morning Pages.  How many days this week did you do them?  How was the experience for you?  If you skipped a day why did you skip it?  Morning pages sucked this week.  It was easy enough getting my tired butt out of bed to do them, but I found them really frustrating.  My mind would wander–and it wouldn’t even wander on the page.  I would write a few lines and then space out like JD in Scrubs (I miss that show).  I fell down a K-hole and my pages kept circling around and around the same two topics.  I mean, I get it.  These are the areas of my life where I am blocked and unfulfilled and need to make changes.  But I’m trying to make changes.  So I started to feel like a broken record and I just got annoyed with the whole damn thing.  So much so that I WILLFULLY skipped them on Friday.  My alarm went off and I thought “what’s the fucking point” and went back to sleep.  I know.  Awful.  Once I was up and about I felt really bad about skipping them, like I had denied myself something.  And I remembered that Julia says the only way to do Morning Pages WRONG is to NOT DO THEM.  So I failed.  I’m trying not to treat it like the end of the world.  I got back on it Saturday and Sunday, but it continued to be really fucking frustrating.

Question Two: Artist Date.  Did you do your Artist Date?  What did you do?  How did it feel?  My Artist Date was as wonderful as my Morning Pages were awful.  I had the house to myself when I came home Friday, and I was feeling really great after a particularly awesome post-work coffee shop writing session.  So I went downstairs to our basement studio, went to youtube and sang as many karaoke tracks as I could find.  I picked up one of Dusty’s unplugged mics and sang at the top of my voice and danced around like a crazy person.  It was fantastic.  I shook my groove thang and hair-tossed like I was goddamn Taylor Swift and sang AS LOUD AS I CAN.  I felt like such a badass.

It's you and me, girl. Also, I really miss your curly hair.

It’s you and me, girl. Also, I really miss your curly hair.

Question Three:  Did you experience any synchronicity this week?  What was it?  Kids, I’m going to pull a fast one here.  I had some things happen that might have been synchronicity, but I’m waiting to see if they play out.  So I’m gonna get all superstitious up in here and give a big NO COMMENT so that nothing gets jinxed.

Question Four: Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant for your recovery? You know….not really.  It was a super roller-coaster-y week for me.  The chapter blew my mind and was really helpful.  The Morning Pages were the bane of my existence.  My Artist Date is quickly becoming one of my favorite parts of the week…but I don’t really feel like it’s helping.  But then I remind myself that not all things that are good for me must feel like work and that it is doing me good, even if I can’t see how yet.  And even if it never does me any good, it’s still fun as fuck.  So…I guess I’m feeling frustrated right now.  I’m enjoying the process, for sure.  But I’m feeling stuck.  Still.  Ready to see what next week brings.

Kids, thank you for following along.  And thanks for being awesome and holding me accountable, so that I can actually VOICE my frustration with some of this rather than just give some bullshit “everything’s awesome!” thing.  I hope this next week brings you creative joy and excitement, and you can punch some frustration in the face!  Until next time.

 

 

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