The Artist's Way - Starts Sunday, May 7 (in progress)
posted April 10, 2023 5:58 AM RSS | iCal | +googleCal
Fri September 15 at 8:00 PM
Hi everyone! Last summer, a handful of us here at Metafilter completed Julia Cameron's classic creativity program, The Artist's Way. It's a 12-week program designed to help you connect to your inherent sense of creativity, be more productive, and build your enjoyment and confidence in artistic work (whether it's writing, music, visual arts, or just simply living a more artistic life). danabanana and I are revisiting the program this year and we'd love your company, whether you're a first-timer or someone looking to try it again. Please join us for gentle accountability, occasional grousing, and weekly revelations about the artistic journey. All are welcome!
You'll need a book: The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. It's typically about $6 used and $18ish new. Otherwise the program is free.
Doing this with others makes it a lot more fun. You can check out last year's post and progress here.
This year's hosts are danabanana and mochapickle.
Doing this with others makes it a lot more fun. You can check out last year's post and progress here.
This year's hosts are danabanana and mochapickle.
Hi everyone! I had a great experience with this last year -- I'd tried the program several times before but it just never seemed to connect with me. Last summer, I discovered that it's much better to do this with a group, and it's also good to just... take a generally loose approach. Some weeks would really resonate with me and I'd spend a lot of time with the material (or parts of the material), while some weeks I'd be just fine reading the chapter once and doing the morning pages and calling it good.
From the vantage of a year later, I can say that the practice of the morning pages has been particularly helpful. I struggle a lot with focus, and the daily practice of sitting down and writing three pages every morning (cup of tea, dog sleeping on my foot) has been really centering and productive. It took the whole summer to fully embrace and adopt the habit and now it's a thing I can't live without. Also, my handwriting has greatly improved. (Some people type their pages, that is perfectly fine.)
And I've also gotten more confident with wanting to try new things and writing/creating more for the sheer pleasure of it. I used to get caught up in the end goal or and worry about what might happen 17 steps ahead, but now everything feels more experimental, more about enjoying the process. Everything feels a bit more fun and bright.
This year, I have some writing projects underway but I'm also hoping to return to watercolor and handlettering.
I hope you'll all join us. If you complete the book, that's terrific. If you begin and decide it's not for you, that's also a positive thing because it means you've found a deeper understanding of what does or does not work for you.
posted by mochapickle at 8:25 AM on April 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
From the vantage of a year later, I can say that the practice of the morning pages has been particularly helpful. I struggle a lot with focus, and the daily practice of sitting down and writing three pages every morning (cup of tea, dog sleeping on my foot) has been really centering and productive. It took the whole summer to fully embrace and adopt the habit and now it's a thing I can't live without. Also, my handwriting has greatly improved. (Some people type their pages, that is perfectly fine.)
And I've also gotten more confident with wanting to try new things and writing/creating more for the sheer pleasure of it. I used to get caught up in the end goal or and worry about what might happen 17 steps ahead, but now everything feels more experimental, more about enjoying the process. Everything feels a bit more fun and bright.
This year, I have some writing projects underway but I'm also hoping to return to watercolor and handlettering.
I hope you'll all join us. If you complete the book, that's terrific. If you begin and decide it's not for you, that's also a positive thing because it means you've found a deeper understanding of what does or does not work for you.
posted by mochapickle at 8:25 AM on April 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
And welcome back, probably not that Karen Blair! Yay!
posted by mochapickle at 8:26 AM on April 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by mochapickle at 8:26 AM on April 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
I have always wanted to do this and peer pressure is exactly what I need to get me started! I'm in and feeling good about it. Thank you mochapickle!
posted by mygothlaundry at 9:13 AM on April 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by mygothlaundry at 9:13 AM on April 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
Hi everyone! I'm so excited to be a part of this group doing this project! I just read last year's thread and it was very enlightening and amusing, with lots of "Oh yeah, I forgot about that!"s. We had a great group, and we each took so much from the program and supported one another very well. I am looking forward to soaking up the goodness of the collaborative side of this creative process!
I have made morning pages part of my life since last year, and if that were the only benefit, that would be fine! But many of the exercises and tasks and essays are really helpful and enlightening (some are not for me) and the feeling of completing a 12-week creative course is tremendous.
And that brings up an important point about The Artist’s Way and Julia Cameron: the program and its author can be infuriating or annoying or problematic at times. What we learned last year is to take what you need from the book and leave the rest behind. And also maybe, if something is making you uncomfortable, why might that be? That's a potential topic for your morning pages or a cathartic rant in this space.
Welcome to everyone preparing for this wonderful journey of introspection and growth! I look forward to saying YAY to your accomplishments and BOO when things get bumpy!
posted by danabanana at 11:54 AM on April 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
I have made morning pages part of my life since last year, and if that were the only benefit, that would be fine! But many of the exercises and tasks and essays are really helpful and enlightening (some are not for me) and the feeling of completing a 12-week creative course is tremendous.
And that brings up an important point about The Artist’s Way and Julia Cameron: the program and its author can be infuriating or annoying or problematic at times. What we learned last year is to take what you need from the book and leave the rest behind. And also maybe, if something is making you uncomfortable, why might that be? That's a potential topic for your morning pages or a cathartic rant in this space.
Welcome to everyone preparing for this wonderful journey of introspection and growth! I look forward to saying YAY to your accomplishments and BOO when things get bumpy!
posted by danabanana at 11:54 AM on April 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
Welcome mygothlaundry! I hope you have fun with this!
Hi probably not that Karen Blair! It will be fun to be on the same week at the same time!
posted by danabanana at 11:58 AM on April 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
Hi probably not that Karen Blair! It will be fun to be on the same week at the same time!
posted by danabanana at 11:58 AM on April 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
Hi everybody! Thank you mochapickle for starting this !! I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed doing this with you all last year even though I couldn’t finish many exercises. Writing the morning pages helped me a lot but somehow I stopped writing after a while. I’m super excited and can’t wait to join you all in this wonderful journey :))
posted by SunPower at 3:24 PM on April 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by SunPower at 3:24 PM on April 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
I’ve been looking to try this. Thanks for the boost!
posted by Bunglegirl at 7:30 PM on April 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Bunglegirl at 7:30 PM on April 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
Yes, I'm so in! I've made a couple false starts and I know a group will be really helpful!
posted by mmmbacon at 7:21 AM on April 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by mmmbacon at 7:21 AM on April 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
Last year, I saw the thread but I couldn't commit to the time or energy. But I bought the book and it's been sitting on my desk for months. So this year, I'm gonna join you all and I'm glad to be able to share the experience with others.
posted by johnxlibris at 2:19 PM on April 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by johnxlibris at 2:19 PM on April 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
Welcome to everyone who has shown up and is giving this a try!
Good to see you again, SunPower!
Bunglegirl, mmmbacon, and johnxlibris: thanks for joining! I look forward to getting to know you better through this process!
posted by danabanana at 2:39 PM on April 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
Good to see you again, SunPower!
Bunglegirl, mmmbacon, and johnxlibris: thanks for joining! I look forward to getting to know you better through this process!
posted by danabanana at 2:39 PM on April 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
I'd like to take part, I'm really keen to make space in my life for a little more creativity. I restarted morning pages during 2020 and I've been doing them pretty consistently since then but none of the other parts of the book ever stuck. Actually I don't think I've ever made it as far as the second half of the book. Maybe this time! Thanks danabanana and mochapickle.
posted by happyfrog at 4:12 AM on April 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by happyfrog at 4:12 AM on April 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
I'm grateful someone has started this up. I'm in a (relatively) new city and don't have a local friend group that I know well enough to suggest this to, but I've been thinking about it for months. I've only recently started going back to museums and indoor cultural spaces, and that's led me to get out my camera and, of course, the frustrations of finding a routine and a practice have come along with it. I miss hte routine of morning pages as I've been getting back into a routine of morning running, and the conflict between those things and a limited amount of time in a day has kept me stgnant. Three cheers for gentle group effort and accountability!
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 4:23 AM on April 18, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 4:23 AM on April 18, 2023 [4 favorites]
Welcome happyfrog! It's great that you have experience with the book and have a morning pages practice already! That's a fundamental part of the process and now all you have to do is some exercises/tasks and artist dates and you'll be through the book in no time. Well, in 12 weeks that will sometimes seem like forever...
Welcome late afternoon dreaming hotel! The group dynamic is so important that there's a chapter about it after the 12 weeks section. I know I would never be able to do it without both the accountability and the space to vent! It sounds like you have some great artist date material! I'm looking forward to hearing about your visits to fun places!
I'm so excited to see more people showing interest! It's going to be a great group!
posted by danabanana at 12:03 PM on April 19, 2023 [4 favorites]
Welcome late afternoon dreaming hotel! The group dynamic is so important that there's a chapter about it after the 12 weeks section. I know I would never be able to do it without both the accountability and the space to vent! It sounds like you have some great artist date material! I'm looking forward to hearing about your visits to fun places!
I'm so excited to see more people showing interest! It's going to be a great group!
posted by danabanana at 12:03 PM on April 19, 2023 [4 favorites]
Oh, wonderful! I have tried TAW a few times on my own but have never made it past morning pages. I look forward to working through this with the gentle support of a group. Thanks for the motivation and organisation mochapickle and danabanana!
posted by lulu68 at 4:13 AM on April 22, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by lulu68 at 4:13 AM on April 22, 2023 [2 favorites]
Yay you, lulu68! It's great that you are giving TAW another chance! Welcome to the group!
posted by danabanana at 12:21 PM on April 22, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by danabanana at 12:21 PM on April 22, 2023 [2 favorites]
Going to join in as much as I am able (I know there will be a week or two when it might not be possible). Ordered the book, as the last time I started reading it, it was from the library. I have set aside a notebook for morning pages as I found that it didn’t work well for me in my “real” journal.
posted by ugf at 12:50 PM on April 22, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by ugf at 12:50 PM on April 22, 2023 [3 favorites]
That totally works, ugf. Last year, we were on different chapters from the very beginning and it still worked really well. I repeated chapters when I wanted more time, I'm pretty sure I skipped a chapter I didn't love, others I just sort of took the time I felt I needed, and we all ended up more or less within shouting distance of each other.
posted by mochapickle at 11:03 AM on April 23, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by mochapickle at 11:03 AM on April 23, 2023 [1 favorite]
Thanks for leading this! I am curious.
I've wondered what morning pages are for a long time and now I (sort of) know. The bit I don't totally understand is the bit about not rereading what you write in that time. I can totally see the need to barf out your small worries into an oubliette, but when it comes to pragmatic things like to-do lists, I feel like I would actually just keep worrying about what I put in the oubliette and then literally forgot. Can anyone comment on this? Is this just a me problem?
posted by eirias at 4:41 AM on May 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
I've wondered what morning pages are for a long time and now I (sort of) know. The bit I don't totally understand is the bit about not rereading what you write in that time. I can totally see the need to barf out your small worries into an oubliette, but when it comes to pragmatic things like to-do lists, I feel like I would actually just keep worrying about what I put in the oubliette and then literally forgot. Can anyone comment on this? Is this just a me problem?
posted by eirias at 4:41 AM on May 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
Hi folks, hope to be there. Just ordered a copy. I haven’t made any significant amount of art after my PhD (and a bereavement) knocked it out of me about ten years ago, so it would be nice to have a way to engage with it again without pressure. I’ll be there if I can.
posted by aesop at 5:03 AM on May 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by aesop at 5:03 AM on May 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
Hello everyone!
Thank you for organizing this! It felt very serendipitous to see this on metafilter - one of my goals this year is to start writing, and just this past week I was looking for some kind of structure/group to work on that with.
I feel like I'm coming at this a bit in reverse - I'm a visual artist and drawing is a very natural way to communicate for me, and I'm generally pretty comfortable with other creative things... with the glaring exception of writing, which has always felt like pulling out teeth. The things I try to say feel awkward and untrue as soon as I put them down in words (and even writing a simple post like this is difficult for me haha.) But I have the sense it would be very freeing to learn to enjoy writing, and I hope to figure that out with this program!
posted by limnerent at 10:33 AM on May 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
Thank you for organizing this! It felt very serendipitous to see this on metafilter - one of my goals this year is to start writing, and just this past week I was looking for some kind of structure/group to work on that with.
I feel like I'm coming at this a bit in reverse - I'm a visual artist and drawing is a very natural way to communicate for me, and I'm generally pretty comfortable with other creative things... with the glaring exception of writing, which has always felt like pulling out teeth. The things I try to say feel awkward and untrue as soon as I put them down in words (and even writing a simple post like this is difficult for me haha.) But I have the sense it would be very freeing to learn to enjoy writing, and I hope to figure that out with this program!
posted by limnerent at 10:33 AM on May 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
Hi! Welcome everyone!
I'm counting this week as Week 0 and spending a little time with the pages before Chapter 1 -- the introduction, principles, and tools. It's about 25 pages altogether (not sure if editions vary) but it's helpful to read it in advance and give it some air before the program officially begins. I'll start Chapter 1 on Sunday.
I'm curious to see others' ideas but my method is to mark my morning pages whenever I want to reference something later. So if there's something I'll need from that page, I'll draw a star on the top right corner of the page and then I'll bracket the specific text, and sometimes I'll add stars next to the text depending on how excited I am about the idea. Big idea = lots of stars! I never read the morning pages as a whole but I do go back to look for starred material.
posted by mochapickle at 11:22 AM on May 1, 2023 [5 favorites]
I'm counting this week as Week 0 and spending a little time with the pages before Chapter 1 -- the introduction, principles, and tools. It's about 25 pages altogether (not sure if editions vary) but it's helpful to read it in advance and give it some air before the program officially begins. I'll start Chapter 1 on Sunday.
I'm curious to see others' ideas but my method is to mark my morning pages whenever I want to reference something later. So if there's something I'll need from that page, I'll draw a star on the top right corner of the page and then I'll bracket the specific text, and sometimes I'll add stars next to the text depending on how excited I am about the idea. Big idea = lots of stars! I never read the morning pages as a whole but I do go back to look for starred material.
posted by mochapickle at 11:22 AM on May 1, 2023 [5 favorites]
Welcome to everyone!
eirias: I suppose this is a bit of a spoiler, but we write morning pages without looking at them for a few weeks and then one week a task is to read the morning pages. Some people love this and others don't do it. It's up to you!
aesop: I hope you will be able to find the time to do this with us!
limnerent: All the writing can be revelatory! And I have posting anxiety myself and I enjoy the support from this group!
mochapickle: Great plan for Week 0! And thanks for sharing your method for using your morning pages!
I am so very excited to start this process once again!
posted by danabanana at 1:40 PM on May 1, 2023 [4 favorites]
eirias: I suppose this is a bit of a spoiler, but we write morning pages without looking at them for a few weeks and then one week a task is to read the morning pages. Some people love this and others don't do it. It's up to you!
aesop: I hope you will be able to find the time to do this with us!
limnerent: All the writing can be revelatory! And I have posting anxiety myself and I enjoy the support from this group!
mochapickle: Great plan for Week 0! And thanks for sharing your method for using your morning pages!
I am so very excited to start this process once again!
posted by danabanana at 1:40 PM on May 1, 2023 [4 favorites]
Hello, hey, hi -
I'm new to this website but I'm interested in TAW and so I've steamrolled into getting an account and buying a copy of the book and even writing this introduction. I'm looking forward to working alongside you all!
I just recently learned about the morning pages (in passing, from someone's blog) and they've been good to me so far. They have been a valuable part of my morning routine in the past few weeks; I want to nurture that into something more.
posted by MeadowlarkDoctrine at 8:07 PM on May 1, 2023 [5 favorites]
I'm new to this website but I'm interested in TAW and so I've steamrolled into getting an account and buying a copy of the book and even writing this introduction. I'm looking forward to working alongside you all!
I just recently learned about the morning pages (in passing, from someone's blog) and they've been good to me so far. They have been a valuable part of my morning routine in the past few weeks; I want to nurture that into something more.
posted by MeadowlarkDoctrine at 8:07 PM on May 1, 2023 [5 favorites]
I saw this in the sidebar and usually I agonize over whether to commit to anything for a really long time, but as it happens, I'm in the middle of trying to do a few things differently in my life right now. So I guess the conditions were just right for me to decide to do this and order the book in the space of about 5 minutes, 'cause that's what I did. Looking forward to joining you all!
posted by valrus at 9:16 PM on May 1, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by valrus at 9:16 PM on May 1, 2023 [3 favorites]
Welcome to MeFi and welcome to the group, MeadowlarkDoctrine! It's great that you are already doing morning pages! You will definitely go deeper with the rest of the program!
Yay for sidebar-related impulses, valrus! It is very serendipitous that your schedule lines up with the program timeline! Welcome!
posted by danabanana at 11:13 AM on May 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
Yay for sidebar-related impulses, valrus! It is very serendipitous that your schedule lines up with the program timeline! Welcome!
posted by danabanana at 11:13 AM on May 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
Hi everyone!
I’m going to just dive in— I’ve known about this book for years first time to actually try it out.
Thanks for the companionship in this project—
I do need this right now!
posted by calgirl at 1:29 PM on May 2, 2023 [2 favorites]
I’m going to just dive in— I’ve known about this book for years first time to actually try it out.
Thanks for the companionship in this project—
I do need this right now!
posted by calgirl at 1:29 PM on May 2, 2023 [2 favorites]
I saw this in the sidebar and I'd really like to participate! I did 750words.com for a long time which is inspired by morning pages, but I've never actually done The Artist's Way in its original form. How does it work--we just do what the book says and then post in this thread every week as we go through it?
posted by Tesseractive at 10:14 PM on May 2, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Tesseractive at 10:14 PM on May 2, 2023 [2 favorites]
Basically, yes. Mochapickle posted last year’s thread up top so you can have a look at how we did it. It felt very supportive to have gentle accountability—very gentle—and even better to feel heard in our challenges and successes. I don’t think there was a single one of us who loved every part of the book, or even all the same parts.* It was just very validating to be able to say that out loud in a safe place. It made it possible to keep going and keep growing, even after you’d thrown the book at the wall. In the end I find I am still benefitting from that experience and looking forward to doing it again.
oh. also, you don’t /have/ to post every week. it’s up to you. many people didn’t.
*It IS a great book, but Julia Cameron is just a person, after all. As the saying goes, take what you can use and leave the rest.
posted by probably not that Karen Blair at 6:04 AM on May 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
oh. also, you don’t /have/ to post every week. it’s up to you. many people didn’t.
*It IS a great book, but Julia Cameron is just a person, after all. As the saying goes, take what you can use and leave the rest.
posted by probably not that Karen Blair at 6:04 AM on May 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
I agree! I think at the very least, you should:
- Read the chapter for the week
- Do the morning pages as often as you can, with a goal of making it a daily or near-daily practice
- Do some sort of artist date once a week, even if it's something very simple like breakfast on your porch
And then however else you opt to engage (or not engage) with the week's material is fully up to you. Last year, after making an attempt every few years to follow the book to the letter, I found that improvising and even rebelling from some of the instructions made the overall experience all the more useful to me. This year I'll probably do more of the tasks/exercises I skipped over last year.
Commenting here is optional, but we want people to feel comfortable to do so. Like probably not that Karen Blair, I found the community to be very gentle, and I gained so much from reading about others' experiences and interpretations.
posted by mochapickle at 5:25 PM on May 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
- Read the chapter for the week
- Do the morning pages as often as you can, with a goal of making it a daily or near-daily practice
- Do some sort of artist date once a week, even if it's something very simple like breakfast on your porch
And then however else you opt to engage (or not engage) with the week's material is fully up to you. Last year, after making an attempt every few years to follow the book to the letter, I found that improvising and even rebelling from some of the instructions made the overall experience all the more useful to me. This year I'll probably do more of the tasks/exercises I skipped over last year.
Commenting here is optional, but we want people to feel comfortable to do so. Like probably not that Karen Blair, I found the community to be very gentle, and I gained so much from reading about others' experiences and interpretations.
posted by mochapickle at 5:25 PM on May 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
oh hello! I did some of this with a group end of last year/early this year - got to about Week 10, then life became pretty chaotic (in a good way but still a LOT) so I haven't finished it. I did follow along with last year's thread as I was doing it which was fun!
Working on it was a weird time - I had spent most of 2022 at that point waylaid due to Covid and wanted to get back into something creative, then literally during Week 2 caught Covid again from my first gig in ages. It was during the chapters were Julia was all like "WHY DON'T YOU BELIEVE IN THE GOD THAT WANTS YOU TO CREATE" so I got pretty angry at her and TAW and thought "well this God doesn't seem to want me to create because this is the second damn time I got The Plague from something artistic!" (The first time was a rehearsal) I'm not sure I've gotten any answers on that front, but it did spur me to actually get into VTubing after waffling about it for a while, so there you go.
I don't know if I'll revisit it (see above paragraph) but I might check in with this thread anyway :)
posted by creatrixtiara at 1:52 AM on May 4, 2023 [3 favorites]
Working on it was a weird time - I had spent most of 2022 at that point waylaid due to Covid and wanted to get back into something creative, then literally during Week 2 caught Covid again from my first gig in ages. It was during the chapters were Julia was all like "WHY DON'T YOU BELIEVE IN THE GOD THAT WANTS YOU TO CREATE" so I got pretty angry at her and TAW and thought "well this God doesn't seem to want me to create because this is the second damn time I got The Plague from something artistic!" (The first time was a rehearsal) I'm not sure I've gotten any answers on that front, but it did spur me to actually get into VTubing after waffling about it for a while, so there you go.
I don't know if I'll revisit it (see above paragraph) but I might check in with this thread anyway :)
posted by creatrixtiara at 1:52 AM on May 4, 2023 [3 favorites]
mochapickle: I'd love to hear more about how you rebelled on the exercises!
posted by creatrixtiara at 1:56 AM on May 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by creatrixtiara at 1:56 AM on May 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
Like mochapickle, I started reading the pages before the Chapter 1. While reading the basic tools section, I realized how much the Censor( the nasty internal and external critic) that Cameron talks about has influenced my whole life during good/bad times.
I cannot write the morning pages right out of bed like Cameron says. I am more comfortable having my coffee, exercise and other morning chores done before sitting peacefully to write .
So, I decided to start writing my morning pages today as I woke up with a bad mood and had to get it out of my system. Felt good dumping all my anger, worries and other things in my mind into the morning pages.
posted by SunPower at 7:18 AM on May 4, 2023 [3 favorites]
I cannot write the morning pages right out of bed like Cameron says. I am more comfortable having my coffee, exercise and other morning chores done before sitting peacefully to write .
So, I decided to start writing my morning pages today as I woke up with a bad mood and had to get it out of my system. Felt good dumping all my anger, worries and other things in my mind into the morning pages.
posted by SunPower at 7:18 AM on May 4, 2023 [3 favorites]
Oh goodness, creatrixtiara... Like sometimes I'd get to the end of a chapter I wasn't connecting to and every exercise was like, "Write a letter to your pinky toe about your favorite vacation..." and I'd just be like, WHATEVER JULIA, and happily close the chapter without another thought.
Sometimes I wouldn't read the chapter until Wednesday or Thursday. Sometimes I'd start morning pages and stop after a page and a half, or repeat a chapter, or get deeply annoyed by parts that felt irrelevant or desperately out of touch (and there are some dazzling examples). There was one point about a month in where I had persistent, vaguely menacing fantasies about throwing a live raccoon at her? It's a blur.
I guess I'm mentioning all this because I attempted and abandoned TAW many (many!) times over the years, and every time I'd buckle myself into it with a five-point harness and take it Very Seriously and have Very Concrete Goals and do everything by the letter, even (and especially) the parts I wasn't feeling. So last year, I just made it enjoyable, treated the book as food for thought instead of something I'd be graded on, and it was a much better experience overall, and ultimately a great pleasure. At least for me.
posted by mochapickle at 2:18 PM on May 4, 2023 [12 favorites]
Sometimes I wouldn't read the chapter until Wednesday or Thursday. Sometimes I'd start morning pages and stop after a page and a half, or repeat a chapter, or get deeply annoyed by parts that felt irrelevant or desperately out of touch (and there are some dazzling examples). There was one point about a month in where I had persistent, vaguely menacing fantasies about throwing a live raccoon at her? It's a blur.
I guess I'm mentioning all this because I attempted and abandoned TAW many (many!) times over the years, and every time I'd buckle myself into it with a five-point harness and take it Very Seriously and have Very Concrete Goals and do everything by the letter, even (and especially) the parts I wasn't feeling. So last year, I just made it enjoyable, treated the book as food for thought instead of something I'd be graded on, and it was a much better experience overall, and ultimately a great pleasure. At least for me.
posted by mochapickle at 2:18 PM on May 4, 2023 [12 favorites]
Best comment ever, mochapickle!!! 100000 favorites!
posted by probably not that Karen Blair at 2:26 PM on May 4, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by probably not that Karen Blair at 2:26 PM on May 4, 2023 [4 favorites]
Ok I'm in. I remember doing the morning pages thing long ago, and I'm keen on getting back to non-academic writing.
posted by dhruva at 3:40 PM on May 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by dhruva at 3:40 PM on May 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
I'm so very in! Yay!
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 12:16 AM on May 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 12:16 AM on May 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
Excellent, dhruva! It's great that you have experience with morning pages!
Welcome, palmcorder_yajna! Yay!
To everyone thinking about joining, we start tomorrow and we would love to have you!
And another welcome to all who have commented that they will give this a try! I hope everyone has a wonderful experience!
posted by danabanana at 10:53 AM on May 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
Welcome, palmcorder_yajna! Yay!
To everyone thinking about joining, we start tomorrow and we would love to have you!
And another welcome to all who have commented that they will give this a try! I hope everyone has a wonderful experience!
posted by danabanana at 10:53 AM on May 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
I've had this book forever and have never given it a go! Although I am coming at it from a natural skeptic's position and I hit the first page and I just want to comment on how the passage of time has completely changed how we define artists and art, both in where artists are supposed to live and look like and do and the value we place on artistic creation. But perhaps that is for the pages?
posted by kingdead at 7:41 AM on May 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by kingdead at 7:41 AM on May 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
I did my very first Morning Pages today. It wound up uncovering slightly more interesting cruft than I expected. Hunh. Looking forward to how this plays out.
I read the preface/etc yesterday and today. When are we meant to read Chapter 1? Also today?
posted by eirias at 8:11 AM on May 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
I read the preface/etc yesterday and today. When are we meant to read Chapter 1? Also today?
posted by eirias at 8:11 AM on May 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
I think we're meant to read chapter 1, and take the following week to do the tasks and the artist date. Morning pages every day.
posted by dhruva at 10:20 AM on May 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by dhruva at 10:20 AM on May 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
Hi everyone! Welcome to Week One! I'm just getting started and will be reading Chapter 1 later today.
kingdead, I remember that part! It makes me celebrate how much more accessible art and artmaking and creativity have become since this was originally published in... 1992. Everything felt so regimented and specialized back then.
And hello, eirias! The introduction/principles/tools and Chapter 1 together weigh in at about 50 pages in my edition (the whole book is 225ish), so that's kind of a lot to read in a day or two. Especially as JCameron has her own... uh, style and vernacular and a very particular point of view. So if you're opening the book for the first time today, feel free to take your time with it. Maybe read the intro sections today and then read Chapter 1 tomorrow or Tuesday. I think it's more important to be in an open frame of mind than on a set schedule. Sometimes a week takes nine days.
How you use this thread is up to you! Last year, it became a spot for the weekly check-in, but we can use it for chatting, ideas, whatever you like! We'll likely end up on different weeks at some point, so we'll keep this thread open indefinitely.
posted by mochapickle at 10:47 AM on May 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
kingdead, I remember that part! It makes me celebrate how much more accessible art and artmaking and creativity have become since this was originally published in... 1992. Everything felt so regimented and specialized back then.
And hello, eirias! The introduction/principles/tools and Chapter 1 together weigh in at about 50 pages in my edition (the whole book is 225ish), so that's kind of a lot to read in a day or two. Especially as JCameron has her own... uh, style and vernacular and a very particular point of view. So if you're opening the book for the first time today, feel free to take your time with it. Maybe read the intro sections today and then read Chapter 1 tomorrow or Tuesday. I think it's more important to be in an open frame of mind than on a set schedule. Sometimes a week takes nine days.
How you use this thread is up to you! Last year, it became a spot for the weekly check-in, but we can use it for chatting, ideas, whatever you like! We'll likely end up on different weeks at some point, so we'll keep this thread open indefinitely.
posted by mochapickle at 10:47 AM on May 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
I am using the The Artist's Way Workbook (it's what was available on Overdrive) and really loved this snippet re: morning pages (edited excerpt).
posted by spamandkimchi at 4:52 PM on May 7, 2023 [4 favorites]
My pages are often grumpy. I use them to vent. In my pages I tell the universe what I don’t like and what I do.
Morning pages are a witness to our passage and they are a cheerleader for our efforts. “It’s great that I got to the park yesterday.” Occasionally, morning pages are the seedbed for new creative ideas. “Wouldn’t it be fun to write a musical about Merlin?”
Morning pages make us known to ourselves. They map our many contradictory urges.
Morning pages make us intimate with ourselves, and this, in turn, allows us to become more intimate with others.
posted by spamandkimchi at 4:52 PM on May 7, 2023 [4 favorites]
Hello? Anyone around? Don’t know if there’s a chat or a meeting I’m supposed to join, sorry.
posted by aesop at 4:54 PM on May 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by aesop at 4:54 PM on May 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
Hi aesop! We're just communicating through this thread asynchronously, so there's no formal meeting. (The IRL page makes you set an event time.)
posted by mochapickle at 4:57 PM on May 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by mochapickle at 4:57 PM on May 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
Got it, sorry!
posted by aesop at 5:03 PM on May 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by aesop at 5:03 PM on May 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
No sorry needed! Glad you are here!
posted by mochapickle at 5:04 PM on May 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by mochapickle at 5:04 PM on May 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
Welcome, spamandkimchi! Thanks for sharing the words about morning pages! It's all so very true!
aesop, this thread is our checking in space. You can post questions like you just did or share your experiences as you go along. Some folks will post a check-in at the end of the week summarizing how things went, but we also pop in here to vent or celebrate or whatever. Thanks for your question! I hope this clears things up for you and whoever else might be confused.
Happy week 1 day 1!
[On preview, what mochapickle said...]
posted by danabanana at 5:04 PM on May 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
aesop, this thread is our checking in space. You can post questions like you just did or share your experiences as you go along. Some folks will post a check-in at the end of the week summarizing how things went, but we also pop in here to vent or celebrate or whatever. Thanks for your question! I hope this clears things up for you and whoever else might be confused.
Happy week 1 day 1!
[On preview, what mochapickle said...]
posted by danabanana at 5:04 PM on May 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
Got up and did my morning pages this morning. Even on Day 1, I felt like I cracked something open just a tiny bit. It was the question: "what type of artist do I want to be?" I don't consider myself an artist (and I realize undoing this mode of thinking is the entire point of Chapter 1), though I've often wanted to pursue something more creative. So where should I go? Writing? Photography? Music? My liberal arts education gave me enough of a footing to follow any of those paths, but do I need to choose in order to make this 12-week experience work? Probably not, but that anxiety lingers. Happy Day 1, everyone!
posted by johnxlibris at 5:31 PM on May 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by johnxlibris at 5:31 PM on May 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
Thanks folks, I appreciate the welcome. Guess I could share that I’ve been joining some insight with morning pages to some other stuff that concerns me in my life. Specifically anxiety about work performance- I get pretty hung up. Might have some sort of undiagnosed attention-something, because I usually freeze up whenever there are more than 2 or 3 things on the go at once & the usual impostor worries I think most folks have. Anyway I’ve been looking through my creative strengths and how they are kind of darkly mirrored by the work anxiety (in my creative time I ping all over the place in different disciplines). Anyway morning pages got me joining that up with the peacefulness I’ve seen settle on certain friends as they experience parenthood; and though I’m probably fantasizing or projecting or something, I thought there was something to the fact of settled commitment to a responsibility, that I could wish for. I can’t really join the dots here without writing an essay, but it made me think that I could try to create a peaceful diligence that might let me slow down and just work honestly, rather than in a sense of guilty procrastination. Perhaps doing enough, is enough?
posted by aesop at 5:40 PM on May 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by aesop at 5:40 PM on May 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
I just came across this website where the book is available to read online for free if anyone who wants to join but doesn’t have the book.
posted by SunPower at 6:58 PM on May 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by SunPower at 6:58 PM on May 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
Unfortunately I haven't received the book yet, but I did pages this morning. It wasn't revelatory but I do think it helped get my thoughts in order for the day!
posted by valrus at 7:56 AM on May 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by valrus at 7:56 AM on May 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
SunPower you're a genius! I did some digging and that site has both the full book and the accompanying workbook in PDF form. The full book has the essays and readings.
Full Book
Workbook
Thank you!
posted by mochapickle at 8:26 AM on May 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
Full Book
Workbook
Thank you!
posted by mochapickle at 8:26 AM on May 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
I got so mad about the whole morning pages thing that I worked myself into a whole state of righteous indignation and that made me think, oh, interesting, this has really touched a nerve. What's going on here? I haven't answered that yet and I'm still mad, but today I did in fact write three pages of cranky miserable whining complaints.
posted by mygothlaundry at 9:51 AM on May 8, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by mygothlaundry at 9:51 AM on May 8, 2023 [6 favorites]
I managed to make morning pages work on a school day. Got all three done just before Little e came down for piano practice. That’s something.
I’m hoping to use this to unblock not traditional artistic creativity (I don’t often think of myself that way) but scientific creativity. I’ve been in a rut for a few years for Reasons and it would be nice to feel some purpose in it again. But I gather that there’s a stochastic element to what comes out of this journey!
posted by eirias at 11:31 AM on May 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
I’m hoping to use this to unblock not traditional artistic creativity (I don’t often think of myself that way) but scientific creativity. I’ve been in a rut for a few years for Reasons and it would be nice to feel some purpose in it again. But I gather that there’s a stochastic element to what comes out of this journey!
posted by eirias at 11:31 AM on May 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
The timing didn't work out for me last year, but in the preceding discussion I mentioned having done TAW "maybe a dozen years ago." Upon reflection, it must have been longer ago than that, though: more like fifteen or sixteen years? Anyway, at the time I knew a few no-nonsense people who'd found it helpful despite rolling their eyes at a lot of the Julia Cameron silliness, so I gave it a try. And as it turned out, it really did help me with a specific goal.
Since I was seven or eight until fairly recently I did something roughly like "morning pages." Not formal journals, not at a specified time of day, but I was constantly writing stuff down on any convenient surface, basically out of habit. Plus I lived by myself for most of my adult life, and was constantly haring off to do random interesting things on my own, ie roughly an "artist's date" in TAW-speak. At some point in the last five years or so, both of those things stopped. The pandemic was only one of many big changes (job environment changed, got married, lost a parent, moved a bunch of times). Somewhere in there the non-stop general commentary and capricious solo excursions wound down. So I was really glad to learn that you all were planning another round of this.
I don't know what happened to my old copy of the book, so a couple of weeks ago I picked up the new edition as an ebook. I skimmed the first few chapters and wow, my heart sank. Of course I'd remembered that there was God and New Age magic talk in there, but I'd forgotten just how much. It's daunting. I've never responded well to that sort of thing. How did I cope the first time around? Maybe that stuff was more pervasive in the culture back then, so it didn't seem so conspicuous?
Even so. The method worked for me last time, and right now there's another project I'm kind of stuck on. So with some frank misgivings and resistance, I'm giving it what Mr Tangerine Man likes to call "a red-hot go."
I won't necessarily be doing pages in the morning. They might have to be "lunchtime pages." Also I'll be travelling for a few weeks in there; I'm not sure how that'll work out. But I'm glad to have resumed daily spew-writing and weekly excursions. Even if that's all I manage to do, I look forward to some companionship along the way.
posted by tangerine at 3:58 PM on May 8, 2023 [6 favorites]
Since I was seven or eight until fairly recently I did something roughly like "morning pages." Not formal journals, not at a specified time of day, but I was constantly writing stuff down on any convenient surface, basically out of habit. Plus I lived by myself for most of my adult life, and was constantly haring off to do random interesting things on my own, ie roughly an "artist's date" in TAW-speak. At some point in the last five years or so, both of those things stopped. The pandemic was only one of many big changes (job environment changed, got married, lost a parent, moved a bunch of times). Somewhere in there the non-stop general commentary and capricious solo excursions wound down. So I was really glad to learn that you all were planning another round of this.
I don't know what happened to my old copy of the book, so a couple of weeks ago I picked up the new edition as an ebook. I skimmed the first few chapters and wow, my heart sank. Of course I'd remembered that there was God and New Age magic talk in there, but I'd forgotten just how much. It's daunting. I've never responded well to that sort of thing. How did I cope the first time around? Maybe that stuff was more pervasive in the culture back then, so it didn't seem so conspicuous?
Even so. The method worked for me last time, and right now there's another project I'm kind of stuck on. So with some frank misgivings and resistance, I'm giving it what Mr Tangerine Man likes to call "a red-hot go."
I won't necessarily be doing pages in the morning. They might have to be "lunchtime pages." Also I'll be travelling for a few weeks in there; I'm not sure how that'll work out. But I'm glad to have resumed daily spew-writing and weekly excursions. Even if that's all I manage to do, I look forward to some companionship along the way.
posted by tangerine at 3:58 PM on May 8, 2023 [6 favorites]
Decided to make an “anonymous” YouTube channel (which I won’t be sharing). It will feature like 20 minute kind of terrible modular bleep bloop noise jams, and possibly voiceovers doing dada ramblings in weird voices. This started off as being just a way to archive the jams but why not just go nuts? It’s not as if I’m trying to do this as a job.
I don’t know what it’s got to do with anything but it sure feels like I got the crayons out and am about to make a hell of a mess in a way I am not entirely unhappy to do. I’ve done a couple of livestreams so far. It is total nonsense but also sort of fun. I should add I am giving myself permission to just be bad at it, not really critiquing it, just letting it hang out a bit.
posted by aesop at 5:59 PM on May 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
I don’t know what it’s got to do with anything but it sure feels like I got the crayons out and am about to make a hell of a mess in a way I am not entirely unhappy to do. I’ve done a couple of livestreams so far. It is total nonsense but also sort of fun. I should add I am giving myself permission to just be bad at it, not really critiquing it, just letting it hang out a bit.
posted by aesop at 5:59 PM on May 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
Hello! I ordered the ebook last week, and then we went out of town for the weekend and got food poisoning, which we are still recovering from, but I am starting the book today and will start morning pages in the morning!
posted by needlegrrl at 5:59 PM on May 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by needlegrrl at 5:59 PM on May 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
In full solidarity with mygothlaundry, I've horked up some cranky miserable whining complaints of my own.
posted by tangerine at 8:00 PM on May 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by tangerine at 8:00 PM on May 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
People who've done it before: has it helped? and if so, in what way?
posted by dhruva at 8:24 AM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by dhruva at 8:24 AM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm completely sold on the morning pages lol. Something about the parameters being pages filled and not time spent writing really appeals.
Sometimes they start really stilted and then I get into a groove. Today I just wrote a review of the last book I read. It was nice drilling down into the text without feeling any of the pressure of a potential audience. Three pages of incoherent exclamations and now maybe my pitch will be better the next time someone asks for a reading recommendation.
The funniest part of all of this is that I've now got a 19 day streak (!) on the NYTimes crossword. I've felt a lot more curious about the world lately and I've been much more inclined to slow down and sit with things in a way that I haven't done in a long time.
posted by MeadowlarkDoctrine at 8:40 AM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Sometimes they start really stilted and then I get into a groove. Today I just wrote a review of the last book I read. It was nice drilling down into the text without feeling any of the pressure of a potential audience. Three pages of incoherent exclamations and now maybe my pitch will be better the next time someone asks for a reading recommendation.
The funniest part of all of this is that I've now got a 19 day streak (!) on the NYTimes crossword. I've felt a lot more curious about the world lately and I've been much more inclined to slow down and sit with things in a way that I haven't done in a long time.
posted by MeadowlarkDoctrine at 8:40 AM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
The first time I did this was 20 years ago this year, and within two years I applied to, was accepted, and completed an art school program. Morning pages and the concept of refilling one’s well have stuck with me all this time. Excited to start again.
posted by annathea at 2:06 PM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by annathea at 2:06 PM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
Hello everyone. Thanks, mochapickle, for initiating this. I’m happy to be here.
Lately, I’ve been feeling more and more like most things in life are just Not That Deep. I feel like most things should be pretty straightforward and just not that big a deal; no drama. This first chapter, however, feels pretty deep. I got all sorts of fEeLiNgS. : )
So I’m glad to be here. It’s scary to articulate stuff, but I hope I make some good, true paintings out of this process.
On a related note, for the past couple of years, I’ve been experimenting with acrylic pouring. I usually layer my paints in a cup and pour but I don’t always have great control over the amount and pace of the pouring. Either my hand trembles or my arm shakes and I can’t always get a consistent pour. So I bought some eye droppers to see if I could control the flow that way and tried it this morning, but all I got was a mushy mess of colors. So something to work on.
posted by gt2 at 5:45 PM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
Lately, I’ve been feeling more and more like most things in life are just Not That Deep. I feel like most things should be pretty straightforward and just not that big a deal; no drama. This first chapter, however, feels pretty deep. I got all sorts of fEeLiNgS. : )
So I’m glad to be here. It’s scary to articulate stuff, but I hope I make some good, true paintings out of this process.
On a related note, for the past couple of years, I’ve been experimenting with acrylic pouring. I usually layer my paints in a cup and pour but I don’t always have great control over the amount and pace of the pouring. Either my hand trembles or my arm shakes and I can’t always get a consistent pour. So I bought some eye droppers to see if I could control the flow that way and tried it this morning, but all I got was a mushy mess of colors. So something to work on.
posted by gt2 at 5:45 PM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
Well after 45 minutes of searching and eventually running my finger along the spine of every book on every bookshelf I own, I found my copy and finished reading the pages before Chapter 1. Once again, and like some other commenters so far, I found it hard to connect to the idea of God or creative life force, but there were two sidebar comments that nearly got me there, both from musicians - Stephane Grappelli: "Great improvisers are like priests. They are thinking only of their god," and Louis Armstrong: "What we play is life."
There was one other quote that resonated, and I think it's because the past few years, after a breakup, social isolation (government-mandated and self-imposed), followed by a dramatic rise in interest rates and my mortgage repayments, a return to scrimping and saving, and a consciousness that wealth inequality is getting worse and the ladders I used (discounted university education, adequate unemployment payments, penalty rates etc) to reach even this ambiguous level of financial stability have been pulled up -- anyway, all of that is to say I've had a parsimonious, lonely existence the last few years. So the quote from Brenda Ueland on page 4, "Why should we all use our creative power...? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money" also struck a chord of... ambition? in me.
posted by happyfrog at 1:56 AM on May 11, 2023 [7 favorites]
There was one other quote that resonated, and I think it's because the past few years, after a breakup, social isolation (government-mandated and self-imposed), followed by a dramatic rise in interest rates and my mortgage repayments, a return to scrimping and saving, and a consciousness that wealth inequality is getting worse and the ladders I used (discounted university education, adequate unemployment payments, penalty rates etc) to reach even this ambiguous level of financial stability have been pulled up -- anyway, all of that is to say I've had a parsimonious, lonely existence the last few years. So the quote from Brenda Ueland on page 4, "Why should we all use our creative power...? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money" also struck a chord of... ambition? in me.
posted by happyfrog at 1:56 AM on May 11, 2023 [7 favorites]
Did my first morning pages today. Ooof, I wish I’d known there was a huge amount of pre-week 1 reading and I would have gotten started earlier. I found myself saying “yeah yeah, blah blah” while reading the first parts. Between the God stuff and the many many ways the author says the same thing over and over again, I got pretty annoyed. A big part of it is I don’t like the idea that I'm a conduit for a greater power, and that something else is working through me. That may be a bridge too far for me, even when you leave out god it still is all about something outside yourself. I read a meditation book recently, recommended by a friend, and felt the same way. Maybe I just have a natural aversion to “self help” type of writing?
How do you all keep track of all of the tasks? It is quite a list. Are you going back and re-reading that page, taking on one a day, etc?
posted by Bunglegirl at 2:40 AM on May 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
How do you all keep track of all of the tasks? It is quite a list. Are you going back and re-reading that page, taking on one a day, etc?
posted by Bunglegirl at 2:40 AM on May 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
Week 1, Day 6
Bunglegirl, I hear you about the God stuff (and the new age-y style) and it was definitely a bridge too far for me in previous attempts. But! Last year, I found a syllogism that seemed to wrap up what JFC is trying to say with, like, 90% less woo:
- The universe is a force of movement and change.
- I am part of the universe.
- Therefore, I am a force of movement and change.
And then whenever Julia went off on a particularly insistent tangent about God, I'd just turn the volume on her down to like a 2 and move on. I started thinking of myself as bobbing along in a cosmic ocean, the stars indistinguishable from their reflections on the water, where I was part of the sea and yet very much myself. I could be carried by the waves and feel every ripple but my thoughts and actions were entirely my own.
Tuning out Julia sometimes and modifying the program when I needed to taught me something that was also important: creativity doesn't always mean building something. Sometimes it means removing things, dismantling them, tailoring them. The God talk... It starts out strong for sure but I didn't really notice it beyond the first few chapters. So either she tapered off eventually, or I was so used to translating her by that point that it didn't seem so heavy and proselytizing. I'm betting it was a combination of both.
If this chapter isn't working for you, that's okay. There'll always be another chapter in a few days. Also, if you want to take extra time with the chapter, that's totally okay, too. Think of this more of a nature hike with friends than a march! I suspect folks will be on different weeks sooner or later due to start dates, travel, etc. I'll start adding what week I'm in to my comments from here.
dhruva, I'm still thinking about your question and my answers so far are either too expansive or too pat. I'll write more in tomorrow's check-in, am also curious to hear what last year's folks might think about this.
posted by mochapickle at 8:40 AM on May 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
Bunglegirl, I hear you about the God stuff (and the new age-y style) and it was definitely a bridge too far for me in previous attempts. But! Last year, I found a syllogism that seemed to wrap up what JFC is trying to say with, like, 90% less woo:
- The universe is a force of movement and change.
- I am part of the universe.
- Therefore, I am a force of movement and change.
And then whenever Julia went off on a particularly insistent tangent about God, I'd just turn the volume on her down to like a 2 and move on. I started thinking of myself as bobbing along in a cosmic ocean, the stars indistinguishable from their reflections on the water, where I was part of the sea and yet very much myself. I could be carried by the waves and feel every ripple but my thoughts and actions were entirely my own.
Tuning out Julia sometimes and modifying the program when I needed to taught me something that was also important: creativity doesn't always mean building something. Sometimes it means removing things, dismantling them, tailoring them. The God talk... It starts out strong for sure but I didn't really notice it beyond the first few chapters. So either she tapered off eventually, or I was so used to translating her by that point that it didn't seem so heavy and proselytizing. I'm betting it was a combination of both.
If this chapter isn't working for you, that's okay. There'll always be another chapter in a few days. Also, if you want to take extra time with the chapter, that's totally okay, too. Think of this more of a nature hike with friends than a march! I suspect folks will be on different weeks sooner or later due to start dates, travel, etc. I'll start adding what week I'm in to my comments from here.
dhruva, I'm still thinking about your question and my answers so far are either too expansive or too pat. I'll write more in tomorrow's check-in, am also curious to hear what last year's folks might think about this.
posted by mochapickle at 8:40 AM on May 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
dhruva, that's a good question.
annathea applied to, was accepted, and completed an art school program. So did I! In my case it was a tough, selective writing MFA. I was also doing some live performances. That's the pat answer. Like mochapickle, I have a too-expansive answer as well. Perhaps a one-sentence compromise version is that I "came to believe" (as the recovery people say) that I had plenty of interesting ideas and I wasn't going to run out of them.
bunglegirl, I too get annoyed at the idea of being a conduit for some outside force. Thanks, mochapickle, for your kind and palatable take on all of that. I suspect you're right that either the tone and attitude changes throughout the book, or that it gets easier to translate on the fly. As I mentioned earlier, I hadn't remembered it and was taken aback when I started re-reading.
Also, aesop, I love the idea of that bleep bloop noise project.
posted by tangerine at 9:17 AM on May 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
annathea applied to, was accepted, and completed an art school program. So did I! In my case it was a tough, selective writing MFA. I was also doing some live performances. That's the pat answer. Like mochapickle, I have a too-expansive answer as well. Perhaps a one-sentence compromise version is that I "came to believe" (as the recovery people say) that I had plenty of interesting ideas and I wasn't going to run out of them.
bunglegirl, I too get annoyed at the idea of being a conduit for some outside force. Thanks, mochapickle, for your kind and palatable take on all of that. I suspect you're right that either the tone and attitude changes throughout the book, or that it gets easier to translate on the fly. As I mentioned earlier, I hadn't remembered it and was taken aback when I started re-reading.
Also, aesop, I love the idea of that bleep bloop noise project.
posted by tangerine at 9:17 AM on May 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
Here are some of the Artist Date ideas that I found interesting.
- Read an inspiring book
- Do something you loved doing as a child
- Bake your favorite cake
- Take a self portrait
-Go for a sunrise hike
- Go watch the sunset by the sea
- Pick a tree and write down every single thing you can observe about it
- Balance rocks in the most challenging ways you can
- Find something nice in nature to put into your home
- Plant some seeds in your garden
- Stay out star-gazing
- Learn a new skill like ikebana art of flower arranging
- Dress in your favorite clothes and go sit in a cafe
- Learn to play a new song on the guitar, piano or any instrument of your choice
- Dance in the rain
- Paint a portrait of your pet
- Invent something useless, but fun
- Explore a new painting technique
- Give yourself a massage
- Have your own little ecstatic dance party
- Have a picnic
- Declutter your favorite room
- Buy yourself flowers
- Take a walk in a park and listen to your favorite music…or take a walk in a nature preserve and listen to nature.
- You can also go to a lake or the middle of a field and sketch or describe nature.
- Take a local tour of a factory or brewery.
- If you live in a city, go on a do-it-yourself architecture tour. Research significant buildings, and go visit them and take pictures of them.
- Tour a historic home.
- Go to a concert (sometimes, you can find free ones!)
- Go to the movies.
- Go to a play.
- Go to an old-school arcade to play games.
- Bounce around at a trampoline park.
- Go indoor skydiving.
- Try a tea tasting or wine tasting.
- Take a crafting class (maybe at a store like Michael’s or Joann’s, if you are in the U.S.)
- Buy greeting cards and send them to people you haven’t connected with in a while.
- Take a bike ride on a new route.
- Pick wildflowers and press them in books.
- Get your fortune told or get a Tarot reading. (You don’t need to take it too seriously, but it may make you see something in a different light.)
- Get up early and go somewhere to watch the sun rise.
- Gaze up at the clouds and see if their shapes remind you of anything.
- Gaze up at the moon and the stars.
- Catch a virtual comedy show.
- Sculpt something with modeling clay.
- Lie down for an hour and just listen to an audiobook.
- Watch an opera for free! The Metropolitan Opera of New York streams a different opera every day.
- Write a poem…even if you don’t consider yourself a poet. For inspiration, check out these easy poetry exercises and prompts
- Try newspaper blackout poetry.
- Try a meditation video, recording, or online class.
- Make a mood board for a writing project…or just a mood board to express your mood!
- Try a YouTube tutorial or DIY for something you’ve never done before, or haven’t done often.
- Build something with Legos.
- Read old diaries or love letters.
- Visit a place you were fond of as a child. This could be your childhood home, a wildlife sanctuary, or an amusement park
- Poke around in a neighboring city you’ve never been to.
- Go to the beach. Sit and listen to the waves, or pick up pretty sea stones and shells.
- Visit a new restaurant, and try a dish you’ve never tasted before.
- Go to a movie by yourself.
- Take a solo-walk in a forest. Take pictures of trees or other forms of nature that inspire you.
- Enjoy a Bill Gates think week retreat in the woods, away from the Internet.
- Find a historical building and spend time imagining what happened there with each detail you come across.
- Explore a niche museum and learn about something new.
- Go to the library and check out some interesting materials that you wouldn’t normally consume.
- Visit an international or specialty grocery store with a $10 budget to see what you can buy.
- Walk around a college campus. Photograph the fascinating things you find.
- Go to your favorite coffee shop, order, and drink coffee by yourself. Fully take in your surroundings.
- Go berry picking.
- Go to a swap meet or flea market and shop for interesting or useful items.
- Visit an art museum to see enchanting artworks by amazing artists. Sketch pieces you like or write about them in a journal.
- Spend a late afternoon window shopping. Go to stores without your wallet and browse through their collections.
- Get a coloring book and colored pencils. Turn on some soothing music and color.
- start a mandala.
- Learn a new language. Try Duolingo for free.
- Create a playlist of upbeat music or your favorite genre, and have a solo dance party. Better yet, open your mind with some music you normally wouldn’t listen to.
- Make a photo book of your previous travels or a dream board of destinations you’d love to visit.
- Watch a movie you wouldn’t ordinarily watch. It could be horror, romance, action, or a just-plain-weird film.
- Practice mindfulness. Start with short meditations
- Get a big jigsaw puzzle and solve it. Or try it online
- Learn origami online
- Learn a new form of physical movement — a new dance move, yoga, Krav maga, Tai chi, or any exercise trend.
-Go to a coffee shop and spend a couple of hours listening and jotting down interesting conversations. Use your notes to create a short story, poem, or song lyrics.
posted by SunPower at 7:43 AM on May 13, 2023 [11 favorites]
- Read an inspiring book
- Do something you loved doing as a child
- Bake your favorite cake
- Take a self portrait
-Go for a sunrise hike
- Go watch the sunset by the sea
- Pick a tree and write down every single thing you can observe about it
- Balance rocks in the most challenging ways you can
- Find something nice in nature to put into your home
- Plant some seeds in your garden
- Stay out star-gazing
- Learn a new skill like ikebana art of flower arranging
- Dress in your favorite clothes and go sit in a cafe
- Learn to play a new song on the guitar, piano or any instrument of your choice
- Dance in the rain
- Paint a portrait of your pet
- Invent something useless, but fun
- Explore a new painting technique
- Give yourself a massage
- Have your own little ecstatic dance party
- Have a picnic
- Declutter your favorite room
- Buy yourself flowers
- Take a walk in a park and listen to your favorite music…or take a walk in a nature preserve and listen to nature.
- You can also go to a lake or the middle of a field and sketch or describe nature.
- Take a local tour of a factory or brewery.
- If you live in a city, go on a do-it-yourself architecture tour. Research significant buildings, and go visit them and take pictures of them.
- Tour a historic home.
- Go to a concert (sometimes, you can find free ones!)
- Go to the movies.
- Go to a play.
- Go to an old-school arcade to play games.
- Bounce around at a trampoline park.
- Go indoor skydiving.
- Try a tea tasting or wine tasting.
- Take a crafting class (maybe at a store like Michael’s or Joann’s, if you are in the U.S.)
- Buy greeting cards and send them to people you haven’t connected with in a while.
- Take a bike ride on a new route.
- Pick wildflowers and press them in books.
- Get your fortune told or get a Tarot reading. (You don’t need to take it too seriously, but it may make you see something in a different light.)
- Get up early and go somewhere to watch the sun rise.
- Gaze up at the clouds and see if their shapes remind you of anything.
- Gaze up at the moon and the stars.
- Catch a virtual comedy show.
- Sculpt something with modeling clay.
- Lie down for an hour and just listen to an audiobook.
- Watch an opera for free! The Metropolitan Opera of New York streams a different opera every day.
- Write a poem…even if you don’t consider yourself a poet. For inspiration, check out these easy poetry exercises and prompts
- Try newspaper blackout poetry.
- Try a meditation video, recording, or online class.
- Make a mood board for a writing project…or just a mood board to express your mood!
- Try a YouTube tutorial or DIY for something you’ve never done before, or haven’t done often.
- Build something with Legos.
- Read old diaries or love letters.
- Visit a place you were fond of as a child. This could be your childhood home, a wildlife sanctuary, or an amusement park
- Poke around in a neighboring city you’ve never been to.
- Go to the beach. Sit and listen to the waves, or pick up pretty sea stones and shells.
- Visit a new restaurant, and try a dish you’ve never tasted before.
- Go to a movie by yourself.
- Take a solo-walk in a forest. Take pictures of trees or other forms of nature that inspire you.
- Enjoy a Bill Gates think week retreat in the woods, away from the Internet.
- Find a historical building and spend time imagining what happened there with each detail you come across.
- Explore a niche museum and learn about something new.
- Go to the library and check out some interesting materials that you wouldn’t normally consume.
- Visit an international or specialty grocery store with a $10 budget to see what you can buy.
- Walk around a college campus. Photograph the fascinating things you find.
- Go to your favorite coffee shop, order, and drink coffee by yourself. Fully take in your surroundings.
- Go berry picking.
- Go to a swap meet or flea market and shop for interesting or useful items.
- Visit an art museum to see enchanting artworks by amazing artists. Sketch pieces you like or write about them in a journal.
- Spend a late afternoon window shopping. Go to stores without your wallet and browse through their collections.
- Get a coloring book and colored pencils. Turn on some soothing music and color.
- start a mandala.
- Learn a new language. Try Duolingo for free.
- Create a playlist of upbeat music or your favorite genre, and have a solo dance party. Better yet, open your mind with some music you normally wouldn’t listen to.
- Make a photo book of your previous travels or a dream board of destinations you’d love to visit.
- Watch a movie you wouldn’t ordinarily watch. It could be horror, romance, action, or a just-plain-weird film.
- Practice mindfulness. Start with short meditations
- Get a big jigsaw puzzle and solve it. Or try it online
- Learn origami online
- Learn a new form of physical movement — a new dance move, yoga, Krav maga, Tai chi, or any exercise trend.
-Go to a coffee shop and spend a couple of hours listening and jotting down interesting conversations. Use your notes to create a short story, poem, or song lyrics.
posted by SunPower at 7:43 AM on May 13, 2023 [11 favorites]
Wow, SunPower! This list is fantastic!
If anyone is interested in a tarot reading, memail me and we can do a little artist date together! I can do a general reading, or you can ask a question; you can use the reading as a starting point for further reflection. I am happy to do a reading for anyone interested!
posted by danabanana at 11:38 AM on May 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
If anyone is interested in a tarot reading, memail me and we can do a little artist date together! I can do a general reading, or you can ask a question; you can use the reading as a starting point for further reflection. I am happy to do a reading for anyone interested!
posted by danabanana at 11:38 AM on May 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
Week 1 Day 7: Check-in
I did morning pages every day and enjoyed the process. I had been doing them since last year, but was writing only 2 pages a day recently. I'm back up to 3, and I'm happy with the extra space to write more affirmations and gratitude lists.
I did a few of the tasks but not all of them. I mainly focused on the "bad" people who hurt me in the past - not necessarily in an artistic way but in a life way. I am finding it challenging to forgive one person and let go of the pain they caused. I know that harboring resentment is not healthy for me and I hope that this will be the year that I finally conquer this beast.
I did several artist dates: I walked the dog around our rural neighborhood almost every day; I made some envelopes; I harvested dandelion greens for salads and smoothies; I started preparing to update my altar for the summer solstice (and week 6 - abundance). I didn't take any pics or make an artist date blog post like last year, but I might start that again at some point.
I am finding a second pass through the book to be much easier than the first. I used to push back on the religious parts and allow the author to get under my skin. This time I know what to expect, and also I have become more comfortable with words she uses that once made me bristle. I am looking forward to continuing on this journey and to seeing everyone else check in (but only if you want - no pressure! Gentle!)!
posted by danabanana at 11:40 AM on May 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
I did morning pages every day and enjoyed the process. I had been doing them since last year, but was writing only 2 pages a day recently. I'm back up to 3, and I'm happy with the extra space to write more affirmations and gratitude lists.
I did a few of the tasks but not all of them. I mainly focused on the "bad" people who hurt me in the past - not necessarily in an artistic way but in a life way. I am finding it challenging to forgive one person and let go of the pain they caused. I know that harboring resentment is not healthy for me and I hope that this will be the year that I finally conquer this beast.
I did several artist dates: I walked the dog around our rural neighborhood almost every day; I made some envelopes; I harvested dandelion greens for salads and smoothies; I started preparing to update my altar for the summer solstice (and week 6 - abundance). I didn't take any pics or make an artist date blog post like last year, but I might start that again at some point.
I am finding a second pass through the book to be much easier than the first. I used to push back on the religious parts and allow the author to get under my skin. This time I know what to expect, and also I have become more comfortable with words she uses that once made me bristle. I am looking forward to continuing on this journey and to seeing everyone else check in (but only if you want - no pressure! Gentle!)!
posted by danabanana at 11:40 AM on May 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
Hi Friends,
Thanks for the perspectives on how to tailor the process to a less-religious or non-religious perspective.
The parts I had to leave on the page were those related to God and 'core negative beliefs' --
I just don't respond to those prompts right now. I don't really feel like I have any 'old enemies' of my creative worth.
I don't have any hidden creative talents-- I just want to explore from where I am at right now.
I didn't grow up in a family that was particularly artistic or musical or crafty.
What I do remember is the sense of humor that my parents had and in particular the sense of whimsy that my mom had. So, I grew up with an eye towards finding the fun, humorous side of things.
I did like the "Imaginary Lives" task. At first I was skeptical I could get to five Imaginary Lives but I was eventually able to identify a solid five. One that I will share was a surprise to me:
that of unprofessional and life-long collector of art, in the vein of Herbert and Dorothy Vogel .
I'm going to try to use our posts for a weekly Saturday-ish check in.
We will see-- I didn't remember to do the Morning Pages until Friday this week!!
But I like the idea of reading TAW before going to bed and writing Morning Pages the next morning.
So 2/7 Morning Pages this week.
And the links to the book and workbook are very helpful, thanks Sunpower for getting us there; And Mochapickle for digging around!
posted by calgirl at 12:01 PM on May 13, 2023 [5 favorites]
Thanks for the perspectives on how to tailor the process to a less-religious or non-religious perspective.
The parts I had to leave on the page were those related to God and 'core negative beliefs' --
I just don't respond to those prompts right now. I don't really feel like I have any 'old enemies' of my creative worth.
I don't have any hidden creative talents-- I just want to explore from where I am at right now.
I didn't grow up in a family that was particularly artistic or musical or crafty.
What I do remember is the sense of humor that my parents had and in particular the sense of whimsy that my mom had. So, I grew up with an eye towards finding the fun, humorous side of things.
I did like the "Imaginary Lives" task. At first I was skeptical I could get to five Imaginary Lives but I was eventually able to identify a solid five. One that I will share was a surprise to me:
that of unprofessional and life-long collector of art, in the vein of Herbert and Dorothy Vogel .
I'm going to try to use our posts for a weekly Saturday-ish check in.
We will see-- I didn't remember to do the Morning Pages until Friday this week!!
But I like the idea of reading TAW before going to bed and writing Morning Pages the next morning.
So 2/7 Morning Pages this week.
And the links to the book and workbook are very helpful, thanks Sunpower for getting us there; And Mochapickle for digging around!
posted by calgirl at 12:01 PM on May 13, 2023 [5 favorites]
My day 7 check in: I did some number of pages all days, but one day I only had 2 in me, and there were a couple 2.5 page days also. That’s not all bad as my journal only has 240 pages, a bit shy of the 252 that perfectly faithful pages would require. It was interesting, not bad, sometimes useful, sometimes embarrassing. Took me about half a hour, generally. I barely slept last night for Reasons, and this morning I think every fifth word was “fret.”
My artist date this week was taking a walk in the rain while listening to scientific talks on YouTube. The pump I’m trying to prime is my scientific curiosity, and so this is the equivalent of taking myself to an opera or a museum, I guess. The last talk really stayed with me! It was one about a new hypothesized mechanism through which misfolded proteins might travel between brain cells in a contagion like process. I’ve thought of it several times this week.
Also this week, I had some long, big picture conversations about work, one with an old mentor. I think some of the journaling I did helped prime the pump for those conversations.
posted by eirias at 5:38 PM on May 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
My artist date this week was taking a walk in the rain while listening to scientific talks on YouTube. The pump I’m trying to prime is my scientific curiosity, and so this is the equivalent of taking myself to an opera or a museum, I guess. The last talk really stayed with me! It was one about a new hypothesized mechanism through which misfolded proteins might travel between brain cells in a contagion like process. I’ve thought of it several times this week.
Also this week, I had some long, big picture conversations about work, one with an old mentor. I think some of the journaling I did helped prime the pump for those conversations.
posted by eirias at 5:38 PM on May 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
I think a previous version of myself would have been very turned off by the God stuff. Now I can sort of "translate" it to other framings that I have seen of similar ideas. I think this book has a lot of kinship with one that I read most of a while ago, Matter and Desire (amazon link for that MeFi affiliate money) by Andreas Weber. I didn't quite finish it because it's A Lot, but I think about it so much that I probably should actually get around to it. The connections I see are plenty but hard for me to articulate: when you act creatively, you act not in isolation but in communication with the universe. Life is the universe expressing its creativity, and so the individual's creativity is a reflection of the universe's. That kind of thing. I don't do it justice. It is all kind of woo, but I guess I have a higher tolerance for woo-adjacent stuff these days. I have seen my partner make amazing strides in her social anxiety and trauma recovery with methods that would have seemed laughable to me a decade ago. And I think the case for the universe stuff is maybe made more convincingly for the woo-averse in Matter and Desire, which is plenty flowery but also pulls in a lot of actual science to support its more metaphysical claims.
Anyway. I have done pages every day this week. It's been a very interesting week in ways that feel like they must be related to the pages but that are hard to connect up explicitly.
I work in tech, and recently there has been a very abrupt switch to focusing on what we can do with LLMs in a way that I'm deeply ambivalent about. They are fascinating tools, to be sure. But they are also profoundly ethically questionable and potentially destabilizing in a lot of ways. Much of the content of the pages has been reckoning with them: the hype around them, the potential (and already very real) impact to my own job and sense of security, the changes that feel underway already. This morning, after doing pages basically completely about my feelings about all this, I talked to my partner about them and had the idea of scheduling and conducting a "Processing Your Feelings About AI" meeting for my co-workers who might be feeling similarly conflicted. I have never done anything remotely like this before and it will be arguably the most "self-starter" type of thing I've attempted in my two years as an unambitious rank-and-file programmer at this company. It's terrifying! But it seems like a good limb to go out on, and it seems hard not to credit the pages to some extent. I will say, those affirmations are starting to look pretty good!
posted by valrus at 5:41 PM on May 13, 2023 [7 favorites]
Anyway. I have done pages every day this week. It's been a very interesting week in ways that feel like they must be related to the pages but that are hard to connect up explicitly.
I work in tech, and recently there has been a very abrupt switch to focusing on what we can do with LLMs in a way that I'm deeply ambivalent about. They are fascinating tools, to be sure. But they are also profoundly ethically questionable and potentially destabilizing in a lot of ways. Much of the content of the pages has been reckoning with them: the hype around them, the potential (and already very real) impact to my own job and sense of security, the changes that feel underway already. This morning, after doing pages basically completely about my feelings about all this, I talked to my partner about them and had the idea of scheduling and conducting a "Processing Your Feelings About AI" meeting for my co-workers who might be feeling similarly conflicted. I have never done anything remotely like this before and it will be arguably the most "self-starter" type of thing I've attempted in my two years as an unambitious rank-and-file programmer at this company. It's terrifying! But it seems like a good limb to go out on, and it seems hard not to credit the pages to some extent. I will say, those affirmations are starting to look pretty good!
posted by valrus at 5:41 PM on May 13, 2023 [7 favorites]
I have written three pages or more every day for my first week. It was easier than I thought to get up a little early to right, since the sun is rising at 6:45 AM this time of year. My artist date was blowing off work on Friday morning for a couple of hours to sit on my porch, drink coffee in my bathrobe, and listen to the sparrow colony in my tree. But I’m definitely going to take advantage of that awesome list of ideas upthread in the future.
I have so many thoughts about all this that are all jumbled together. All the talk in the book about the divine creator, reminds me of ideas about the higher self that I’ve encountered elsewhere. For me, that divine source of creativity is as much my unconscious self, that I can’t access with my conscious, thinking brain, as it is a deity that is external to myself. My mind has a mind of its own, as I learned from Lynda Barry.
At the same time, I am a polytheist too, so I’m very happy to replace Julia Cameron’s word God with “the gods,” or the name of a specific deity.
One of the careers off of my fantasy list from this chapter was “psychic”, so I guess I’ll be the second person in this thread to offer to do a reading if anyone wants one.
posted by Tesseractive at 11:05 PM on May 13, 2023 [5 favorites]
I have so many thoughts about all this that are all jumbled together. All the talk in the book about the divine creator, reminds me of ideas about the higher self that I’ve encountered elsewhere. For me, that divine source of creativity is as much my unconscious self, that I can’t access with my conscious, thinking brain, as it is a deity that is external to myself. My mind has a mind of its own, as I learned from Lynda Barry.
At the same time, I am a polytheist too, so I’m very happy to replace Julia Cameron’s word God with “the gods,” or the name of a specific deity.
One of the careers off of my fantasy list from this chapter was “psychic”, so I guess I’ll be the second person in this thread to offer to do a reading if anyone wants one.
posted by Tesseractive at 11:05 PM on May 13, 2023 [5 favorites]
SunPower, that is amazing! Thank you so much for sharing these with us.
This week, I made time each day to do my morning pages, though I didn't make it to three full pages every time. Nonetheless, I surprised myself in my ability to get up earlier each morning. Even if the first page or two is mostly navel-gazing dribble (ah! inner critic!), I love the feeling of having arrived somewhere after three pages. In at least two occasions, I made some rather interesting discoveries.
For my artist date, I went on a walking tour of historic downtown Los Angeles. It was with other people, but I'm still counting it as a date. Group date. =) I don't know yet what I'll be doing this week, but I made a reservation to visit the Museum of Jurassic Technology in two weeks, and this time I'll be alone. I've been meaning to visit this museum for years!
posted by johnxlibris at 8:19 AM on May 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
This week, I made time each day to do my morning pages, though I didn't make it to three full pages every time. Nonetheless, I surprised myself in my ability to get up earlier each morning. Even if the first page or two is mostly navel-gazing dribble (ah! inner critic!), I love the feeling of having arrived somewhere after three pages. In at least two occasions, I made some rather interesting discoveries.
For my artist date, I went on a walking tour of historic downtown Los Angeles. It was with other people, but I'm still counting it as a date. Group date. =) I don't know yet what I'll be doing this week, but I made a reservation to visit the Museum of Jurassic Technology in two weeks, and this time I'll be alone. I've been meaning to visit this museum for years!
posted by johnxlibris at 8:19 AM on May 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Day 7 Check in: I went to a art market for the artist dae witht he idea that i would view it as a museum rather than to buy something. I too don't haev any creativity enemies, so I just focussed on the positive parts. The morning pages are coming along fine, but I have to be careful not think of work in the mornings else it veers into the direction of regular work (which is fun and worthwhile, but perhaps not right now!). The last time I did the morning pages was at the tail end of my PhD and I was under a lot of stress; so I'm assuming it helped me cope, but since I only did the morning pages and nothing else, now I feel that it was unbalanced.
posted by dhruva at 12:11 PM on May 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by dhruva at 12:11 PM on May 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Week 1 Check-In: Recovering a Sense of Safety
Hello everyone! Week 1 made a deeper impression on me this time around. I spent a lot of time on the tasks this week. The alternate lives one surprised me: two jobs were scientists, another was a job that required being worlds more outgoing and outspoken than I've ever been in real life. And for the past three days I've been grappling with Task 4, The Monster, which I wasn't ready to recognize last year, and I'm still kind of at odds with, but here we are.
I skipped morning pages on Wednesday due to an early appointment, which of course needed to be followed by breakfast-to-go and sitting in the sunshine, surrounded by new leaves and blue skies. I remain delighted by my choice. Yesterday I cleaned up the front porch, shook out the moths and the dried leaves from the wicker chairs, and set up the space for iced tea in the evenings. I'm pretty sure we're going to need to put up some some cafe lights this year.
Thanks to SunPower for that absolutely brilliant list of artist dates! I am going to print it out and use it. I found a list of free museums in my city, too, and I'm looking forward to checking some of them out.
I love reading all of your updates and I'm so glad you're here!
posted by mochapickle at 12:17 PM on May 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
Hello everyone! Week 1 made a deeper impression on me this time around. I spent a lot of time on the tasks this week. The alternate lives one surprised me: two jobs were scientists, another was a job that required being worlds more outgoing and outspoken than I've ever been in real life. And for the past three days I've been grappling with Task 4, The Monster, which I wasn't ready to recognize last year, and I'm still kind of at odds with, but here we are.
I skipped morning pages on Wednesday due to an early appointment, which of course needed to be followed by breakfast-to-go and sitting in the sunshine, surrounded by new leaves and blue skies. I remain delighted by my choice. Yesterday I cleaned up the front porch, shook out the moths and the dried leaves from the wicker chairs, and set up the space for iced tea in the evenings. I'm pretty sure we're going to need to put up some some cafe lights this year.
Thanks to SunPower for that absolutely brilliant list of artist dates! I am going to print it out and use it. I found a list of free museums in my city, too, and I'm looking forward to checking some of them out.
I love reading all of your updates and I'm so glad you're here!
posted by mochapickle at 12:17 PM on May 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
6/7 for morning pages last week. I might try scheduling a post-work artist's date in the middle of the week, maybe an hour in some different scenery.
posted by betweenthebars at 12:42 PM on May 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by betweenthebars at 12:42 PM on May 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
I was able to write my morning pages for 5 days. First, I was planning to skip writing about the monster hall of fame but decided to go for it. Well ….actually felt better writing about it.
The weather has been pretty good here this week . So, I got all my indoor plants out, repotted some of them, planted some seeds and went for a walk in the park. I even got some flowers from Trader joes. I think, I had multiple artist dates this week.
posted by SunPower at 6:37 PM on May 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
The weather has been pretty good here this week . So, I got all my indoor plants out, repotted some of them, planted some seeds and went for a walk in the park. I even got some flowers from Trader joes. I think, I had multiple artist dates this week.
posted by SunPower at 6:37 PM on May 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
One of my "alternate lives" was being a spy. (Fantasy version! Recruiters, if you're reading this, I don't think I really want the job, though as Joan Armatrading put it, I'm open to persuasion.) Now that I work from home and don't go out much and rarely take transit anywhere, I miss casual eavesdropping. I used to appreciate getting little glimpses into other people's lives. I'd like to figure out a way to bring some of that back.
posted by tangerine at 5:12 PM on May 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by tangerine at 5:12 PM on May 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
I've been having trouble with the morning pages and I realize that part of it is whenever I'm given the opportunity to write stream of consciousness or diary style, it inevitably turns into a list of my own faults and reasons why I am irredeemably flawed and evil. I've become slightly more creative since I was a teenager and was writing about how my pimples and chunky thighs made me the world's most miserable wretch, but is there a way to be less narcissistic about these things? Next time I'm probably going to morning page about how there's some angel out there who is writing about the glowing light of the sun and the whispers of the pines and how I don't deserve to have pen and ink compared to them.
posted by kingdead at 6:21 PM on May 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by kingdead at 6:21 PM on May 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
Next time I'm probably going to morning page about how there's some angel out there who is writing about the glowing light of the sun
kingdead, I just had the thought that somehow your angel and your teenager-writing-about-pimples somehow found each others' journals, and what an awesome short story that would make!
(But yeah, my writing feels too narcissistic too and it really is a struggle to get outside my own head)
posted by johnxlibris at 6:53 PM on May 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
kingdead, I just had the thought that somehow your angel and your teenager-writing-about-pimples somehow found each others' journals, and what an awesome short story that would make!
(But yeah, my writing feels too narcissistic too and it really is a struggle to get outside my own head)
posted by johnxlibris at 6:53 PM on May 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
More later -- some aspects of this are going well -- but for now, here's a grouchy observation: among other things, I find Julia's use of "we" really annoying. I appreciate that you've encountered some common patterns but don't presume to speak for me!
To be fair, it's not just Julia: it irritates me in all those essays everywhere about What Things are Like Now (social media, post-lockdown, &c ad naus.) too.
posted by tangerine at 5:08 PM on May 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
To be fair, it's not just Julia: it irritates me in all those essays everywhere about What Things are Like Now (social media, post-lockdown, &c ad naus.) too.
posted by tangerine at 5:08 PM on May 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
among other things, I find Julia's use of "we" really annoying
That is one of my top pet peeves, along with "You were thinking..." No, I wasn't. I was thinking something else.
6/7 this week. The artist's date was supposed to be Brooklyn Botanic Garden, but I got lost in Prospect Park--my phone wasn't charged, so I couldn't find my way out.
posted by betweenthebars at 12:30 PM on May 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
That is one of my top pet peeves, along with "You were thinking..." No, I wasn't. I was thinking something else.
6/7 this week. The artist's date was supposed to be Brooklyn Botanic Garden, but I got lost in Prospect Park--my phone wasn't charged, so I couldn't find my way out.
posted by betweenthebars at 12:30 PM on May 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
Hello TAW friends! Here's my week 2 check-in:
I did morning pages every day, but I did not do the full 3 pages each time. I wrote many affirmations, and I sorted out some feelings I've been having. So it feels like I did the work, as I showed up every morning and did what I could.
My artist date was inspired by SunPower's excellent list: it reminded me that listening to music while bouncing on a mini trampoline (rebounder) is really fun and makes me feel very good in many ways. So I did a daily trampoline date this week; I'm expecting this to become routine and I'm happy that I had a positive approach to starting this habit once again.
I enjoyed doing the Life Pie and comparing it to last year's: the shape was more warped and thin last time, and this year it's fuller and more balanced. Which makes sense to me, so yay!
Other things this week: experienced lots of synchronicity, walked the dog and played ball with her every day, foraged yarrow for tea, read a few books.
If I remember correctly, I was still pushing back on much of what the author wrote and how she wrote it at this point last year. It became more tolerable in future weeks, and then it became kind of magical. I'm looking forward to future magic!
posted by danabanana at 4:48 PM on May 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
I did morning pages every day, but I did not do the full 3 pages each time. I wrote many affirmations, and I sorted out some feelings I've been having. So it feels like I did the work, as I showed up every morning and did what I could.
My artist date was inspired by SunPower's excellent list: it reminded me that listening to music while bouncing on a mini trampoline (rebounder) is really fun and makes me feel very good in many ways. So I did a daily trampoline date this week; I'm expecting this to become routine and I'm happy that I had a positive approach to starting this habit once again.
I enjoyed doing the Life Pie and comparing it to last year's: the shape was more warped and thin last time, and this year it's fuller and more balanced. Which makes sense to me, so yay!
Other things this week: experienced lots of synchronicity, walked the dog and played ball with her every day, foraged yarrow for tea, read a few books.
If I remember correctly, I was still pushing back on much of what the author wrote and how she wrote it at this point last year. It became more tolerable in future weeks, and then it became kind of magical. I'm looking forward to future magic!
posted by danabanana at 4:48 PM on May 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
My week 2 went pretty well. I wrote my daily pages 7 out of 7 days. Waking up early and doing them before I shower and get ready for work in the morning has been going well. I don't rightly remember what I wrote about this week other than some ruminations on illness and chronic pain, which have been flaring up badly this week. But, I think what's good about a creativity course instead of a productivity course is that contemplative rest "counts" as much as writing or drawing.
As for artists dates, I went for a quiet walk in the woods near Ashland last Sunday (and found some people's altars/land art installations/fairy doors which was pretty cool) and then on Wednesday I cracked into some gold watercolors I bought on vacation but hadn't even opened. It was nice to just put paint on paper without trying to make it look like anything in particular.
kingdead, if you're struggling to get outside of your own negative self talk stream of consciousness while journaling, I recommend Lynda Barry's journal prompts. The "X pages" approach is a structured method to get at your sensory memories of the recent or distant past. (I also use it to write fiction.) It's like a structured brainstorm followed by a focused period of descriptive writing. Her "review frame" for making concrete observations about your day is also useful. Here is a google doc summarizing both the review frame and x pages if you'd rather read than watch.
posted by Tesseractive at 10:02 PM on May 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
As for artists dates, I went for a quiet walk in the woods near Ashland last Sunday (and found some people's altars/land art installations/fairy doors which was pretty cool) and then on Wednesday I cracked into some gold watercolors I bought on vacation but hadn't even opened. It was nice to just put paint on paper without trying to make it look like anything in particular.
kingdead, if you're struggling to get outside of your own negative self talk stream of consciousness while journaling, I recommend Lynda Barry's journal prompts. The "X pages" approach is a structured method to get at your sensory memories of the recent or distant past. (I also use it to write fiction.) It's like a structured brainstorm followed by a focused period of descriptive writing. Her "review frame" for making concrete observations about your day is also useful. Here is a google doc summarizing both the review frame and x pages if you'd rather read than watch.
posted by Tesseractive at 10:02 PM on May 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
Hi friends! My week got away from me so I'm spending one more day on Chapter 2. But I'm happy to report I had 7/7 morning pages this week, even if it meant I had to finish them after dinner. Check-in to come.
Also, if you're just now finding this thread or if you've already picked up the book and would still like to begin, welcome! Last year, we had a gap in our starting dates and it ended up being a positive thing for all.
posted by mochapickle at 8:14 AM on May 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
Also, if you're just now finding this thread or if you've already picked up the book and would still like to begin, welcome! Last year, we had a gap in our starting dates and it ended up being a positive thing for all.
posted by mochapickle at 8:14 AM on May 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
I started late, reading the front matter for week 1 so I’m kind of in-between weeks 1 and 2. I’ll admit that I have been avoiding reading the week 2 chapter because I’m so allergic to this kind of thing, especially when I could read a novel instead! So that will take some pushing but I’m trying to be more self aware.
I have written 6/7 morning pages, missing one for an international flight. I love the list of artists dates and already do a lot of them regularly so I feel like I’m doing pretty good. This artist date for week 1 felt like cheating because I was in Paris for two weeks alone with no expectations or need to do anything touristy. Since I sketched at 5+ museums, rode a bike along the Seine, and other things like that I’m counting my artist dates as the day trips I took. Specifically, going to Auvers-sur-Oise where Van Gogh lived the prolific last month of his life and hiked above town to the fields where he painted. I stood on the tiny dirt track between fields and listened. Birds, wind, grass, and the bonging of the church’s bells. I worked on a few quick paintings trying not to be too judgmental since I’m trying out a new medium.
At the end of week one going through the affirmations and detractors. I realized people have been really supportive of me. I questioned why I stopped creating and a lot of it is internal forces, perhaps influenced by societies expectations, social media, etc? I’m thinking about that and why I feel like I don’t have the time or space to create (I literally have both in so many ways more than most people working in the US). TV is probably one answer to that.
posted by Bunglegirl at 8:39 AM on May 21, 2023 [4 favorites]
I have written 6/7 morning pages, missing one for an international flight. I love the list of artists dates and already do a lot of them regularly so I feel like I’m doing pretty good. This artist date for week 1 felt like cheating because I was in Paris for two weeks alone with no expectations or need to do anything touristy. Since I sketched at 5+ museums, rode a bike along the Seine, and other things like that I’m counting my artist dates as the day trips I took. Specifically, going to Auvers-sur-Oise where Van Gogh lived the prolific last month of his life and hiked above town to the fields where he painted. I stood on the tiny dirt track between fields and listened. Birds, wind, grass, and the bonging of the church’s bells. I worked on a few quick paintings trying not to be too judgmental since I’m trying out a new medium.
At the end of week one going through the affirmations and detractors. I realized people have been really supportive of me. I questioned why I stopped creating and a lot of it is internal forces, perhaps influenced by societies expectations, social media, etc? I’m thinking about that and why I feel like I don’t have the time or space to create (I literally have both in so many ways more than most people working in the US). TV is probably one answer to that.
posted by Bunglegirl at 8:39 AM on May 21, 2023 [4 favorites]
Week 2.
Hi Friends. My morning pages are admittedly shorter than my goal.
Also I find it difficult to wake up and start writing morning pages before my head fills up with the minutiae of the upcoming day.
Oh Bunglegirl, I think your artists date are spot-on!! And sound interesting and beautiful.
On another note, I find myself using Artists Day Out instead of 'date'. I don't know why I started doing that but it feels more like me.
Because I am trying to declutter my living space at the same time I am trying out TAW, I hesitated using the Day Out for a art/craft splurge [to $5] however, I really wanted to. So I bought a clip board I saw while I was out exploring. Very utilitarian but very much needed so that I can write my Morning Pages and try other artwork on the go or in my bed.
For some reason this felt like artistic and creative.
I am excited that I found an Arts and Crafts handicraft marketplace for today's Day Out.
Challenge: I have to go to work today so I can only spend a limited amount of time there.
BUT it sounds like my jam and is close to work.
Also I met a new co-worker who I was a delight to get to know. They are young and very energetic and artistic too. I look forward to chatting to them about their career.
4/7 Morning Pages this week.
posted by calgirl at 9:28 AM on May 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
Hi Friends. My morning pages are admittedly shorter than my goal.
Also I find it difficult to wake up and start writing morning pages before my head fills up with the minutiae of the upcoming day.
Oh Bunglegirl, I think your artists date are spot-on!! And sound interesting and beautiful.
On another note, I find myself using Artists Day Out instead of 'date'. I don't know why I started doing that but it feels more like me.
Because I am trying to declutter my living space at the same time I am trying out TAW, I hesitated using the Day Out for a art/craft splurge [to $5] however, I really wanted to. So I bought a clip board I saw while I was out exploring. Very utilitarian but very much needed so that I can write my Morning Pages and try other artwork on the go or in my bed.
For some reason this felt like artistic and creative.
I am excited that I found an Arts and Crafts handicraft marketplace for today's Day Out.
Challenge: I have to go to work today so I can only spend a limited amount of time there.
BUT it sounds like my jam and is close to work.
Also I met a new co-worker who I was a delight to get to know. They are young and very energetic and artistic too. I look forward to chatting to them about their career.
4/7 Morning Pages this week.
posted by calgirl at 9:28 AM on May 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
Those excursions sound lovely, Bunglegirl. Like you, I've been around mostly supportive people over the years. Discouraging factors come from things like this horrible 2016 comment.
I'm smiling at calgirl's objection to "Artist's Date" because the term feels icky to me too. I just make sure to arrange an interesting and unusual diversion or excursion for myself, never mind what it's called. Likewise the "morning pages": not necessarily in the morning, and I have seriously tiny writing so it's two instead of three, otherwise they'd take an hour or more. But I always do them, except on one weekend day. That was the deal I made with myself ahead of time.
I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I impatiently started as soon as I finished reading the book, so I'm heading into week 4. I have a sudden trip coming up --a funeral, not work or fun -- so we'll see how that goes.
It's taken me a while to work up "affirmations" that felt accurate and helpful and didn't make me cringe, and they're still subject to occasional revision. But because I'm in a not-great situation at work, they've turned out to be unexpectedly useful. For a few months I was constantly trying to figure out how to make the work situation better. Eventually I concluded that it wasn't really fixable. It's not useful to think about it any more; I just have to tolerate it until I can find another job, and realistically that'll take a while. When I catch myself starting to think about it, I can instantly switch into silent reminders that there's real work going on elsewhere.
posted by tangerine at 11:03 AM on May 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm smiling at calgirl's objection to "Artist's Date" because the term feels icky to me too. I just make sure to arrange an interesting and unusual diversion or excursion for myself, never mind what it's called. Likewise the "morning pages": not necessarily in the morning, and I have seriously tiny writing so it's two instead of three, otherwise they'd take an hour or more. But I always do them, except on one weekend day. That was the deal I made with myself ahead of time.
I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I impatiently started as soon as I finished reading the book, so I'm heading into week 4. I have a sudden trip coming up --a funeral, not work or fun -- so we'll see how that goes.
It's taken me a while to work up "affirmations" that felt accurate and helpful and didn't make me cringe, and they're still subject to occasional revision. But because I'm in a not-great situation at work, they've turned out to be unexpectedly useful. For a few months I was constantly trying to figure out how to make the work situation better. Eventually I concluded that it wasn't really fixable. It's not useful to think about it any more; I just have to tolerate it until I can find another job, and realistically that'll take a while. When I catch myself starting to think about it, I can instantly switch into silent reminders that there's real work going on elsewhere.
posted by tangerine at 11:03 AM on May 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
This week I managed to do my morning pages 6/7 days, today (Sunday) being the only day I didn’t make it. (There’s still time!). For the tasks, I enjoyed the many “make a list” options: I do love a good list. In particular, the “I would like to” list brought up some unexpected wants/desires. The pie chart was also fun to draw, even if it didn’t show me anything I didn’t already know. For my artist’s day out, I had planned to take an afternoon to just sit alone and listen to music, but it didn’t work out. Yet I have reservations for something exciting this week, so I’m looking forward to that.
posted by johnxlibris at 3:22 PM on May 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by johnxlibris at 3:22 PM on May 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
I seem to be decent at sticking to a routine if it feels like homework so I'm 100% on pages since I started, but I've not been great about the end-of chapter exercises. I skipped a couple of Chapter 1's because people in my life have generally been supportive of my creative endeavors, and I'm still working through Chapter 2's. It might be a good way to fill some pages to take a closer look at them and ask myself why I'm dragging my feet.
One side effect of the pages is I seem to be looking at my phone less and I'm also taking walks in the mornings much more consistently than I have in the past. It's hard to connect these things up to the pages other than maybe being more intentional about how I spend my time.
My first artist date was to a nearby park that I've visited a couple times but haven't taken nearly as much advantage of as I should have in the time I've lived here. I thought it was interesting that though it was just a walk in the woods, thinking of it as an artist date made me more open to serendipity and just sort of Noticing and Feeling things. A couple times I was moved nearly to tears just by the beauty of nature or something I can't even remember now, and I'm an emotionally constipated dude who historically has not cried easily. I picked up a map when I arrived and gave it away almost immediately to someone who asked me if I knew the trails — I did not, but opening myself to the possibility of getting a little lost seemed in the spirit of things. In the end my adequate sense of direction won out.
My second artist date yesterday was going to Goodwill. It was much harder to maintain the "artist brain" that I described amid the hustle and bustle. But I did find, remarkably, a tour shirt for a band I love, for the tour that included the show I went to last April (it was Destroyer's Labyrinthitis tour, if you're curious). At $25 I'd passed on it but at $4 it was a no-brainer. I am trying to practice opening my mind in response to my reflexive thought that this is just a happy but meaningless coincidence.
posted by valrus at 9:53 PM on May 22, 2023 [3 favorites]
One side effect of the pages is I seem to be looking at my phone less and I'm also taking walks in the mornings much more consistently than I have in the past. It's hard to connect these things up to the pages other than maybe being more intentional about how I spend my time.
My first artist date was to a nearby park that I've visited a couple times but haven't taken nearly as much advantage of as I should have in the time I've lived here. I thought it was interesting that though it was just a walk in the woods, thinking of it as an artist date made me more open to serendipity and just sort of Noticing and Feeling things. A couple times I was moved nearly to tears just by the beauty of nature or something I can't even remember now, and I'm an emotionally constipated dude who historically has not cried easily. I picked up a map when I arrived and gave it away almost immediately to someone who asked me if I knew the trails — I did not, but opening myself to the possibility of getting a little lost seemed in the spirit of things. In the end my adequate sense of direction won out.
My second artist date yesterday was going to Goodwill. It was much harder to maintain the "artist brain" that I described amid the hustle and bustle. But I did find, remarkably, a tour shirt for a band I love, for the tour that included the show I went to last April (it was Destroyer's Labyrinthitis tour, if you're curious). At $25 I'd passed on it but at $4 it was a no-brainer. I am trying to practice opening my mind in response to my reflexive thought that this is just a happy but meaningless coincidence.
posted by valrus at 9:53 PM on May 22, 2023 [3 favorites]
Week 2: I did pages 6/7 days, although once it was not in the morning, and I do think I see the difference it makes in when I do them. One day I did them outside and that was glorious.
My artist’s date: I found a YouTube video of a half day NIH workshop on a topic that has me excited and I did like 40 minutes of weeding while listening to the first talk. Having something repetitive to do while listening helps — sort of like people who knit in seminars — and there could not be a better time for this than May.
The exercises for week 2 did not completely grab me — they felt slightly miscellaneous. I definitely bristled at some of her framing around what we owe to each other. I am decreasingly individualistic and that made some of chapter 2 a harder read. Also, the section on nightmare people made me think, jeez, I am probably someone’s nightmare person, and I am not sure that’s really where she intended that to go. Well, anyway, onward. I haven’t yet cracked open chapter 3, but I’m on track with my pages so far.
posted by eirias at 5:36 AM on May 23, 2023 [2 favorites]
My artist’s date: I found a YouTube video of a half day NIH workshop on a topic that has me excited and I did like 40 minutes of weeding while listening to the first talk. Having something repetitive to do while listening helps — sort of like people who knit in seminars — and there could not be a better time for this than May.
The exercises for week 2 did not completely grab me — they felt slightly miscellaneous. I definitely bristled at some of her framing around what we owe to each other. I am decreasingly individualistic and that made some of chapter 2 a harder read. Also, the section on nightmare people made me think, jeez, I am probably someone’s nightmare person, and I am not sure that’s really where she intended that to go. Well, anyway, onward. I haven’t yet cracked open chapter 3, but I’m on track with my pages so far.
posted by eirias at 5:36 AM on May 23, 2023 [2 favorites]
Week 2 Check In: Recovering a Sense of Identity
This was a great week and I'm glad I spent a little more time with it. I'm not a fan of the crazymakers essay -- like, I get it and it's Julia's way of saying that there are people out there who are draining your energy, shattering your focus, and setting your personal compass spinning like a wheel, and you should probably recognize who those people are and spend less time on them and/or decide more carefully which details to share -- but I hate the term crazymaker and I think maybe there's a better way of naming that. And yet her latest book, which is kind of a remix of this one but intended specifically for writing, uses this term as well. Boo, Julia.
But! I did like revisiting the essay on Skepticism, and I really, really liked the essay on Attention, which I re-read throughout the week because it rang so clear and true:
I keep thinking about dhruva's question, and one answer is that positive things seem to happen when I'm allowing creativity/openness/patience to rule. This week, I heard from someone who I hadn't heard from in 20 years, who recounted our past with more kindness and warmth than I probably deserved, so now something I'd worried about for literally decades now feels quietly and lovingly resolved. I received THREE books of poetry as gifts over the course of last week, all lovely, all unexpected, separately from two different people. I went to a small party over the weekend and saw people I hadn't seen since well before the transplant, and my friend's wife hugged me tight and told me she's so glad I'm still here and still alive. How often does anyone get to hear someone saying they're glad you're alive? Also, Edgar Wright liked one of my instagram comments, which was rather exciting!
I continue to love reading all of the updates and see all the ways people are tailoring this to their own path.
kingdead, I was hunting for morning pages prompts (there are so many!) and I liked this list in particular for approaching negative talk. A lot of my pages are to-do lists, also there's a lot of What I Want To Change About My Current Situation And How To Go About That. Last year, I had a lot of morning pages devoted to rearranging my house? Much of which I ended up doing -- there's a lot more art on my walls now compared to this time last year, and the whole place feels much more lived in.
Hope all are having a good week. :)
posted by mochapickle at 9:18 AM on May 23, 2023 [6 favorites]
This was a great week and I'm glad I spent a little more time with it. I'm not a fan of the crazymakers essay -- like, I get it and it's Julia's way of saying that there are people out there who are draining your energy, shattering your focus, and setting your personal compass spinning like a wheel, and you should probably recognize who those people are and spend less time on them and/or decide more carefully which details to share -- but I hate the term crazymaker and I think maybe there's a better way of naming that. And yet her latest book, which is kind of a remix of this one but intended specifically for writing, uses this term as well. Boo, Julia.
But! I did like revisiting the essay on Skepticism, and I really, really liked the essay on Attention, which I re-read throughout the week because it rang so clear and true:
"...the truth of a life really has little to do with its quality. The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.I was worried about my dog this week -- we've been in and out of the vet for a while now -- and so we'll go sit in the back yard, watch the birds, and she'll streeeeeetch out with her belly on the warm concrete patio, and I'll sit in the hammock with my feet hanging over, and everything seems a bit more manageable.
[...]
The reward for attention is always healing."
I keep thinking about dhruva's question, and one answer is that positive things seem to happen when I'm allowing creativity/openness/patience to rule. This week, I heard from someone who I hadn't heard from in 20 years, who recounted our past with more kindness and warmth than I probably deserved, so now something I'd worried about for literally decades now feels quietly and lovingly resolved. I received THREE books of poetry as gifts over the course of last week, all lovely, all unexpected, separately from two different people. I went to a small party over the weekend and saw people I hadn't seen since well before the transplant, and my friend's wife hugged me tight and told me she's so glad I'm still here and still alive. How often does anyone get to hear someone saying they're glad you're alive? Also, Edgar Wright liked one of my instagram comments, which was rather exciting!
I continue to love reading all of the updates and see all the ways people are tailoring this to their own path.
kingdead, I was hunting for morning pages prompts (there are so many!) and I liked this list in particular for approaching negative talk. A lot of my pages are to-do lists, also there's a lot of What I Want To Change About My Current Situation And How To Go About That. Last year, I had a lot of morning pages devoted to rearranging my house? Much of which I ended up doing -- there's a lot more art on my walls now compared to this time last year, and the whole place feels much more lived in.
Hope all are having a good week. :)
posted by mochapickle at 9:18 AM on May 23, 2023 [6 favorites]
Week 3 Check In: Recovering a Sense of Power
Synchronicity is a funny thing: For two weeks, I'd been thinking I should get myself some flowers. I love having flowers in the house and I used to buy some regularly. This week, my mom brought back some things from my grandmother's house and one of those things was a green glass vase full of big silk sunflowers, which is now sitting brightly in the living room. Also, a friend and I were texting about a mystery novel we'd both read and our texts crossed each other with the exact same reaction, word for word.
Kind of a mixed week this week. 5.5/7 for the morning pages. I tend to get distracted and wander off and twice this week I never quite wandered back. This week, I'm going to go back to setting a timer and focus on doing each day's pages in a single go. I was cranky and inpatient this week, so that part in the Growth essay about how a week of insights (like last week!) can be followed by a week of sluggishness (like this week!) was helpful perspective.
Woke up early this morning before sunrise and decided to sit out on the porch and watch the day come in. Birds and crickets gave way to a woodpecker terrorizing some poor household down the block. At dawn, a rather large skunk meandered out of the alley and crossed the street to the next alley down. I'd been letting Annie nose around in the front yard and thankfully saw the skunk before she did.
I like the Detective Work exercise. It was good to spend some time with that. Julia's on to something, I think, about looking closely at what made you happy in childhood and reconnecting with that, and I'm always buoyed by this. Ten-year-old me would have loved my dog and my tiny old house, would have been fine with my messy hair. She'd have wanted me to do more things, though: "Wait, you have a whole set of watercolors and good paper and it's all just sitting there? You have a car that you can take anywhere you want and you haven't driven down to the lake to look at the boats and bounce on the floating docks? YOU HAVE A TENT!"
So I'm going to let my ten-year-old self live here for the summer, I think she'd be good for me. I found a shiny monster sticker in a drawer this morning and stuck it on the fridge to welcome her.
Hope everyone had a great week. Week 4!
posted by mochapickle at 7:00 AM on May 28, 2023 [6 favorites]
Synchronicity is a funny thing: For two weeks, I'd been thinking I should get myself some flowers. I love having flowers in the house and I used to buy some regularly. This week, my mom brought back some things from my grandmother's house and one of those things was a green glass vase full of big silk sunflowers, which is now sitting brightly in the living room. Also, a friend and I were texting about a mystery novel we'd both read and our texts crossed each other with the exact same reaction, word for word.
Kind of a mixed week this week. 5.5/7 for the morning pages. I tend to get distracted and wander off and twice this week I never quite wandered back. This week, I'm going to go back to setting a timer and focus on doing each day's pages in a single go. I was cranky and inpatient this week, so that part in the Growth essay about how a week of insights (like last week!) can be followed by a week of sluggishness (like this week!) was helpful perspective.
Woke up early this morning before sunrise and decided to sit out on the porch and watch the day come in. Birds and crickets gave way to a woodpecker terrorizing some poor household down the block. At dawn, a rather large skunk meandered out of the alley and crossed the street to the next alley down. I'd been letting Annie nose around in the front yard and thankfully saw the skunk before she did.
I like the Detective Work exercise. It was good to spend some time with that. Julia's on to something, I think, about looking closely at what made you happy in childhood and reconnecting with that, and I'm always buoyed by this. Ten-year-old me would have loved my dog and my tiny old house, would have been fine with my messy hair. She'd have wanted me to do more things, though: "Wait, you have a whole set of watercolors and good paper and it's all just sitting there? You have a car that you can take anywhere you want and you haven't driven down to the lake to look at the boats and bounce on the floating docks? YOU HAVE A TENT!"
So I'm going to let my ten-year-old self live here for the summer, I think she'd be good for me. I found a shiny monster sticker in a drawer this morning and stuck it on the fridge to welcome her.
Hope everyone had a great week. Week 4!
posted by mochapickle at 7:00 AM on May 28, 2023 [6 favorites]
Week 3 Check-In
It was an exciting week. For my artist's day out, I went to the Museum of Jurassic Technology, a quirky cabinet of curiosities that blurs the lines between museum and eccentric collector and between truth and fiction. I spent a good two hours just wandering around back and forth between exhibits and just enjoying the experience. I might go back for a second day out in the next few weeks, perhaps to really dive into one or two exhibits (like the 1930s mobile homes dioramas or the bestiary).
I was 6/7 on my morning pages. These have become noticeably more positive compared to previous weeks. I still struggle to find a topic to write about, so I used the tasks from this week's TAW to help spur some creativity. For example, remembering my past bedrooms made me realize that I'm not a "bed person." I don't default to spending time in my bedroom and, come to think of it, I never spent most time in my bedroom as a kid. Something to think about, for sure!
I am already noticing that writing daily has helped improve (and speed up!) how I write in other spaces. Even here, this post would have taken 20 minutes a few weeks ago. Now, I'm just cranking words out. =)
posted by johnxlibris at 9:47 AM on May 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
It was an exciting week. For my artist's day out, I went to the Museum of Jurassic Technology, a quirky cabinet of curiosities that blurs the lines between museum and eccentric collector and between truth and fiction. I spent a good two hours just wandering around back and forth between exhibits and just enjoying the experience. I might go back for a second day out in the next few weeks, perhaps to really dive into one or two exhibits (like the 1930s mobile homes dioramas or the bestiary).
I was 6/7 on my morning pages. These have become noticeably more positive compared to previous weeks. I still struggle to find a topic to write about, so I used the tasks from this week's TAW to help spur some creativity. For example, remembering my past bedrooms made me realize that I'm not a "bed person." I don't default to spending time in my bedroom and, come to think of it, I never spent most time in my bedroom as a kid. Something to think about, for sure!
I am already noticing that writing daily has helped improve (and speed up!) how I write in other spaces. Even here, this post would have taken 20 minutes a few weeks ago. Now, I'm just cranking words out. =)
posted by johnxlibris at 9:47 AM on May 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
Hello TAW pals! I'm enjoying everyone's check-ins! Here is mine:
Week 3 Check-in
This was a weird week for me as I was feeling under the weather and not very enthusiastic about my inner creative. I did what I suppose is around the bare minimum. I guess this falls into the "other issues" category.
I skipped one day of morning pages because I slept poorly and couldn't focus. I regretted not trying because it really does seem to have an impact on the rest of my day. So that's a lesson I learned this week, or at least I was reminded about it as I already knew the power of the pages.
For artist dates, I made some mail art using magazines, catalogs, maps, washi tape, and stickers. I did a few sessions of working on these little projects and I enjoyed it very much.
Synchronicity! Yes! Often and interesting! Lots of good times (11:11, 12:34, etc.) and hearing words on the TV as I am reading them in a book or online. Fun!
I hope everyone is enjoying the process! Onto week 4!
posted by danabanana at 2:55 PM on May 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
Week 3 Check-in
This was a weird week for me as I was feeling under the weather and not very enthusiastic about my inner creative. I did what I suppose is around the bare minimum. I guess this falls into the "other issues" category.
I skipped one day of morning pages because I slept poorly and couldn't focus. I regretted not trying because it really does seem to have an impact on the rest of my day. So that's a lesson I learned this week, or at least I was reminded about it as I already knew the power of the pages.
For artist dates, I made some mail art using magazines, catalogs, maps, washi tape, and stickers. I did a few sessions of working on these little projects and I enjoyed it very much.
Synchronicity! Yes! Often and interesting! Lots of good times (11:11, 12:34, etc.) and hearing words on the TV as I am reading them in a book or online. Fun!
I hope everyone is enjoying the process! Onto week 4!
posted by danabanana at 2:55 PM on May 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
6/7 morning pages again, but no artist's date unless getting flummoxed by weekend MTA and stopping by a Five Guys to recover counts.
This week I'm really going to go for 7/7 on morning pages--I hate putting that in writing because what if I don't, but 7/7 is the goal. That, and an artist's date that doesn't involve a french fry, unless the french fry is eaten under a tree.
posted by betweenthebars at 2:57 PM on May 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
This week I'm really going to go for 7/7 on morning pages--I hate putting that in writing because what if I don't, but 7/7 is the goal. That, and an artist's date that doesn't involve a french fry, unless the french fry is eaten under a tree.
posted by betweenthebars at 2:57 PM on May 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
Week 1 Check-in
I'm on a slightly different schedule, so this morning completed day 6 of my week 1 morning pages. I, too, didn't know what to write and typically write journal-y stuff like what's going on in my life, current challenges etc, so it's been good to read that we are all together on this one. And now that I'm a few days into it, I'm noticing that I really like starting the day with a brain dump of all the junk floating around in my mind. It is a clarifying force and lets me get on with things once I've released all the nitter-natter onto a page (or three).
Big thanks to Sunpower for the list of date ideas, and to Tesseractive and mochapickle for the journaling prompts/framework - all so helpful.
I'm just now drinking my morning coffee and settling in to read through Chapter 1, so I will report back on the artist's date and exercises in a later post. Onward!
posted by lulu68 at 3:35 PM on May 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
I'm on a slightly different schedule, so this morning completed day 6 of my week 1 morning pages. I, too, didn't know what to write and typically write journal-y stuff like what's going on in my life, current challenges etc, so it's been good to read that we are all together on this one. And now that I'm a few days into it, I'm noticing that I really like starting the day with a brain dump of all the junk floating around in my mind. It is a clarifying force and lets me get on with things once I've released all the nitter-natter onto a page (or three).
Big thanks to Sunpower for the list of date ideas, and to Tesseractive and mochapickle for the journaling prompts/framework - all so helpful.
I'm just now drinking my morning coffee and settling in to read through Chapter 1, so I will report back on the artist's date and exercises in a later post. Onward!
posted by lulu68 at 3:35 PM on May 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
I'm forcing myself to write in the afternoon if I can't do so in the morning, but it seems to make a big difference , and it's better if I do it in the morning. I missed a few days, but I'm trying to get back to the routine. I went to a book fair for my 2nd artist date. One other thing I've noticed it that I seem to write much faster longhand than typing and so I'm seriously thinking of going back to the days when I used to write short stories on paper and edit them as I typed them up.
posted by dhruva at 4:35 PM on May 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by dhruva at 4:35 PM on May 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
Week 2 (for me) check in: 7/7 morning pages
I’m realizing how much time morning pages takes, especially once I add on the affirmations but I’m really trying to pull myself through it. Half of my entries are about the noise my neighbors are making (upstairs lady listens to one whiny song very loud every morning and afternoon 6 times in a row - do I do a wellness check?). I realized I need to let go and divorce myself from everything about this building if I’m ever going to move.
This week’s artist date was to a big art museum I’m a member of to draw. I saw all the big exhibits, although the mass of people continues to annoy me. Now I guess I can go back and revisit the quieter permanent collections. Im also challenging myself to do different kinds of artist dates than the things I usually or already do.
I was really excited about my two things I used to love but one of them was to sit outside with friends and I had friends cancel plans with me on 3 different occasions last minute throughout the week so I failed on that one, but not without trying. I made a tiny bit of progress on one of my tiny changes. I don’t know if it’s good or bad to do this process while I’m going through some big changes in my life, including the end of a long term relationship.
posted by Bunglegirl at 9:58 AM on May 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
I’m realizing how much time morning pages takes, especially once I add on the affirmations but I’m really trying to pull myself through it. Half of my entries are about the noise my neighbors are making (upstairs lady listens to one whiny song very loud every morning and afternoon 6 times in a row - do I do a wellness check?). I realized I need to let go and divorce myself from everything about this building if I’m ever going to move.
This week’s artist date was to a big art museum I’m a member of to draw. I saw all the big exhibits, although the mass of people continues to annoy me. Now I guess I can go back and revisit the quieter permanent collections. Im also challenging myself to do different kinds of artist dates than the things I usually or already do.
I was really excited about my two things I used to love but one of them was to sit outside with friends and I had friends cancel plans with me on 3 different occasions last minute throughout the week so I failed on that one, but not without trying. I made a tiny bit of progress on one of my tiny changes. I don’t know if it’s good or bad to do this process while I’m going through some big changes in my life, including the end of a long term relationship.
posted by Bunglegirl at 9:58 AM on May 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
Late Week 3 Check In
Pages: 7/7 days, but two were in the evening because I had a morning tummyache.
So far so good? It was weird to catch up on my pages at night, then try to also write first thing the next morning. I think it's better to be all morning or all night (I used to be an every night writer, but I am coming to look forward to my morning pages as a bit of a reflective brain dump, dream diary, downloading-worries-out-of-my-brain time like some others have mentioned).
This week's date for me was blowing off work early to sit at my kitchen table and paint. At this point part of the painting process is just remembering what all my brushes and paints and inks even do or look like on a page, since it's been so long. I also like to paint words and I even ended up writing a poem for the first time since probably 2008. It doesn't matter if it's good! It just has to be there! I bought myself a bunch of illustration board but I've so far been too nervous to use it. I did use up at least half a steno notebook stolen from work though. (Stolen. Liberated? Appropriated. I brought it home. No one missed it.)
I desperately want to do the week of no reading described in the week 4 chapter but I'm absolutely the person making excuses why I can't. (But I'm an academic department chair and I have to grade!) So I'm going to reschedule it for myself to a week after June 25 and hopefully reward myself for a tough academic year with the luxury of not checking my email for a while. If anyone successfully does it I want to hear about it!
posted by Tesseractive at 6:17 PM on May 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
Pages: 7/7 days, but two were in the evening because I had a morning tummyache.
So far so good? It was weird to catch up on my pages at night, then try to also write first thing the next morning. I think it's better to be all morning or all night (I used to be an every night writer, but I am coming to look forward to my morning pages as a bit of a reflective brain dump, dream diary, downloading-worries-out-of-my-brain time like some others have mentioned).
This week's date for me was blowing off work early to sit at my kitchen table and paint. At this point part of the painting process is just remembering what all my brushes and paints and inks even do or look like on a page, since it's been so long. I also like to paint words and I even ended up writing a poem for the first time since probably 2008. It doesn't matter if it's good! It just has to be there! I bought myself a bunch of illustration board but I've so far been too nervous to use it. I did use up at least half a steno notebook stolen from work though. (Stolen. Liberated? Appropriated. I brought it home. No one missed it.)
I desperately want to do the week of no reading described in the week 4 chapter but I'm absolutely the person making excuses why I can't. (But I'm an academic department chair and I have to grade!) So I'm going to reschedule it for myself to a week after June 25 and hopefully reward myself for a tough academic year with the luxury of not checking my email for a while. If anyone successfully does it I want to hear about it!
posted by Tesseractive at 6:17 PM on May 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
Tesseractive, great update! About the reading restriction: I did it pretty strictly last year and it was very interesting! I read fiction every day, and cutting that out left hours of time to do other things. I started a knitting project and did lots of crafting. No social media, skimming email subject lines for important items, no reading my snail mail... I think the lesson I learned is that I do not need to read to fill up my time; I have lots of other things to do. But: first, I am on disability and my job is staying sane and reading helps me stay focused; also, I read before going to sleep and if I don't, I don't sleep as well. Last year I listened to guided meditations to help me sleep, and that was helpful. But my routine is reading until I just can't anymore and then falling asleep.
So I did reading restriction successfully last year and it was a good experience and I am happy I learned a bit about myself while not reading. But I am not doing it again this time, and it's something I wrote about in my morning pages when I was deciding whether to do it. My sleep routine is more important to me than seeing what more restriction would be like this year. I hope that feedback is helpful!
(I never did go back to that knitting project!)
posted by danabanana at 9:03 AM on June 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
So I did reading restriction successfully last year and it was a good experience and I am happy I learned a bit about myself while not reading. But I am not doing it again this time, and it's something I wrote about in my morning pages when I was deciding whether to do it. My sleep routine is more important to me than seeing what more restriction would be like this year. I hope that feedback is helpful!
(I never did go back to that knitting project!)
posted by danabanana at 9:03 AM on June 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
I feel bad but I have bailed on this. I didn't know that my job was going to basically implode in early May - it's been and continues to be terrible; I can't really talk about it but my recent Askme pretty much speaks for itself - and I just do not have the bandwidth to do anything else. I'm enjoying reading everyone else's updates though and maybe next year if we do it again I'll be able to participate!
posted by mygothlaundry at 10:39 AM on June 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by mygothlaundry at 10:39 AM on June 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
Ugh, mgl, I'm so sorry about your job. What a mess.
I'm on week 5 so my reading deprivation period was last week. FYI, Julia, I get that things were different in 1992 but in 2023 you don't have to be a pompous, self-important excuse-maker to have a job that actually, literally, involves significant amounts of reading every day.
I avoided any discretionary, non-work reading: I kept up with email but didn't follow recreational links. That worked out reasonably well on Monday and Tuesday. After that it was simpler. On Wednesday I flew to Montreal for a few days. I wasn't working and I was surrounded by people, so that was easy enough. I hit a breaking point on Saturday after numerous airport delays. I spent five hours in the terminal mostly eavesdropping, window-shopping, and writing in my notebook. Then the airline announced yet another delay. It would be another half hour till the flight, then five and a half more in the air. At that point it felt entirely reasonable to pick up a book, so I did.
As soon as I was back at home, I did a major Week 4 clothes purge. That felt great.
Julia's references to "tantrums" frankly pissed me off. I'm an adult ffs. I can make and execute plans, but I reserve the right to change my mind if, as in this case, there's a good reason.
And speaking of adulthood: Some people, Julia, are actually over fifty years old RIGHT NOW! Sixty-five! Eighty! Those are real people's ages, not necessarily points to imagine in the far-off future.
It was instructive to note that I really didn't miss my usual miscellaneous link-following at all. Which leads me to the week 5 tasks. I'm definitely not the only one of us for whom a "major creative block" is puttering around online, including here.
The so-called "Forbidden Joys" exercise made me laugh because with one exception I've done everything on her sample list. The exception? I haven't learned to fly and I'm glad to leave that one to the pros. Around here, driving is stressful enough in the two usual dimensions.
I mentioned this before but I'm so glad to be back to daily writing. It's what I did for my entire life till the last few years and I'm starting to feel more like myself, whatever that means. It's taking me 40-45 minutes on average, I think. If anyone's willing to talk about it, I'm curious about roughly how much time other people are spending on theirs.
posted by tangerine at 1:44 PM on June 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
I'm on week 5 so my reading deprivation period was last week. FYI, Julia, I get that things were different in 1992 but in 2023 you don't have to be a pompous, self-important excuse-maker to have a job that actually, literally, involves significant amounts of reading every day.
I avoided any discretionary, non-work reading: I kept up with email but didn't follow recreational links. That worked out reasonably well on Monday and Tuesday. After that it was simpler. On Wednesday I flew to Montreal for a few days. I wasn't working and I was surrounded by people, so that was easy enough. I hit a breaking point on Saturday after numerous airport delays. I spent five hours in the terminal mostly eavesdropping, window-shopping, and writing in my notebook. Then the airline announced yet another delay. It would be another half hour till the flight, then five and a half more in the air. At that point it felt entirely reasonable to pick up a book, so I did.
As soon as I was back at home, I did a major Week 4 clothes purge. That felt great.
Julia's references to "tantrums" frankly pissed me off. I'm an adult ffs. I can make and execute plans, but I reserve the right to change my mind if, as in this case, there's a good reason.
And speaking of adulthood: Some people, Julia, are actually over fifty years old RIGHT NOW! Sixty-five! Eighty! Those are real people's ages, not necessarily points to imagine in the far-off future.
It was instructive to note that I really didn't miss my usual miscellaneous link-following at all. Which leads me to the week 5 tasks. I'm definitely not the only one of us for whom a "major creative block" is puttering around online, including here.
The so-called "Forbidden Joys" exercise made me laugh because with one exception I've done everything on her sample list. The exception? I haven't learned to fly and I'm glad to leave that one to the pros. Around here, driving is stressful enough in the two usual dimensions.
I mentioned this before but I'm so glad to be back to daily writing. It's what I did for my entire life till the last few years and I'm starting to feel more like myself, whatever that means. It's taking me 40-45 minutes on average, I think. If anyone's willing to talk about it, I'm curious about roughly how much time other people are spending on theirs.
posted by tangerine at 1:44 PM on June 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
mygothlaundry, totally understandable. We have school districts being taken over here in southern Colorado, Woodland Park is just up the hill from here. There's absolutely a playbook, and dark money, and-and-and. But please do hang out with us here, we love having you and I love the idea of making this an annual thing, just for the sake of regular creative recalibration.
tangerine, my morning pages took 23 minutes today, which was me not getting up, not stopping, writing at a pretty solid clip. I've been trying to write more quickly this week, which seems to tap more into the subconscious thoughts/subconscious connections even though it makes everything utterly illegible? Perhaps that's a good thing. I do three pages of wide looseleaf.
More tomorrow or Sunday but mostly just wanted to say hi! Hi everyone!
posted by mochapickle at 8:03 PM on June 2, 2023 [4 favorites]
tangerine, my morning pages took 23 minutes today, which was me not getting up, not stopping, writing at a pretty solid clip. I've been trying to write more quickly this week, which seems to tap more into the subconscious thoughts/subconscious connections even though it makes everything utterly illegible? Perhaps that's a good thing. I do three pages of wide looseleaf.
More tomorrow or Sunday but mostly just wanted to say hi! Hi everyone!
posted by mochapickle at 8:03 PM on June 2, 2023 [4 favorites]
Hi back and thanks, mochapickle! That's good to know. I have microscopic handwriting and use tiny grid paper. I knew three pages was unrealistic for me, but wasn't sure what that means in "normal people" quantities.
Something I intended to mention in that earlier comment: a couple of weeks ago I realized how much I missed hearing snippets of strangers' conversations. Since then I've been making a point of putting myself in situations where that's possible.
A few days ago I overheard someone say to a friend: "But he was mostly interested in my kosher uterus." I didn't catch any more of it, but there's a whole story in that one line.
posted by tangerine at 12:16 PM on June 3, 2023 [8 favorites]
Something I intended to mention in that earlier comment: a couple of weeks ago I realized how much I missed hearing snippets of strangers' conversations. Since then I've been making a point of putting myself in situations where that's possible.
A few days ago I overheard someone say to a friend: "But he was mostly interested in my kosher uterus." I didn't catch any more of it, but there's a whole story in that one line.
posted by tangerine at 12:16 PM on June 3, 2023 [8 favorites]
Hi everyone,
It’s so wonderful to read everyone’s update.
I was doing very well with my morning pages until I fell sick. I went a week without writing. During that time, numerous sad memories were floating in my mind, and I desperately wanted to unload them onto my morning pages. However, I couldn't find the motivation to do so. I am not sure if it’s just me .Whenever, I am physically unwell, my brain tends to engage in negative rumination, which becomes challenging to control during that time. But everything gets better after though.
When I started reading week 4, I was surprised to read how Julia mentions about the feelings I felt when I was sick. She emphasizes how important the morning pages are to unload our extreme emotions. Is it synchronicity??? Now the goal is to find a way to push myself to write the morning pages on my worst days. But idk how!!! Any ideas???
I recently joined Tai chi classes to learn something new. It’s interesting how the slow movements make you sweat. I can say it was and is going to be one of the artist’s date for the coming weeks.
posted by SunPower at 8:48 AM on June 4, 2023 [3 favorites]
It’s so wonderful to read everyone’s update.
I was doing very well with my morning pages until I fell sick. I went a week without writing. During that time, numerous sad memories were floating in my mind, and I desperately wanted to unload them onto my morning pages. However, I couldn't find the motivation to do so. I am not sure if it’s just me .Whenever, I am physically unwell, my brain tends to engage in negative rumination, which becomes challenging to control during that time. But everything gets better after though.
When I started reading week 4, I was surprised to read how Julia mentions about the feelings I felt when I was sick. She emphasizes how important the morning pages are to unload our extreme emotions. Is it synchronicity??? Now the goal is to find a way to push myself to write the morning pages on my worst days. But idk how!!! Any ideas???
I recently joined Tai chi classes to learn something new. It’s interesting how the slow movements make you sweat. I can say it was and is going to be one of the artist’s date for the coming weeks.
posted by SunPower at 8:48 AM on June 4, 2023 [3 favorites]
7/7 morning pages. Finally.
The no-reading was a flop, and I'm going to try again in the middle of the week. My replacement for scrolling is reading actual books, and there's nothing else I want to do during those idle moments when I'm too tired for thought work.
posted by betweenthebars at 10:12 AM on June 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
The no-reading was a flop, and I'm going to try again in the middle of the week. My replacement for scrolling is reading actual books, and there's nothing else I want to do during those idle moments when I'm too tired for thought work.
posted by betweenthebars at 10:12 AM on June 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
I balked, and whined, and resisted the reading deprivation challenge, but during Monday's morning pages I ended up convincing myself I could do it. And for the most part I did! I'm a department head and a librarian, so it's just not possible for me to do my job without reading, but I cut out any recreational or web reading (including Mefi!). I used the extra time to set up a new notebook and think about some goals for the summer. It was time well spent.
Morning pages: 7/7!
Artist Day Out: I spent the U.S. Memorial Day holiday at a huge festival, just meandering through the vendor/artists' stalls. I bought a lovely, white clay soap dish, something I had been needing for a while but none of the (terrible) options on Amazon seemed to be a good fit. And I supported a local artist, so that's great!
Synchronicity: I keep seeing it, and then I forget to write it down. At least twice this week, I experienced it... only to now have forgotten what it was.
I have to agree with other folks who have said the morning pages are the best part of this process. I feel more creative, writing is easier (though, not necessarily better), I am more curious and feel interested in more projects... Sidenote: I've been experiencing some serious burnout over the last year. I don't just mean overwork, though that's part of it, but extreme cynicism and a lack of faith in the efficacy of what I do. But I'm beginning to feel passionate about projects again, and I think I have the morning pages to thank for that. =)
posted by johnxlibris at 10:32 AM on June 4, 2023 [3 favorites]
Morning pages: 7/7!
Artist Day Out: I spent the U.S. Memorial Day holiday at a huge festival, just meandering through the vendor/artists' stalls. I bought a lovely, white clay soap dish, something I had been needing for a while but none of the (terrible) options on Amazon seemed to be a good fit. And I supported a local artist, so that's great!
Synchronicity: I keep seeing it, and then I forget to write it down. At least twice this week, I experienced it... only to now have forgotten what it was.
I have to agree with other folks who have said the morning pages are the best part of this process. I feel more creative, writing is easier (though, not necessarily better), I am more curious and feel interested in more projects... Sidenote: I've been experiencing some serious burnout over the last year. I don't just mean overwork, though that's part of it, but extreme cynicism and a lack of faith in the efficacy of what I do. But I'm beginning to feel passionate about projects again, and I think I have the morning pages to thank for that. =)
posted by johnxlibris at 10:32 AM on June 4, 2023 [3 favorites]
Week 4 Check In: Recovering a Sense of Integrity
Hi everyone!
My reading embargo backfired spectacularly. Surely Julia knows that if you tell someone they can't do something they'll only want to do it more? I unplugged the TV and put the books on the shelf, only to find myself so distracted by concentrating on the whole no-books-no-tv-no-xbox-ever thing that I ended up scrolling on instagram and playing dorky little games on my phone, certainly more than I did during the previous weeks, and more than once I'd catch myself online without even realizing how I'd gotten there.
So this week forced me to think a little more about my uses and intentions for reading/scrolling/tv, am I using each engagement as a soothing/distracting activity, or is it something that genuinely helps and enhances my day? For example, I'm more likely to spend more time working on the yard if I have a podcast helping me pass the time, that's useful. But if I'm just doomscrolling to procrastinate or dull/delay my thoughts, then that's probably something to work on. I did end up doing a month of no TV/internet after completing TAW last year and it really did help me -- I focus a lot more easily when I'm not tuned in to competing frequencies. I'm interested in trying this again, maybe a different week or 1-2 days a week.
Definitely experiencing an uptick in wanting to shake things up in my life, which is good. I signed up for a free online calligraphy class that starts in July. I've been baking a lot lately. I bought new walking shoes to replace an old pair. I'm more on top of errands lately. I finally found a name for a character I couldn't name before, so that was kind of a breakthrough because I've been wanting to return to that project but felt I didn't have enough of a grasp of her just yet.
6/7 morning pages but I've been doing them faster, so that seems to make more of an impact on the day. SunPower, I missed a day this week because I'd gotten some unexpected news the night before and I didn't feel quite ready to address it through the pages. I was in a much more grounded place by the next morning and had plenty of thoughts, even ended up writing an extra page. I do find that it's really nice to prepare a cup of tea to go with the pages -- I've been drinking spearmint tea and if I write fast enough I can finish the pages before it gets cold.
Artist date was simple: I went to a coffee shop I'd never been to, sat outside and listened to the rain. They have these homemade syrups for the various coffee drinks, so I got a latte with the black walnut one and it was wonderful -- there was a kind of an unexpected smokiness to it. It was good.
Hope all had a good week! Hopping over to Week 5!
posted by mochapickle at 11:10 AM on June 4, 2023 [3 favorites]
Hi everyone!
My reading embargo backfired spectacularly. Surely Julia knows that if you tell someone they can't do something they'll only want to do it more? I unplugged the TV and put the books on the shelf, only to find myself so distracted by concentrating on the whole no-books-no-tv-no-xbox-ever thing that I ended up scrolling on instagram and playing dorky little games on my phone, certainly more than I did during the previous weeks, and more than once I'd catch myself online without even realizing how I'd gotten there.
So this week forced me to think a little more about my uses and intentions for reading/scrolling/tv, am I using each engagement as a soothing/distracting activity, or is it something that genuinely helps and enhances my day? For example, I'm more likely to spend more time working on the yard if I have a podcast helping me pass the time, that's useful. But if I'm just doomscrolling to procrastinate or dull/delay my thoughts, then that's probably something to work on. I did end up doing a month of no TV/internet after completing TAW last year and it really did help me -- I focus a lot more easily when I'm not tuned in to competing frequencies. I'm interested in trying this again, maybe a different week or 1-2 days a week.
Definitely experiencing an uptick in wanting to shake things up in my life, which is good. I signed up for a free online calligraphy class that starts in July. I've been baking a lot lately. I bought new walking shoes to replace an old pair. I'm more on top of errands lately. I finally found a name for a character I couldn't name before, so that was kind of a breakthrough because I've been wanting to return to that project but felt I didn't have enough of a grasp of her just yet.
6/7 morning pages but I've been doing them faster, so that seems to make more of an impact on the day. SunPower, I missed a day this week because I'd gotten some unexpected news the night before and I didn't feel quite ready to address it through the pages. I was in a much more grounded place by the next morning and had plenty of thoughts, even ended up writing an extra page. I do find that it's really nice to prepare a cup of tea to go with the pages -- I've been drinking spearmint tea and if I write fast enough I can finish the pages before it gets cold.
Artist date was simple: I went to a coffee shop I'd never been to, sat outside and listened to the rain. They have these homemade syrups for the various coffee drinks, so I got a latte with the black walnut one and it was wonderful -- there was a kind of an unexpected smokiness to it. It was good.
Hope all had a good week! Hopping over to Week 5!
posted by mochapickle at 11:10 AM on June 4, 2023 [3 favorites]
Hi all! I really enjoy reading everyone's comments about progress and other issues. I do my writing in a college-ruled notebook and 3 pages takes me about 25 minutes. I have wide-ruled notebooks to use next and I'm curious to see how this will affect how much I write!
Checking in: I did morning pages every day and I continue to truly enjoy the process. It's definitely my favorite part of TAW.
My artist date was watching the 6-part PBS series of Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth with Bill Moyer on Kanopy and crafting with paper and glue the whole time. I found their conversation riveting and the hours flew by! The power of myth is fundamentally the path to self-discovery, and I enjoyed seeing the parallels between what Cameron presents and Campbell's theories. He spoke of Jung and serendipity and the value of understanding the bounty of the universe, which is key to what we're doing. It was a great reinforcement of some of the topics and an interesting explanation of archetypes, yin and yang, chakras, and lots of myths. So that was fun!
I continue to experience little moments of synchronicity, which is always delightful to me! Nothing huge this week, but I'm definitely feeling these messages from the universe!
Thanks for reading this! I appreciate the community we are building here! On to week 5!
posted by danabanana at 5:46 PM on June 4, 2023 [3 favorites]
Checking in: I did morning pages every day and I continue to truly enjoy the process. It's definitely my favorite part of TAW.
My artist date was watching the 6-part PBS series of Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth with Bill Moyer on Kanopy and crafting with paper and glue the whole time. I found their conversation riveting and the hours flew by! The power of myth is fundamentally the path to self-discovery, and I enjoyed seeing the parallels between what Cameron presents and Campbell's theories. He spoke of Jung and serendipity and the value of understanding the bounty of the universe, which is key to what we're doing. It was a great reinforcement of some of the topics and an interesting explanation of archetypes, yin and yang, chakras, and lots of myths. So that was fun!
I continue to experience little moments of synchronicity, which is always delightful to me! Nothing huge this week, but I'm definitely feeling these messages from the universe!
Thanks for reading this! I appreciate the community we are building here! On to week 5!
posted by danabanana at 5:46 PM on June 4, 2023 [3 favorites]
I was 7/7 on pages for week 4 but again, I had to do one at night due to illness. I'm feeling antsy to be able to go back and read everything but I am trying to be patient until week 9 (I am not typically a patient person but I guess we're all here for personal growth). I've filled one composition book already and I'm about 1/4 through a second one. It takes me at least 30 minutes, closer to an hour when I get distracted by daydreaming or looking stuff up on my phone.
I decided to try picking up chess again this week, in service of "things that might be fun." My dad taught me how to play as a kid, but not any actual strategies, just what the pieces do. So I'm using the chess.com app and doing lessons. My artist date was to go to the public library's summer chess club--I know that might not exactly count as feeding my artist but it was something to do that got me out of the house? (I went 1-5. Definitely got schooled by people who know the actual names of all the different openings. I am learning that unlike the collectible card game I typically play, there is no "heart of the cards" in chess--you can't stay in a losing position hoping to draw the card that saves you. You should probably just concede (resign) and move on. I'm sure there's a Julia Cameron lesson in all this somewhere.)
posted by Tesseractive at 8:19 PM on June 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
I decided to try picking up chess again this week, in service of "things that might be fun." My dad taught me how to play as a kid, but not any actual strategies, just what the pieces do. So I'm using the chess.com app and doing lessons. My artist date was to go to the public library's summer chess club--I know that might not exactly count as feeding my artist but it was something to do that got me out of the house? (I went 1-5. Definitely got schooled by people who know the actual names of all the different openings. I am learning that unlike the collectible card game I typically play, there is no "heart of the cards" in chess--you can't stay in a losing position hoping to draw the card that saves you. You should probably just concede (resign) and move on. I'm sure there's a Julia Cameron lesson in all this somewhere.)
posted by Tesseractive at 8:19 PM on June 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
Week 3/4 Check-in
I’m a little in between and not quite sure what week to say I’m on. I have missed a few days of pages but am back in the saddle for now. How do you all pace yourselves on the reading and exercises at the end of each chapter? I’ve been reading at the end/start of a week and doing the exercises all at once and it ends up taking a lot of my day. I feel like I’m always behind, not that it matters but I also don’t want this to last for 24 weeks instead of 12!
I enjoyed the childhood exercises. I went to my childhood home this weekend and had some food I only eat there and spent time outdoors alone listening to birdsong we don’t get nearly as much of in the city. I feel like I do a lot of activities where I’m alone and can think, cutting out fabric for a project, yard work, and weeding my garden last week.
So far I have discounted the synchronicity aspect but a few times this week something sparked a thought in my mind. The book’s discussion of being jealous of people creating the idea you had. This happens to me all the time. But the cold hard fact is I don’t DO the things, so my problem really lack of action and being accepting of playing and not trying to crate the “best” on my first try. Part of it is on some level fear of not being good anymore, and part of it is not wanting to “waste” supplies. I need to just DO and stop being to precious about consumables. This week I saw Austin Kleon’s post titled Artists Must Be Allowed to Make Bad Work was a reminder of this for me.
posted by Bunglegirl at 11:01 AM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
I’m a little in between and not quite sure what week to say I’m on. I have missed a few days of pages but am back in the saddle for now. How do you all pace yourselves on the reading and exercises at the end of each chapter? I’ve been reading at the end/start of a week and doing the exercises all at once and it ends up taking a lot of my day. I feel like I’m always behind, not that it matters but I also don’t want this to last for 24 weeks instead of 12!
I enjoyed the childhood exercises. I went to my childhood home this weekend and had some food I only eat there and spent time outdoors alone listening to birdsong we don’t get nearly as much of in the city. I feel like I do a lot of activities where I’m alone and can think, cutting out fabric for a project, yard work, and weeding my garden last week.
So far I have discounted the synchronicity aspect but a few times this week something sparked a thought in my mind. The book’s discussion of being jealous of people creating the idea you had. This happens to me all the time. But the cold hard fact is I don’t DO the things, so my problem really lack of action and being accepting of playing and not trying to crate the “best” on my first try. Part of it is on some level fear of not being good anymore, and part of it is not wanting to “waste” supplies. I need to just DO and stop being to precious about consumables. This week I saw Austin Kleon’s post titled Artists Must Be Allowed to Make Bad Work was a reminder of this for me.
posted by Bunglegirl at 11:01 AM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
Bunglegirl, I've been reading the chapter (including the exercises) at some point on the weekend. At any point from then through the following week, I do at least some of the exercises. I'm not being strict about them, having taken to heart mochapickle's sensible advice to skip over any that don't apply or resonate.
I'm enjoying all the idiosyncratic things people have mentioned recently. Working backwards:
Tesseractive, as a kid I had zero chess strategy either. I remember late one night when I was twelve, jetlagged after a long flight, playing both sides with no idea how the game would resolve, just letting the pieces make their own decisions.
danabanana, documentary-watching while gluing sounds appealing though maybe not for me till my dog is a little older and less eager to engage in all activities with full nose and mouth.
mochapickle, that new-to-you coffee shop, your black walnut latte, watching the rain!
johnxlibris, a beautiful clay soap dish!
betweenthebars, I bet the point of the no-reading exercise is more about finding out what happens when you try than it is about following the embargo to the letter.
SunPower, I'm sorry you were sick. Glad you're feeling better now and I hope you enjoy that Tai Chi class.
And a great big hug to mygothlaundry.
posted by tangerine at 3:38 PM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
I'm enjoying all the idiosyncratic things people have mentioned recently. Working backwards:
Tesseractive, as a kid I had zero chess strategy either. I remember late one night when I was twelve, jetlagged after a long flight, playing both sides with no idea how the game would resolve, just letting the pieces make their own decisions.
danabanana, documentary-watching while gluing sounds appealing though maybe not for me till my dog is a little older and less eager to engage in all activities with full nose and mouth.
mochapickle, that new-to-you coffee shop, your black walnut latte, watching the rain!
johnxlibris, a beautiful clay soap dish!
betweenthebars, I bet the point of the no-reading exercise is more about finding out what happens when you try than it is about following the embargo to the letter.
SunPower, I'm sorry you were sick. Glad you're feeling better now and I hope you enjoy that Tai Chi class.
And a great big hug to mygothlaundry.
posted by tangerine at 3:38 PM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
Hello all! I hope everyone had a nice week 5! Here's my check-in:
Morning pages continue to be very powerful and I do sometimes find myself coming to a moment of clarity halfway through, but not every time. I completed morning pages every day this week. I have a pattern I follow: I first pick an affirmation from the Spirit Junkie deck, then I pull a tarot card. My writing begins with my interpretation of the card and then I move on to whatever I need to dump from my mind. Then I write out the Spirit Junkie affirmation and write some more. At the end, I write a gratitude list and my favorite affirmation and then I'm done.
My artist date was a little weird in that I had an idea for Valentine's Day cards and I wanted to see what painting the background of the cards would look like, so I spent some time making a mess with watercolors but they turned out better than I imagined and now I am going to do a few more so that future me will have everything set up in a few months when I go to put them together. The MeFi Valentines Swap is my favorite mail project and I don't want to put too much pressure on SunPower, who hosted last year's swap, but this is what I felt I needed to do this week in June for a February holiday. I showed my work to my husband and confused him about time!
I wrote a friend a letter back in April and told him about synchronicity and a few of my experiences with it, and asked if he experienced it. I just heard back from him, and of course he does! So that's my spreading the word about the phenomenon. I had small moments this week but nothing really interesting to report.
Other issues: I'm keeping up the trampoline habit pretty well and I'm very grateful to SunPower again for posting that fabulous list of artist dates! I have not been doing many of the tasks mostly because I didn't feel like they resonated with me. I laughed at my previous highlight of her words about collecting images "somehow!!!" and went to the Pinterest boards I made last year and added some images. Boy, did she miss an opportunity to properly update her book!
I loved week 6 last year and I'm really looking forward to it this year! Time to tune up my abundance mindset!
I hope everyone is having a good experience and I look forward to reading your updates!
posted by danabanana at 10:12 AM on June 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
Morning pages continue to be very powerful and I do sometimes find myself coming to a moment of clarity halfway through, but not every time. I completed morning pages every day this week. I have a pattern I follow: I first pick an affirmation from the Spirit Junkie deck, then I pull a tarot card. My writing begins with my interpretation of the card and then I move on to whatever I need to dump from my mind. Then I write out the Spirit Junkie affirmation and write some more. At the end, I write a gratitude list and my favorite affirmation and then I'm done.
My artist date was a little weird in that I had an idea for Valentine's Day cards and I wanted to see what painting the background of the cards would look like, so I spent some time making a mess with watercolors but they turned out better than I imagined and now I am going to do a few more so that future me will have everything set up in a few months when I go to put them together. The MeFi Valentines Swap is my favorite mail project and I don't want to put too much pressure on SunPower, who hosted last year's swap, but this is what I felt I needed to do this week in June for a February holiday. I showed my work to my husband and confused him about time!
I wrote a friend a letter back in April and told him about synchronicity and a few of my experiences with it, and asked if he experienced it. I just heard back from him, and of course he does! So that's my spreading the word about the phenomenon. I had small moments this week but nothing really interesting to report.
Other issues: I'm keeping up the trampoline habit pretty well and I'm very grateful to SunPower again for posting that fabulous list of artist dates! I have not been doing many of the tasks mostly because I didn't feel like they resonated with me. I laughed at my previous highlight of her words about collecting images "somehow!!!" and went to the Pinterest boards I made last year and added some images. Boy, did she miss an opportunity to properly update her book!
I loved week 6 last year and I'm really looking forward to it this year! Time to tune up my abundance mindset!
I hope everyone is having a good experience and I look forward to reading your updates!
posted by danabanana at 10:12 AM on June 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
Week 5 Check In: Recovering a Sense of Possibility
I'm at the point of the program where I start moving furniture. It happened this time last year too! Most of my morning pages end up including at least one to-do list. I've always wanted to grow basil and a few other herbs indoors and so I'm mapping out where and how that might go. This week, the hardware store.
For my artist date, I took a quick online class on watercolor + doodling. It was much too short! But it did make me grab a palette I bought a long time ago and never really used (this one, the Tropicals set) and it was fun to play with the brighter colors and turn random blobs of paint into cheerful little round birds with little ink-black beaks and sticks for feet. There's a particular lime green and a bright coral hibiscus color that make my heart sing. We've had so much rain lately that I've been doing artist dates at home or staying close by. If the rain lets up, I'm hoping to venture out a few towns over.
5/7 morning pages. I thought a lot about finding opportunities in unexpected places & what she said about shaking an apple tree but welcoming the abundance of oranges falling right at your feet. That's so true. I really loved Week 6 last year, so looking forward to this coming week.
Hope everyone had a great week!
posted by mochapickle at 11:06 AM on June 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm at the point of the program where I start moving furniture. It happened this time last year too! Most of my morning pages end up including at least one to-do list. I've always wanted to grow basil and a few other herbs indoors and so I'm mapping out where and how that might go. This week, the hardware store.
For my artist date, I took a quick online class on watercolor + doodling. It was much too short! But it did make me grab a palette I bought a long time ago and never really used (this one, the Tropicals set) and it was fun to play with the brighter colors and turn random blobs of paint into cheerful little round birds with little ink-black beaks and sticks for feet. There's a particular lime green and a bright coral hibiscus color that make my heart sing. We've had so much rain lately that I've been doing artist dates at home or staying close by. If the rain lets up, I'm hoping to venture out a few towns over.
5/7 morning pages. I thought a lot about finding opportunities in unexpected places & what she said about shaking an apple tree but welcoming the abundance of oranges falling right at your feet. That's so true. I really loved Week 6 last year, so looking forward to this coming week.
Hope everyone had a great week!
posted by mochapickle at 11:06 AM on June 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
Week 4. Did my pages every day, each day to varying commitment or depth. There was definitely more griping than usual about the book itself this week, probably from the expectations about not “reading.” I wasn’t working this week so all of my day is either household chores, working on different creative pursuits, or doing artist date-type stuff that I normally do when I have time off. I really felt like I needed a break. I needed to turn off and absorb at the end of the day instead of create after I’ve been creating, or at least being productive all day. So, yeah, I felt like total failure on that because I didn’t even keep to my lax rules I gave for myself. Living alone makes this week feel extra lonely and I wonder if my experience would have been different if I had someone to talk to.
I’m not so sure about some of Julia’s sometimes vague writing. What happened to the affirmations? This dropped a few weeks ago (good riddance, I feel) but was there a line or implication to continue? She also says to prepare for a day long artists date. I assumed that was supposed to be this week although that’s not mentioned again. I’m taking it that all of these things are up to my own interpretation.
So, I took all of Thursday to have a bit longer artists date. I biked 45 minutes to another neighborhood I don’t go to often. I had to pass through some tough areas of the city that I might normally avoid. I poked around a giant fabric warehouse that I like to explore. It has original windows and entire floors that look like people forgot existed, full of lots of crap but also some interesting different vignettes. Ate a local food which I’ve never had before. Biked some more. Sat on a rock in a riverside park, watching the birds and the boats and the bridges. Wished I could read a novel. I love to sit in parks and read. Turned around to bike all the way home just as rush hour hit but it was okay. Took a different way home, got a little lost.
This week I have a lot more energy to get things done (mostly getting my place in order which I’ve been neglecting). But I also have been restless and not sleeping as well. Last night I don’t think I slept at all? I’m not sure, but I got up at 4, then decided to go grocery shopping at 6:30am in the rain. Nobody is out, it was lovely. Had a moment of synchronicity on the way home as the rain got harder. I have had more realizations and periods of thinking riding a bike than writing morning pages, but I always have felt really free when I ride. Interesting that I’m now realizing that I haven’t mentioned biking at all in any of my visions, desires, or whatever tasks even though it’s kind of a big part of me for the past 20 years.
posted by Bunglegirl at 7:26 PM on June 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
I’m not so sure about some of Julia’s sometimes vague writing. What happened to the affirmations? This dropped a few weeks ago (good riddance, I feel) but was there a line or implication to continue? She also says to prepare for a day long artists date. I assumed that was supposed to be this week although that’s not mentioned again. I’m taking it that all of these things are up to my own interpretation.
So, I took all of Thursday to have a bit longer artists date. I biked 45 minutes to another neighborhood I don’t go to often. I had to pass through some tough areas of the city that I might normally avoid. I poked around a giant fabric warehouse that I like to explore. It has original windows and entire floors that look like people forgot existed, full of lots of crap but also some interesting different vignettes. Ate a local food which I’ve never had before. Biked some more. Sat on a rock in a riverside park, watching the birds and the boats and the bridges. Wished I could read a novel. I love to sit in parks and read. Turned around to bike all the way home just as rush hour hit but it was okay. Took a different way home, got a little lost.
This week I have a lot more energy to get things done (mostly getting my place in order which I’ve been neglecting). But I also have been restless and not sleeping as well. Last night I don’t think I slept at all? I’m not sure, but I got up at 4, then decided to go grocery shopping at 6:30am in the rain. Nobody is out, it was lovely. Had a moment of synchronicity on the way home as the rain got harder. I have had more realizations and periods of thinking riding a bike than writing morning pages, but I always have felt really free when I ride. Interesting that I’m now realizing that I haven’t mentioned biking at all in any of my visions, desires, or whatever tasks even though it’s kind of a big part of me for the past 20 years.
posted by Bunglegirl at 7:26 PM on June 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
Week Five: 7/7 pages but at all different times of the day due to illness and various 8 am meetings that I couldn’t fit in any writing before. I spent a lot of my pages this week perseverating on big work drama, and how to deal with it, that led to the imaginary lives activity and imagining myself as a super villain, with a cool lair. Ultimately, the work drama handled itself.
But I still want a lair. I ordered myself a drafting table and a full length mirror, neither of which I have ever owned. I’m hoping to get back into self portraiture. When I’m stuck for what to draw, I can always draw myself, which is probably how I ended up as an autobiographical cartoonist.
I got so fed up with all the God talk in chapter 5, that I actually crossed out God and wrote Hermes throughout the entire chapter. It definitely made me feel better about it.
My artist date was going birding on a local wetland, followed by buying frivolous colors of water colors that I probably can’t use to paint pictures of anything, but are very fun to put on paper. And then I did a bunch of color studies painting purple rectangles with gold shimmer, cross hatching and such. I used up so much paper, and it felt really good. I have had huge amounts of watercolor paper, gathering dust for years and it’s nice to actually use it.
Hang in there everyone!!!
posted by Tesseractive at 10:35 PM on June 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
But I still want a lair. I ordered myself a drafting table and a full length mirror, neither of which I have ever owned. I’m hoping to get back into self portraiture. When I’m stuck for what to draw, I can always draw myself, which is probably how I ended up as an autobiographical cartoonist.
I got so fed up with all the God talk in chapter 5, that I actually crossed out God and wrote Hermes throughout the entire chapter. It definitely made me feel better about it.
My artist date was going birding on a local wetland, followed by buying frivolous colors of water colors that I probably can’t use to paint pictures of anything, but are very fun to put on paper. And then I did a bunch of color studies painting purple rectangles with gold shimmer, cross hatching and such. I used up so much paper, and it felt really good. I have had huge amounts of watercolor paper, gathering dust for years and it’s nice to actually use it.
Hang in there everyone!!!
posted by Tesseractive at 10:35 PM on June 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
5/7 last week, aiming for 7/7 this week even though I have some work and life stuff happening. For last week, the artist's date involved getting mad at Aaron Sorkin, for this week, it may simply be going to bed early. Like I said, there's some stuff.
For some reason I genuinely thought TAW is a 6-week program and I was excited to start the final week. I kept scrolling and lol there are 6 more weeks after this. It's very possible that I've never done the full 12 weeks before.
posted by betweenthebars at 3:33 PM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
For some reason I genuinely thought TAW is a 6-week program and I was excited to start the final week. I kept scrolling and lol there are 6 more weeks after this. It's very possible that I've never done the full 12 weeks before.
posted by betweenthebars at 3:33 PM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
Hello everyone! I just finished cranking out a triple ration of pages, having recently woken up on the other side of the planet following 28 long hours of planes, trains, and automobiles. I'll be away for three weeks. It'll all be interesting. So I guess that counts as a gigantic ongoing artist's date.
Exasperation continues at Julia's god-magic-recovery framing of everything. I can't read the book without giant eyerolls. For me, the heart of the program is the structured commitment to daily spew-writing and weekly diversions/excursions. Even so, I have to admit that some of her chapter content has given me some valuable food for thought.
One I've mentioned a couple of times before, which is that I need to be around random strangers sometimes -- I guess that's like Saul Bellow's "humanity bath." That's fixable and I'm doing it.
The other? I'm into week 7 now. The first time I read through it, I didn't think the jealousy exercise had anything to offer me. But it planted a seed in my mind. A few days later I realized that there are some things I do want that other people have. Not material things; possibly embarrassing/discreditable things, which in itself is interesting, isn't it. I need to think more about this.
Sun's up and shining! It's unequivocally morning where I am now.
posted by tangerine at 2:10 PM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
Exasperation continues at Julia's god-magic-recovery framing of everything. I can't read the book without giant eyerolls. For me, the heart of the program is the structured commitment to daily spew-writing and weekly diversions/excursions. Even so, I have to admit that some of her chapter content has given me some valuable food for thought.
One I've mentioned a couple of times before, which is that I need to be around random strangers sometimes -- I guess that's like Saul Bellow's "humanity bath." That's fixable and I'm doing it.
The other? I'm into week 7 now. The first time I read through it, I didn't think the jealousy exercise had anything to offer me. But it planted a seed in my mind. A few days later I realized that there are some things I do want that other people have. Not material things; possibly embarrassing/discreditable things, which in itself is interesting, isn't it. I need to think more about this.
Sun's up and shining! It's unequivocally morning where I am now.
posted by tangerine at 2:10 PM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
I want to join!! But my life is just so chaotic right now that I don't really know how to make it fit and join the group -- any suggestions?
posted by yueliang at 12:37 AM on June 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by yueliang at 12:37 AM on June 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
Hi yueliang! I think we're all somewhere between Week 5 and Week 8, but you're welcome to begin. We're keeping the thread open until we're all through.
OR, you might like to do the daily morning pages, which are so helpful. I've been doing them for a year now and will continue to do them.
OR, if you want, you might like to do some artist dates/excursions. SunPower posted this absolutely terrific list of ideas but you can do anything you like. We try to do an artist date at least once or twice a week and they're a great source of delight and new perspectives.
Or you can just hang out in the thread with us! Please join us.
posted by mochapickle at 10:58 AM on June 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
OR, you might like to do the daily morning pages, which are so helpful. I've been doing them for a year now and will continue to do them.
OR, if you want, you might like to do some artist dates/excursions. SunPower posted this absolutely terrific list of ideas but you can do anything you like. We try to do an artist date at least once or twice a week and they're a great source of delight and new perspectives.
Or you can just hang out in the thread with us! Please join us.
posted by mochapickle at 10:58 AM on June 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
Week 6 Check-In: Well, I tried.
I managed 6/7 morning pages, but a couple of those were only 2 pages long. Better than nothing, I suppose! I had planned to do an artist's day out at a local cafe I had been wanting to visit for months, but got too caught up in something at work. And I kept forgetting to look for synchronicity.
Honestly, I had already considered this week to be "an off week" from the beginning. It was the week after my kids got out of school, and it's always a little hectic managing a new schedule for the first time in months. I even wrote in my morning pages that I would need to give myself compassion and grace.
posted by johnxlibris at 1:02 PM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
I managed 6/7 morning pages, but a couple of those were only 2 pages long. Better than nothing, I suppose! I had planned to do an artist's day out at a local cafe I had been wanting to visit for months, but got too caught up in something at work. And I kept forgetting to look for synchronicity.
Honestly, I had already considered this week to be "an off week" from the beginning. It was the week after my kids got out of school, and it's always a little hectic managing a new schedule for the first time in months. I even wrote in my morning pages that I would need to give myself compassion and grace.
posted by johnxlibris at 1:02 PM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
Week 5 check in. 7/7 pages though I didn’t do the full amount each day.
The new paint brushes and palette I bought my artist a few weeks ago arrived but I haven’t had a chance to use them. I really wanted my only day off today to be an artist date trying it all out but spent too much time with chores. One morning I experienced some clarity around things that I’d stopped doing that I love. I couldn’t sleep at all. I’m not sure if I drifted off at all but by 4am I got up, watched some tv, did my pages, then decided I should go do something. Not too much is open at 6am Sunday, so I decided to go grocery shopping. I had to go that day so why not get it over with?
Shopping at 6:30am is such a delight. It started raining while I was inside. The ride home was wet, but no one was out and the spring smells and crisp air just got to me. Biking like that feels so free. I stopped biking as much as I used to with my recent ex. He preferred walking. It got me thinking about what else I gave up to fit in his life. I had a lot less time for my art and other creative pursuits.
Hope everyone is doing well, even if they don’t get to their pages every day!
posted by Bunglegirl at 8:23 PM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
The new paint brushes and palette I bought my artist a few weeks ago arrived but I haven’t had a chance to use them. I really wanted my only day off today to be an artist date trying it all out but spent too much time with chores. One morning I experienced some clarity around things that I’d stopped doing that I love. I couldn’t sleep at all. I’m not sure if I drifted off at all but by 4am I got up, watched some tv, did my pages, then decided I should go do something. Not too much is open at 6am Sunday, so I decided to go grocery shopping. I had to go that day so why not get it over with?
Shopping at 6:30am is such a delight. It started raining while I was inside. The ride home was wet, but no one was out and the spring smells and crisp air just got to me. Biking like that feels so free. I stopped biking as much as I used to with my recent ex. He preferred walking. It got me thinking about what else I gave up to fit in his life. I had a lot less time for my art and other creative pursuits.
Hope everyone is doing well, even if they don’t get to their pages every day!
posted by Bunglegirl at 8:23 PM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
Hi everyone! I'm calling Week 6 a personal do-over so I'm restarting it today. I did manage to get most of the morning pages and I remain convinced that any progress on those is good progress in general. But overall I had kind of an anxious, busy, preoccupied, exhausted kind of week and I ended up abandoning a chapter of TAW that I love and that I'd been genuinely looking to. So I'm excited about the decision to go back a week and enjoy taking my time with it. I'll wave to all of you embarking on other chapters!
Also, a break in the rain means I can maybe-possibly-finally do a proper outdoor artist date. Here in Colorado, it's typically sunny and dry in the summers, so last year while working on TAW I made a point to have breakfast in the back yard every morning. Annie would sprawl out in the sunshine, catching the light and the warmth in her fur. And then we'd come inside all glowy and warm and be ready for the day. This year I've substituted it with the occasional coffee on a rainsoaked porch and it's not the same at all. I hadn't realized just how much those outdoor breakfasts mattered.
Bunglegirl, I'm loving the stories of your bicycle adventures! And the other loves/pursuits that are making themselves heard. I went to the hardware store at 6 a.m. yesterday and it's so blissful and quiet then.
johnxlibris, our weeks were very different but yet very similar! You're totally welcome to hang out with me in Week 6 if you're interested in revisiting that chapter.
tangerine, I also love soaking in other people's conversations! Years ago, I lived in a big city and the tables were so close you'd have to slide between them to get to your seat, always with a smile and a mumble of apology, and then you'd spend the entire dinner politely pretending you weren't hanging on every word at the next table over, and the next table over would quietly pretend you weren't quietly pretending. I'm glad your travels were safe!
betweenthebars, what did Aaron Sorkin do this time??? And welcome to the last half of TAW!
Tesseractive, I laughed about your substitution of Hermes for god! I keep substituting THE UNIVERSE OR WHATEVER for when she starts talking about god, and through the chapter my substitution gets louder and louder. Also, how lovely to use up art supplies! I was once given a really lovely set of granulated watercolors and I still don't really know how to use them, but I absolutely love making swatches for them and watching them swirl...
danabanana, hello friend!
posted by mochapickle at 7:29 AM on June 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
Also, a break in the rain means I can maybe-possibly-finally do a proper outdoor artist date. Here in Colorado, it's typically sunny and dry in the summers, so last year while working on TAW I made a point to have breakfast in the back yard every morning. Annie would sprawl out in the sunshine, catching the light and the warmth in her fur. And then we'd come inside all glowy and warm and be ready for the day. This year I've substituted it with the occasional coffee on a rainsoaked porch and it's not the same at all. I hadn't realized just how much those outdoor breakfasts mattered.
Bunglegirl, I'm loving the stories of your bicycle adventures! And the other loves/pursuits that are making themselves heard. I went to the hardware store at 6 a.m. yesterday and it's so blissful and quiet then.
johnxlibris, our weeks were very different but yet very similar! You're totally welcome to hang out with me in Week 6 if you're interested in revisiting that chapter.
tangerine, I also love soaking in other people's conversations! Years ago, I lived in a big city and the tables were so close you'd have to slide between them to get to your seat, always with a smile and a mumble of apology, and then you'd spend the entire dinner politely pretending you weren't hanging on every word at the next table over, and the next table over would quietly pretend you weren't quietly pretending. I'm glad your travels were safe!
betweenthebars, what did Aaron Sorkin do this time??? And welcome to the last half of TAW!
Tesseractive, I laughed about your substitution of Hermes for god! I keep substituting THE UNIVERSE OR WHATEVER for when she starts talking about god, and through the chapter my substitution gets louder and louder. Also, how lovely to use up art supplies! I was once given a really lovely set of granulated watercolors and I still don't really know how to use them, but I absolutely love making swatches for them and watching them swirl...
danabanana, hello friend!
posted by mochapickle at 7:29 AM on June 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
It's so nice to read everybody's update.
Week 6 Update: 6/7 pages. Somedays, I couldn't write more than 2 pages. It's okay with me as long as I can keep writing.
I completed most of the exercises this week. I baked some muffins, keto buns and energy bars. I am clearing up spaces in all the rooms(I've kept trash bag hanging in every room and whenever I find something that need to be thrown/give away, it goes inside the bag). I'm hoping to finish the space clearing by the end of July.
I went for my weekly Tai chi class and also started playing pickle ball this week. My artist date was going to the newly built library and stayed there for 3 hours just looking at the new place, browsing the magazines, books, puzzles, etc .
I don't like rainy days. It's depressing and it's always hard to find motivation to do anything. But this week was different. We experienced both rain and sunshine on a same day. This pattern continued almost every single day. It felt good even though I couldn't go to the park for walking.
Hope everyone is having a great week!
posted by SunPower at 7:40 AM on June 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
Week 6 Update: 6/7 pages. Somedays, I couldn't write more than 2 pages. It's okay with me as long as I can keep writing.
I completed most of the exercises this week. I baked some muffins, keto buns and energy bars. I am clearing up spaces in all the rooms(I've kept trash bag hanging in every room and whenever I find something that need to be thrown/give away, it goes inside the bag). I'm hoping to finish the space clearing by the end of July.
I went for my weekly Tai chi class and also started playing pickle ball this week. My artist date was going to the newly built library and stayed there for 3 hours just looking at the new place, browsing the magazines, books, puzzles, etc .
I don't like rainy days. It's depressing and it's always hard to find motivation to do anything. But this week was different. We experienced both rain and sunshine on a same day. This pattern continued almost every single day. It felt good even though I couldn't go to the park for walking.
Hope everyone is having a great week!
posted by SunPower at 7:40 AM on June 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
Hello TAW pals! I love reading everyone's updates! Here is mine:
I was quite low energy this week and I didn't do all the things I wanted to do for abundance week. I did do some stuff, though. I did morning pages every day and several artists dates in which I made lots of cute little envelopes. Every piece of paper I encounter is now a potential envelope! So that has been fun. I started a new doodling project that I will share next week once I get the hang of it. And I watched the video that SunPower about growing a mandala and I definitely want to try that at some point. So I have a few artist dates planned for future weeks, which is exciting! I tend to get a second wind in the early evening and that has become my arts and crafts time.
I did some of the tasks: instead of writing five post cards to friends I'd like to hear from, I wrote a letter to a college friend I've been out of touch with since 2000. And it was hot at the beginning of the week (we're back in the 50s and cuddling under blankets) so I made a delicious gazpacho that I will definitely make again when the weather gets warmer.
I wanted to gather rocks and wildflowers to replace the ones from last year, but I didn't. I wanted to update my altar, but I didn't. I have lots of clearing I wanted to do, but I didn't. So, like mochapickle, I am spending another week exploring abundance and doing the associated tasks. I did week 11 three times last year, so I know that spending extra time on a chapter has its own rewards. I'm looking forward to doing this week with more focus and energy.
I hope everyone is enjoying the process! Have a great week wherever you are in the book!
posted by danabanana at 12:23 PM on June 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
I was quite low energy this week and I didn't do all the things I wanted to do for abundance week. I did do some stuff, though. I did morning pages every day and several artists dates in which I made lots of cute little envelopes. Every piece of paper I encounter is now a potential envelope! So that has been fun. I started a new doodling project that I will share next week once I get the hang of it. And I watched the video that SunPower about growing a mandala and I definitely want to try that at some point. So I have a few artist dates planned for future weeks, which is exciting! I tend to get a second wind in the early evening and that has become my arts and crafts time.
I did some of the tasks: instead of writing five post cards to friends I'd like to hear from, I wrote a letter to a college friend I've been out of touch with since 2000. And it was hot at the beginning of the week (we're back in the 50s and cuddling under blankets) so I made a delicious gazpacho that I will definitely make again when the weather gets warmer.
I wanted to gather rocks and wildflowers to replace the ones from last year, but I didn't. I wanted to update my altar, but I didn't. I have lots of clearing I wanted to do, but I didn't. So, like mochapickle, I am spending another week exploring abundance and doing the associated tasks. I did week 11 three times last year, so I know that spending extra time on a chapter has its own rewards. I'm looking forward to doing this week with more focus and energy.
I hope everyone is enjoying the process! Have a great week wherever you are in the book!
posted by danabanana at 12:23 PM on June 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
6/7 last week, which is not 7/7, but is better than zero.
posted by betweenthebars at 6:42 AM on June 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by betweenthebars at 6:42 AM on June 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
Well, I fell off the path three weeks ago. I know exactly why, too -- an emotional Thing I wanted to avoid having to journal about, or was not ready to. Perversely, it's actually good news: I'm getting a sort of promotion at work, and will be supervising a new hire for the first time. But I'm having a lot of Feelings about it, and needed to feel those silently before bringing out the journal again, never mind cracking TAW itself. Hoping to return to it this week.
This change is going to modify my approach to this program for the rest of summer, I think. Management certainly sounds like a distraction, from the standpoint of Week (2? 3?)'s admonishment to put down whatever social labor can be put down -- this is signing up for more of it. But a sizable chunk of why I've felt scientifically stuck since 2019 is that I've gradually fallen into the "analytical errand runner" role for my research group, which was easier work to sustain amid all my own upheaval in that time, but which also makes real scientific concentration and exploration incredibly hard. If this goes well, I'll be able to offload those tasks to our competent and knowledgeable new hire, opening so much time for me to do other things. But there is fear there too, like, A) what if it doesn't go well -- this is genuinely new ground for me, and B) what if I can't recover, and in giving away the errands I lose my confidence that I have value to my team? Oof. Maybe HR should offer "Therapy For New Managers."
posted by eirias at 8:30 AM on June 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
This change is going to modify my approach to this program for the rest of summer, I think. Management certainly sounds like a distraction, from the standpoint of Week (2? 3?)'s admonishment to put down whatever social labor can be put down -- this is signing up for more of it. But a sizable chunk of why I've felt scientifically stuck since 2019 is that I've gradually fallen into the "analytical errand runner" role for my research group, which was easier work to sustain amid all my own upheaval in that time, but which also makes real scientific concentration and exploration incredibly hard. If this goes well, I'll be able to offload those tasks to our competent and knowledgeable new hire, opening so much time for me to do other things. But there is fear there too, like, A) what if it doesn't go well -- this is genuinely new ground for me, and B) what if I can't recover, and in giving away the errands I lose my confidence that I have value to my team? Oof. Maybe HR should offer "Therapy For New Managers."
posted by eirias at 8:30 AM on June 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
I've been wretched at my morning pages (even when I allow myself to have any-time-of-day pages) but I did come across this book Wonder Seeker: 52 Ways to Wake Up Your Creativity and Find Your Joy which seems very much in the spirit of artist dates with oneself but in variable doses. #5 is "Measure the Blueness of the Sky," inspired by Saussure's cyanometer. created in 1789.
posted by spamandkimchi at 5:05 PM on June 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by spamandkimchi at 5:05 PM on June 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
Hello TAW friends! I did chapter 6 again and I am happy with how it went. I got a lot done and I feel like I captured the spirit of the chapter this time around.
Morning pages continue to be deeply rewarding. I love my morning routine and dumping my thoughts is very helpful. I was able to make some decisions, which was extremely helpful. I did them every day this week.
Artist date: I found this video about neurographic drawing and watched it several times, then watched a few more (they have a nice AMSR effect on me!) and then tried one myself. I got frustrated at first because I was doing the cornering backwards (convex instead of concave), but then I figured it out and discovered a fantastic new way to achieve flow. Everything else dissolved into the background as I drew with my Sharpie. Coloring it in was fun too, but I need to work on making my coloring more smooth. I'm going to do more of these with watercolors and colored pencils and see what technique I like best. Here is a picture of my first drawing.
Clearing: I am doing The Minimalist Game with a friend. We're on day 5 and so I have thrown out or put in the thrift store pile (1+2+3+4+5) 15 things! We're going to keep going until it becomes impossible to continue. I have also been organizing as I declutter and I have a sense of lightness I have not felt for awhile. I also removed everything from my altar and I am slowly putting meaningful items old and new onto it. I didn't find new rocks, but I anointed the ones from last year with essential oil and now they are shiny and fragrant!
Synchronicity: Every single day! I feel tuned into the energy of the universe and these little reminders of oneness continue to delight me!
Other: I am finding myself more tolerant of Cameron and her odd way of asserting her beliefs this time around. I know she is going to annoy and even offend me in future chapters, but I am prepared for that and ready to focus on the good aspects that are genuinely helpful.
I am going to read chapter 7 today and get to work on the tasks! Have a great week wherever you are in the book! And I look forward to reading your update! Thanks for reading mine!
posted by danabanana at 10:18 AM on June 25, 2023 [3 favorites]
Morning pages continue to be deeply rewarding. I love my morning routine and dumping my thoughts is very helpful. I was able to make some decisions, which was extremely helpful. I did them every day this week.
Artist date: I found this video about neurographic drawing and watched it several times, then watched a few more (they have a nice AMSR effect on me!) and then tried one myself. I got frustrated at first because I was doing the cornering backwards (convex instead of concave), but then I figured it out and discovered a fantastic new way to achieve flow. Everything else dissolved into the background as I drew with my Sharpie. Coloring it in was fun too, but I need to work on making my coloring more smooth. I'm going to do more of these with watercolors and colored pencils and see what technique I like best. Here is a picture of my first drawing.
Clearing: I am doing The Minimalist Game with a friend. We're on day 5 and so I have thrown out or put in the thrift store pile (1+2+3+4+5) 15 things! We're going to keep going until it becomes impossible to continue. I have also been organizing as I declutter and I have a sense of lightness I have not felt for awhile. I also removed everything from my altar and I am slowly putting meaningful items old and new onto it. I didn't find new rocks, but I anointed the ones from last year with essential oil and now they are shiny and fragrant!
Synchronicity: Every single day! I feel tuned into the energy of the universe and these little reminders of oneness continue to delight me!
Other: I am finding myself more tolerant of Cameron and her odd way of asserting her beliefs this time around. I know she is going to annoy and even offend me in future chapters, but I am prepared for that and ready to focus on the good aspects that are genuinely helpful.
I am going to read chapter 7 today and get to work on the tasks! Have a great week wherever you are in the book! And I look forward to reading your update! Thanks for reading mine!
posted by danabanana at 10:18 AM on June 25, 2023 [3 favorites]
Week 6 and 7 check in: hello, I am alive and I am out the other end of a two week gauntlet of grading finals, three academic events in two states plus online, and reading names at commencement.
I am 14/14 for daily pages but by necessity they were mostly evening pages. And for some reason, mornings I brain dump but evenings I tend toward fanfiction. Which is allowed I think, as long as I don’t go back and reread, which I haven’t been. It’s lately been one page of processing my day followed by two pages of Jason Todd going to rehab. A soothing thing to do while sitting in a hotel room on a business trip.
I only got one artist date—I went to ikea while I was in Portland for one of my trips and bought soft textured things. I got a sheepskin rug and a new blankie. Well it’s a throw but any little blanket for napping is a blankie to me.
My floor mirror and drawing table arrived and my spouse assembled them while I was gone. And I start two weeks of actual vacation after just a little more work tomorrow.
I haven’t actually read chapter 6 or 7 though, nor 8 which should hypothetically be this week. I am dying to get to week 9 but I don’t want to miss anything good in the book either. So I’m going to read as far as I can this week, and do what feels right.
posted by Tesseractive at 8:39 PM on June 25, 2023 [3 favorites]
I am 14/14 for daily pages but by necessity they were mostly evening pages. And for some reason, mornings I brain dump but evenings I tend toward fanfiction. Which is allowed I think, as long as I don’t go back and reread, which I haven’t been. It’s lately been one page of processing my day followed by two pages of Jason Todd going to rehab. A soothing thing to do while sitting in a hotel room on a business trip.
I only got one artist date—I went to ikea while I was in Portland for one of my trips and bought soft textured things. I got a sheepskin rug and a new blankie. Well it’s a throw but any little blanket for napping is a blankie to me.
My floor mirror and drawing table arrived and my spouse assembled them while I was gone. And I start two weeks of actual vacation after just a little more work tomorrow.
I haven’t actually read chapter 6 or 7 though, nor 8 which should hypothetically be this week. I am dying to get to week 9 but I don’t want to miss anything good in the book either. So I’m going to read as far as I can this week, and do what feels right.
posted by Tesseractive at 8:39 PM on June 25, 2023 [3 favorites]
Week 6 Check In: Recovering a Sense of Abundance
Had a good week & I'm glad that I spent a bit more time with this chapter. SunPower, your most recent update really inspired me! I put up some art in the kitchen, finally hung up the redwood mirror I inherited from my grandmother, fixed up the lamp I broke last month with some new shades. They're white glass, and when the lights are on they look like snowdrops glowing softly in the corner of the room. It's nice. My mom stopped by for an evening walk and noticed the changes, she says it all feels so inviting.
Right now there's banana bread in the over and I'm about to go paint a storage box. Since doing TAW last year, it feels easier now just to jump in and use whatever I have on hand. In this case, house paint and the stain we'd used to refinish the floors.
I think I only did morning pages twice this week! At least, the full three pages and then 1-2 pages most of the other days. But then some days I'd be scrubbing the kitchen counter or whatever and all of a sudden I'd get smacked in the brain by these vivid images from a story I'm working on. I'd have throw down the sponge and rush to find a pen and then write very quickly to keep up with it all, things I really have no idea where they come from. There's a FIGHT SCENE this week! Like, actual combat! It's scary and thrilling! I've never written anything like it. Everyone's so alive in these scenes.
That started for me around week six last year as well, it's like being possessed but in the best possible way. Also frequent magnetic sort of draw to clean and move furniture. Remarkable.
SunPower, I am cheering you on with the houseclearing. It must feel amazing! I have a garage that needs similar attention and I will aim for a similar timeframe.
betweenthebars, 6/7 is beyond terrific! Did you ever find your way to Brooklyn Botanic Garden? I used to live along the west side of Prospect Park and whenever I made the trek it was totally worth it.
eirias, I hear you. I had a job interview this week and this whole process has thrown me off track with TAW. Like, it feels a lot like trying to tune into a radio while going through a mountain tunnel. I've been thinking a lot about how to balance work and creative stuff, also how to help them energize each other. I'm not sure how.
spamandkimchi I had not heard of Saussure's cyanometer! And now I have the perfect idea for an artist date in the coming weeks. For now, it's a secret. That book looks amazing, will have to check it out.
danabanana, I love your art, it looks just like stained glass! I'm saving the rocks task for my next trip to the Arkansas River. If I remember correctly there's a chapter coming up that I'm generally meh on, so I'm saving a fun past task for that week...
Have a great week!
posted by mochapickle at 8:55 PM on June 25, 2023 [4 favorites]
Had a good week & I'm glad that I spent a bit more time with this chapter. SunPower, your most recent update really inspired me! I put up some art in the kitchen, finally hung up the redwood mirror I inherited from my grandmother, fixed up the lamp I broke last month with some new shades. They're white glass, and when the lights are on they look like snowdrops glowing softly in the corner of the room. It's nice. My mom stopped by for an evening walk and noticed the changes, she says it all feels so inviting.
Right now there's banana bread in the over and I'm about to go paint a storage box. Since doing TAW last year, it feels easier now just to jump in and use whatever I have on hand. In this case, house paint and the stain we'd used to refinish the floors.
I think I only did morning pages twice this week! At least, the full three pages and then 1-2 pages most of the other days. But then some days I'd be scrubbing the kitchen counter or whatever and all of a sudden I'd get smacked in the brain by these vivid images from a story I'm working on. I'd have throw down the sponge and rush to find a pen and then write very quickly to keep up with it all, things I really have no idea where they come from. There's a FIGHT SCENE this week! Like, actual combat! It's scary and thrilling! I've never written anything like it. Everyone's so alive in these scenes.
That started for me around week six last year as well, it's like being possessed but in the best possible way. Also frequent magnetic sort of draw to clean and move furniture. Remarkable.
SunPower, I am cheering you on with the houseclearing. It must feel amazing! I have a garage that needs similar attention and I will aim for a similar timeframe.
betweenthebars, 6/7 is beyond terrific! Did you ever find your way to Brooklyn Botanic Garden? I used to live along the west side of Prospect Park and whenever I made the trek it was totally worth it.
eirias, I hear you. I had a job interview this week and this whole process has thrown me off track with TAW. Like, it feels a lot like trying to tune into a radio while going through a mountain tunnel. I've been thinking a lot about how to balance work and creative stuff, also how to help them energize each other. I'm not sure how.
spamandkimchi I had not heard of Saussure's cyanometer! And now I have the perfect idea for an artist date in the coming weeks. For now, it's a secret. That book looks amazing, will have to check it out.
danabanana, I love your art, it looks just like stained glass! I'm saving the rocks task for my next trip to the Arkansas River. If I remember correctly there's a chapter coming up that I'm generally meh on, so I'm saving a fun past task for that week...
Have a great week!
posted by mochapickle at 8:55 PM on June 25, 2023 [4 favorites]
Tesseractive, I just found your comment after posting my own and I enjoyed it with a molten hot slab of banana bread fresh out of the oven and a glass of almond milk. It sounds like your lair is coming along magnificently...
posted by mochapickle at 9:12 PM on June 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by mochapickle at 9:12 PM on June 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
So I am working my way through the Wonder Seeker book (I'm procrastinating from the Artist's Way by doing an adjacent practice? Afternoon pages and some muddled introspection here I come), and was inspired by #15 so much that I made a post on the blue and actually "wrote" a spine poem.
posted by spamandkimchi at 1:33 PM on June 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by spamandkimchi at 1:33 PM on June 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
Weak 6 and Week 7 update:
These past two weeks have been emotionally challenging for me, but I was able to do my morning pages every single day. Expressing my frustrations on the morning pages helped me navigate through each day. Despite the difficulties, there were moments that brought me joy. During a walk in the park, I gathered wild flowers and preserved them in a book. Additionally, I indulged myself baking a strawberry cake, filling my home with a comforting aroma that lifted my spirits.
I've been making progress with decluttering as well. Through Nextdoor, I discovered someone who was interested in the items I was planning to discard. This motivated me to push myself to get things out sooner than expected. Everything is ready now in boxes to be dropped off. As I struggled emotionally, I sought solace by visiting my place of worship three times this week, which provided me with some peace of mind. I also got some all-natural incense from Etsy, which filled my house with a wonderful fragrance.
I may continue to do some of the exercises from week 6 & 7 but starting week 8.
posted by SunPower at 9:04 AM on July 2, 2023 [2 favorites]
These past two weeks have been emotionally challenging for me, but I was able to do my morning pages every single day. Expressing my frustrations on the morning pages helped me navigate through each day. Despite the difficulties, there were moments that brought me joy. During a walk in the park, I gathered wild flowers and preserved them in a book. Additionally, I indulged myself baking a strawberry cake, filling my home with a comforting aroma that lifted my spirits.
I've been making progress with decluttering as well. Through Nextdoor, I discovered someone who was interested in the items I was planning to discard. This motivated me to push myself to get things out sooner than expected. Everything is ready now in boxes to be dropped off. As I struggled emotionally, I sought solace by visiting my place of worship three times this week, which provided me with some peace of mind. I also got some all-natural incense from Etsy, which filled my house with a wonderful fragrance.
I may continue to do some of the exercises from week 6 & 7 but starting week 8.
posted by SunPower at 9:04 AM on July 2, 2023 [2 favorites]
Week 7: This was a bizarre week for me, with several low energy days that had me skipping morning pages (once) and doing only one or two pages. Then I found myself feeling much better and doing proper pages and crafting for my artist date and continuing to do some clearing. I still have much to do in that area, but I have decluttered a lot and have several bags to take to the thrift shop.
But! Even though I was not fully engaged by the program this week, I did manage to do a few tasks. I sat in the grass under a tree with my dog and it was peaceful and lovely. I used lavender body wash every time I showered, and it scented the bathroom and bedroom with its amazing fragrance. I listened to music as I crafted. Some of the crafting was collage; I did a sort of "good vibes" theme but am unable to get a good picture of it. Its place of honor is in my junk journal!
I am about to finish my college ruled notebook and will be switching to wide ruled this week. I'm strangely excited about this little thing!
I am looking forward to the next week but I have yet to reread the chapter and I don't recall what it entails. I'll find out later today!
posted by danabanana at 5:29 PM on July 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
But! Even though I was not fully engaged by the program this week, I did manage to do a few tasks. I sat in the grass under a tree with my dog and it was peaceful and lovely. I used lavender body wash every time I showered, and it scented the bathroom and bedroom with its amazing fragrance. I listened to music as I crafted. Some of the crafting was collage; I did a sort of "good vibes" theme but am unable to get a good picture of it. Its place of honor is in my junk journal!
I am about to finish my college ruled notebook and will be switching to wide ruled this week. I'm strangely excited about this little thing!
I am looking forward to the next week but I have yet to reread the chapter and I don't recall what it entails. I'll find out later today!
posted by danabanana at 5:29 PM on July 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
Well, my eighth week of the artist’s way, where I decided to catch up on chapters 6 and 7, went fine. I’m 7/7 on pages.
I am right now attempting to take two weeks of vacation and sort of failing, and I keep looking at my email anyway, which is a reminder of how badly I need some of Julia Cameron’s annoying lessons. I take a lot of psychic damage from my job and it’s all the more noticeable when I’m trying to set boundaries and keep time for myself. Maybe by week 12 I will have figured out how to quit, but I’ve never quit a job before, they’ve all just ended.
I am somewhat annoyed at her restrictions artist dates have to be by yourself because that precludes good hiking safety practices out here in mountain lion country. So this week I had a friend take me on a hike to see where the egrets are nesting and I’m counting it even though I was accompanied. Seeing 100 huge water birds nesting in the tops of ponderosa pines and seeing their weird muppety babies and listening to how loud they all are filled me with wonder.
I’m on to chapter 8 next week.
posted by Tesseractive at 10:31 AM on July 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
I am right now attempting to take two weeks of vacation and sort of failing, and I keep looking at my email anyway, which is a reminder of how badly I need some of Julia Cameron’s annoying lessons. I take a lot of psychic damage from my job and it’s all the more noticeable when I’m trying to set boundaries and keep time for myself. Maybe by week 12 I will have figured out how to quit, but I’ve never quit a job before, they’ve all just ended.
I am somewhat annoyed at her restrictions artist dates have to be by yourself because that precludes good hiking safety practices out here in mountain lion country. So this week I had a friend take me on a hike to see where the egrets are nesting and I’m counting it even though I was accompanied. Seeing 100 huge water birds nesting in the tops of ponderosa pines and seeing their weird muppety babies and listening to how loud they all are filled me with wonder.
I’m on to chapter 8 next week.
posted by Tesseractive at 10:31 AM on July 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
SunPower: Wow, you are making huge strides! The clearing you have done is impressive, and the cake you baked sounds wonderful! Yay for doing pages every day!
Tesseractive: Yay you too for daily morning pages! I understand your frustration about Cameron's requirements for solo artist dates! I'm legally blind and can't drive, and we are too far from town to walk there. So I have to rely on my husband if I want to explore anything in town. Your hike sounds fantastic! We live in a ponderosa pine forest, but sadly we have no nesting egrets! I hope that you are able to find some resolution with your job. I'm rooting for you!
posted by danabanana at 1:07 PM on July 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
Tesseractive: Yay you too for daily morning pages! I understand your frustration about Cameron's requirements for solo artist dates! I'm legally blind and can't drive, and we are too far from town to walk there. So I have to rely on my husband if I want to explore anything in town. Your hike sounds fantastic! We live in a ponderosa pine forest, but sadly we have no nesting egrets! I hope that you are able to find some resolution with your job. I'm rooting for you!
posted by danabanana at 1:07 PM on July 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
Week 8 Check-In:
Morning Pages: I was only 4/7 this week. Truth is, I had a row with my partner that really threw me off emotionally for the whole week. I'm not fully recovered from it but we both agreed on a mediation plan, so hopefully heading in the right direction.
Artist Day Out: The artist day out also didn't happen, though I did do sitting mediation a number of days, so there was still some time for myself in there. Does binge (re)watching Foundation Season 1 episodes count? I'm a fan of the composer, Bear McCreary, so I watched with careful attention to the scoring. Yeah: I think that counts. I have a huge artist day out schedule for Week 10 that I'm looking forward to. More details to come.
Synchronicity: Synchronicity was happening all over the place this week in small ways. A few things I put out into the universe came back to me: like this idea I've been toying with for a few years of diving into wine. Not literally, but like sommelier-style. =) Not sure if anything will come of it, but keeping my eyes open.
posted by johnxlibris at 5:37 PM on July 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
Morning Pages: I was only 4/7 this week. Truth is, I had a row with my partner that really threw me off emotionally for the whole week. I'm not fully recovered from it but we both agreed on a mediation plan, so hopefully heading in the right direction.
Artist Day Out: The artist day out also didn't happen, though I did do sitting mediation a number of days, so there was still some time for myself in there. Does binge (re)watching Foundation Season 1 episodes count? I'm a fan of the composer, Bear McCreary, so I watched with careful attention to the scoring. Yeah: I think that counts. I have a huge artist day out schedule for Week 10 that I'm looking forward to. More details to come.
Synchronicity: Synchronicity was happening all over the place this week in small ways. A few things I put out into the universe came back to me: like this idea I've been toying with for a few years of diving into wine. Not literally, but like sommelier-style. =) Not sure if anything will come of it, but keeping my eyes open.
posted by johnxlibris at 5:37 PM on July 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
Week 7: 6/7
Week 8: 5/7
Week 9: happening now!
I'm enjoying reading everyone's updates. It's good to see other people having breakthroughs, and/or struggling but still going.
posted by betweenthebars at 7:17 PM on July 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
Week 8: 5/7
Week 9: happening now!
I'm enjoying reading everyone's updates. It's good to see other people having breakthroughs, and/or struggling but still going.
posted by betweenthebars at 7:17 PM on July 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
johnxlibris: I believe meditation and binge watching count as artist dates! Looking forward to your big one coming up. Your wine plans sound fun! Good luck with your gift from the universe!
betweenthebars: Strong work on the pages! I agree that the updates from others make the process more interesting and helpful!
posted by danabanana at 9:20 PM on July 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
betweenthebars: Strong work on the pages! I agree that the updates from others make the process more interesting and helpful!
posted by danabanana at 9:20 PM on July 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
Hi again! It's the middle of the night and I'm jetlagged. Back at home after what feels like a much longer stretch away than just three weeks and a bit. So much to take in and react to and think about. I didn't spend much time alone either, but that's okay, it all still counts. Pages every day but two.
Week 8 felt very serious, like a turning point. What exactly would I'd like to accomplish? What little things can I do today, tomorrow, this week, next week, to make that happen? I can't believe in Julia's God but I have rough confidence in a sort of priming process, like the pop-science metaphor of resonant entrainment, helping me spot the ropes and pulleys I'll need to make bigger things out of the little ones.
I looked at last year's thread and wanted to hug mochapickle when I saw What if there's no story there? What if there's no story anywhere? [...] a sheer sense of terror that I had nothing important to say, and in doing so I was ignoring the pleasure and process of creation -- which is the whole point, the best part of everything because yes, exactly.
posted by tangerine at 2:48 AM on July 4, 2023 [3 favorites]
Week 8 felt very serious, like a turning point. What exactly would I'd like to accomplish? What little things can I do today, tomorrow, this week, next week, to make that happen? I can't believe in Julia's God but I have rough confidence in a sort of priming process, like the pop-science metaphor of resonant entrainment, helping me spot the ropes and pulleys I'll need to make bigger things out of the little ones.
I looked at last year's thread and wanted to hug mochapickle when I saw What if there's no story there? What if there's no story anywhere? [...] a sheer sense of terror that I had nothing important to say, and in doing so I was ignoring the pleasure and process of creation -- which is the whole point, the best part of everything because yes, exactly.
posted by tangerine at 2:48 AM on July 4, 2023 [3 favorites]
tangerine: Welcome home! I agree that chapter 8 seems quite serious, and the overall experience can be done without Cameron's religiosity. I'm doing it this week and I like the planning aspect. That comment from mochapickle is spot on, and I often want to hug her when I read her words. Impeccable!
posted by danabanana at 5:17 PM on July 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by danabanana at 5:17 PM on July 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
I’m pretty behind - just finished week 6. I had two weeks of kind of bad morning pages - hitting maybe 4-5 out of 7. I was traveling for work and it’s just not possible some work days to get up at 5am to do the pages or stay up after working until 8. I was wondering what it would be like when I was working and I can work morning pages in most days except the super long ones in the middle that are 16-18 hour long days. I didn’t feel comfortable moving forward until I gave myself more days to do weeks 5 and 6.
This past week I was 6/7. I thought about creative luxury and it’s interesting because I don’t think I’m too stingy about direct art supplies but I am stingy about giving my artist both free time and space in an environment to create (it’s not about money). And though I did buy new paints and brushes the past few months, the more I think about it the more I realize I have traditionally been stingy — the brushes I usually use are from high school… 30 years ago. And back the they were old ones my teacher let me have. So it wasn’t luxurious at all to buy a new set! I’m currently cleaning out my apartment and trying to make myself throw out stuff I just don’t use. I have a lot of paper, bottles, boxes, and other used things I’ve saved to “make art” and I’ve barely touched it. I wonder if I throw it out as a fresh start?
My artist date was biking downtown 45 minutes to an appointment and swinging by the art museum for a few hours afterwards. I sketched two pages—the first in a Roman and Greek area I never look at and then some of my favorite modern art. I’ve drawn some of those paintings 3 or 4 times but I think this time was the closest I’ve gotten to the feeling of them. Bonus was walking through the prairie garden across the street. I’ve also been spending time in my garden watching the bees. There’s at least 5 differently shapes “bees” enjoying my flowers. I planted strawflowers fro seed for the first time this year and they’re gorgeous.
I threw out a “around the house” sweater I wore as a robe the entire last year of my failing relationship. It feels wasteful but it feels freeing not to see it reminding me of the sad stuff I’m trying to get past.
posted by Bunglegirl at 4:33 PM on July 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
This past week I was 6/7. I thought about creative luxury and it’s interesting because I don’t think I’m too stingy about direct art supplies but I am stingy about giving my artist both free time and space in an environment to create (it’s not about money). And though I did buy new paints and brushes the past few months, the more I think about it the more I realize I have traditionally been stingy — the brushes I usually use are from high school… 30 years ago. And back the they were old ones my teacher let me have. So it wasn’t luxurious at all to buy a new set! I’m currently cleaning out my apartment and trying to make myself throw out stuff I just don’t use. I have a lot of paper, bottles, boxes, and other used things I’ve saved to “make art” and I’ve barely touched it. I wonder if I throw it out as a fresh start?
My artist date was biking downtown 45 minutes to an appointment and swinging by the art museum for a few hours afterwards. I sketched two pages—the first in a Roman and Greek area I never look at and then some of my favorite modern art. I’ve drawn some of those paintings 3 or 4 times but I think this time was the closest I’ve gotten to the feeling of them. Bonus was walking through the prairie garden across the street. I’ve also been spending time in my garden watching the bees. There’s at least 5 differently shapes “bees” enjoying my flowers. I planted strawflowers fro seed for the first time this year and they’re gorgeous.
I threw out a “around the house” sweater I wore as a robe the entire last year of my failing relationship. It feels wasteful but it feels freeing not to see it reminding me of the sad stuff I’m trying to get past.
posted by Bunglegirl at 4:33 PM on July 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
Hi all! This is my week 8 check-in:
Morning pages 7/7 and they remain wonderful and helpful and they are a great habit that I am so very grateful for. And I write about this gratitude in my pages! I started a wide rule notebook and I love it! More room for writing really big when impassioned, doodling, and notes to future self.
I am still treating artist dates as focused time spent crafting, and I try to do something creative and a bit different every day. This week I made a "ransom note" card (you are!!!) that was great fun! One day was looking for and fussy cutting letters, and the next day was the layout and the gluing. I really enjoyed this project and I look forward to doing another one.
The tasks were interesting, but I did not write anything down. I did mind tasks and just spent time thinking about the prompts. I know that writing longhand boosts the power of my words, but I wanted to spend my time doing other things. I might do a creative u-turn one week and revisit the tasks when I am in the right headspace.
I love all the synchronicity in my life! One example: I was thinking about an internet friend and a few minutes later I checked my messages and she had contacted me right when I was thinking about her. I told her about it and now we share some of our serendipity moments. So that was fun, as are the tiny ones that feel like the universe winking at me!
I'm in the middle of week 8 and I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest has in store for me!
posted by danabanana at 12:00 PM on July 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
Morning pages 7/7 and they remain wonderful and helpful and they are a great habit that I am so very grateful for. And I write about this gratitude in my pages! I started a wide rule notebook and I love it! More room for writing really big when impassioned, doodling, and notes to future self.
I am still treating artist dates as focused time spent crafting, and I try to do something creative and a bit different every day. This week I made a "ransom note" card (you are!!!) that was great fun! One day was looking for and fussy cutting letters, and the next day was the layout and the gluing. I really enjoyed this project and I look forward to doing another one.
The tasks were interesting, but I did not write anything down. I did mind tasks and just spent time thinking about the prompts. I know that writing longhand boosts the power of my words, but I wanted to spend my time doing other things. I might do a creative u-turn one week and revisit the tasks when I am in the right headspace.
I love all the synchronicity in my life! One example: I was thinking about an internet friend and a few minutes later I checked my messages and she had contacted me right when I was thinking about her. I told her about it and now we share some of our serendipity moments. So that was fun, as are the tiny ones that feel like the universe winking at me!
I'm in the middle of week 8 and I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest has in store for me!
posted by danabanana at 12:00 PM on July 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
This is my late week 8 check in. I was 6/7 because I got distracted playing a video game called Heaven's Vault (it's amazing and the puzzles are mainly translating a made up hieroglypic language, but it's like a really well done conlang) and by the time I noticed I hadn't done my pages it was 2 am the next day. Oh well. Not all games are good for one's artist but I suspect this one is.
I had an artist's date of going to the craft store, but I got a shadowbox and made it an afternoon of organizing and displaying my pin collection. I collect enamel pins and vintage brooches and while I need to do a little bit more securing so I can actually hang it on a wall, it was nice to see them all in one place, for the most part. Here's a bad photo.
So, this week I've been doing week 9. I am halfway through reading my pages and tbh I'm not sure what I expected or wanted so bad. It's pretty clear from the first notebook that...this is process writing not product writing. I think the frequency of my interesting insights does tick up as you get to the second and third notebooks though. (I'm halfway through a third notebook right now. I use Decomposition Books and only write on one side.)
Synchronicities are hit or miss. It seems trivial that "Paperback Writer" came on the radio right after I did the week 8 goal setting activity about publishing a book but...I never hear the Beatles on the radio? It was at least weird. Bigger things have definitely procced but I feel really ambivalent about them.
Onward I guess?
posted by Tesseractive at 5:52 PM on July 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
I had an artist's date of going to the craft store, but I got a shadowbox and made it an afternoon of organizing and displaying my pin collection. I collect enamel pins and vintage brooches and while I need to do a little bit more securing so I can actually hang it on a wall, it was nice to see them all in one place, for the most part. Here's a bad photo.
So, this week I've been doing week 9. I am halfway through reading my pages and tbh I'm not sure what I expected or wanted so bad. It's pretty clear from the first notebook that...this is process writing not product writing. I think the frequency of my interesting insights does tick up as you get to the second and third notebooks though. (I'm halfway through a third notebook right now. I use Decomposition Books and only write on one side.)
Synchronicities are hit or miss. It seems trivial that "Paperback Writer" came on the radio right after I did the week 8 goal setting activity about publishing a book but...I never hear the Beatles on the radio? It was at least weird. Bigger things have definitely procced but I feel really ambivalent about them.
Onward I guess?
posted by Tesseractive at 5:52 PM on July 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
Week 9: 6/7
Week 10: 7/7
I feel weirdly hesitant discussing how I'm finally making progress on a stalled project because what if it doesn't last?
No artist's date last week because it is hard to motivate myself to do something "extra" when the weather is disgusting. Maybe I need to tell myself it's a necessity, not a bonus.
posted by betweenthebars at 8:19 AM on July 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
Week 10: 7/7
I feel weirdly hesitant discussing how I'm finally making progress on a stalled project because what if it doesn't last?
No artist's date last week because it is hard to motivate myself to do something "extra" when the weather is disgusting. Maybe I need to tell myself it's a necessity, not a bonus.
posted by betweenthebars at 8:19 AM on July 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
Hello from the end of Week 9!
This week I started doing a daily walk around my neighborhood before it gets too hot and it's been such a joy. The linden trees are in bloom this month and there are lots of them here, so the air smells like honey and jasmine, so strong it catches in your clothes and hair. I'll pass pink-cheeked neighbors getting an early start on gardening, cats asleep on porches, clouds of fine mist from the automatic sprinklers. Yesterday, just down the block, in the break between songs on my headphones, I heard a soft clucking. Chickens. Through the narrow gaps of the neighbors' tall wooden fence, I could just barely see four of them gently ruffling their feathers. They were big white puffy things, like popcorn.
Walking seems to dislodge thoughts a bit in favor of clarity, for better or for worse. I sometimes catch myself feeling super emotional out of absolutely nowhere, and I don't like it. I was cranky around this time last year, too -- there was some medical stuff happening so I mostly chalked it up to that, but even on a second round of TAW I'm still discovering a certain sadness/frustration/fury that happens when you peel away a long-settled layer of cruft. There's damp leaves there. Scuttling beetles, the scent of earth, veins of mold and salt.
I'd avoided outdoor artist dates the first part of this round due to the constant rain, but I'm enjoying them now. Last week, the dog and I drove down to the lake in Pueblo, explored the marinas, ended up in the middle a thunderstorm that brought all the boats in with great white wakes behind them. The week before that, inspired spamandkimchi's comment about Saussure's cyanometer, I ventured up to Skyspace for a sunrise view, which meant zooming up the mountain pass alone at 4 a.m. I nearly talked myself out of it but I'm so glad I went and I've thought about it every day since. I wonder what Saussure would have thought about that square of emerging light changing from violet to a glowing, almost liquid emerald green.
I'm continuing to rearrange things -- like, I'm excited about being able to watercolor more easily, so instead of sorting through the giant canvas bag full of supplies and having to clean that all up every session, I have a small palette and a few brushes out and a jar for water, and right now that's stacked neatly on the dining room table. So it's easy for me to spend 20 minutes here or there working on transparency or blending or some random technique from instagram without it feeling so formal and defined.
I didn't go back and read all my morning pages for Week 9. I didn't last year, either. But I did gather up the pages where I'd made stars in the corner for future reference and read through those. Although I've written something in some form almost every day, I skipped several mornings over the past few weeks. I feel fine about it -- I started them up again and it feels like maybe a short break was even helpful.
I've loved reading all of your updates and sharing this experience with all of you! On to Week 10!
posted by mochapickle at 6:15 PM on July 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
This week I started doing a daily walk around my neighborhood before it gets too hot and it's been such a joy. The linden trees are in bloom this month and there are lots of them here, so the air smells like honey and jasmine, so strong it catches in your clothes and hair. I'll pass pink-cheeked neighbors getting an early start on gardening, cats asleep on porches, clouds of fine mist from the automatic sprinklers. Yesterday, just down the block, in the break between songs on my headphones, I heard a soft clucking. Chickens. Through the narrow gaps of the neighbors' tall wooden fence, I could just barely see four of them gently ruffling their feathers. They were big white puffy things, like popcorn.
Walking seems to dislodge thoughts a bit in favor of clarity, for better or for worse. I sometimes catch myself feeling super emotional out of absolutely nowhere, and I don't like it. I was cranky around this time last year, too -- there was some medical stuff happening so I mostly chalked it up to that, but even on a second round of TAW I'm still discovering a certain sadness/frustration/fury that happens when you peel away a long-settled layer of cruft. There's damp leaves there. Scuttling beetles, the scent of earth, veins of mold and salt.
I'd avoided outdoor artist dates the first part of this round due to the constant rain, but I'm enjoying them now. Last week, the dog and I drove down to the lake in Pueblo, explored the marinas, ended up in the middle a thunderstorm that brought all the boats in with great white wakes behind them. The week before that, inspired spamandkimchi's comment about Saussure's cyanometer, I ventured up to Skyspace for a sunrise view, which meant zooming up the mountain pass alone at 4 a.m. I nearly talked myself out of it but I'm so glad I went and I've thought about it every day since. I wonder what Saussure would have thought about that square of emerging light changing from violet to a glowing, almost liquid emerald green.
I'm continuing to rearrange things -- like, I'm excited about being able to watercolor more easily, so instead of sorting through the giant canvas bag full of supplies and having to clean that all up every session, I have a small palette and a few brushes out and a jar for water, and right now that's stacked neatly on the dining room table. So it's easy for me to spend 20 minutes here or there working on transparency or blending or some random technique from instagram without it feeling so formal and defined.
I didn't go back and read all my morning pages for Week 9. I didn't last year, either. But I did gather up the pages where I'd made stars in the corner for future reference and read through those. Although I've written something in some form almost every day, I skipped several mornings over the past few weeks. I feel fine about it -- I started them up again and it feels like maybe a short break was even helpful.
I've loved reading all of your updates and sharing this experience with all of you! On to Week 10!
posted by mochapickle at 6:15 PM on July 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
Hi all. It's good to read what everyone's up to.
It's been taking me ages to read through my existing pages, because since there were so many travel observations, I'm also making notes as I go. It occurs to me as I write this that I don't have to hold everything up because of this. I could actually move on to week 10. I guess I'll read the chapter after this.
bunglegirl, there were strawflowers where I used to live and yes they are gorgeous.
danabana, that's a great ransom note card. Lucky recipient!
tesseractive, process writing rather than product writing: agreed, exactly.
betweenthebars, I hesitate to say anything about progress on a formerly stalled project, too!
mochapickle, I walk through the neighborhood here nearly every morning and wouldn't miss it for anything. And we have chickens! One of ours is fluffy and white like popcorn too. The other is a sleek, elegant silvery grey. We might add two or three more later this summer.
I didn't skip any whole days of pages, but there were half-rations on the weekend.
posted by tangerine at 11:33 AM on July 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
It's been taking me ages to read through my existing pages, because since there were so many travel observations, I'm also making notes as I go. It occurs to me as I write this that I don't have to hold everything up because of this. I could actually move on to week 10. I guess I'll read the chapter after this.
bunglegirl, there were strawflowers where I used to live and yes they are gorgeous.
danabana, that's a great ransom note card. Lucky recipient!
tesseractive, process writing rather than product writing: agreed, exactly.
betweenthebars, I hesitate to say anything about progress on a formerly stalled project, too!
mochapickle, I walk through the neighborhood here nearly every morning and wouldn't miss it for anything. And we have chickens! One of ours is fluffy and white like popcorn too. The other is a sleek, elegant silvery grey. We might add two or three more later this summer.
I didn't skip any whole days of pages, but there were half-rations on the weekend.
posted by tangerine at 11:33 AM on July 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
Week 7. 7/7 morning pages. I've been pretty good about writing although my notebooks are smaller than letter or A4 size. I usually aim for writing for half an hour but I get so distracted and my mind wanders. Sometimes I don't make it through the first sentence before I find myself staring off into space. I've been using morning pages to finally use notebooks people had given me and I've been "saving." Through this book so far I've realized I just need to use stuff, do stuff, and generally get on with it.
I should be in week 8 or 9 now. I've been falling behind because I'd rather read a novel than the next chapter, oops. Also, it feels like there's a lot of tasks and I don't want to move on until I get most of them done. I'll get there eventually. I'm not feeling very creative lately for some reason although I do have quite a bit of energy (maybe that new vitamin D pill is kicking in!).
I totally forgot about the art I have been making. It's new. I realized early on in this process that I miss taking art classes and started a pottery wheel throwing class for the first time. I had a talk with my artist before the first class to remind her that she has never done pottery and even though it's "art" she will not be good at it and it's okay. I'm enjoying letting myself play, get messy, and am taking advantage of the free open studio time you can book all week long. So I guess I am being creative but just not in my usual way.
mochapickle, I'm so glad you had that Skyspace experience. I saw the one at Rice University in Houston years ago and it was transformational. I've wondered how I could recreate that experience/feeling at home. I feel that way a little about the Rothko chapel in Houston too. I don't live there but I end up there for work often enough to have visited a lot of art.
posted by Bunglegirl at 11:07 AM on July 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
I should be in week 8 or 9 now. I've been falling behind because I'd rather read a novel than the next chapter, oops. Also, it feels like there's a lot of tasks and I don't want to move on until I get most of them done. I'll get there eventually. I'm not feeling very creative lately for some reason although I do have quite a bit of energy (maybe that new vitamin D pill is kicking in!).
I totally forgot about the art I have been making. It's new. I realized early on in this process that I miss taking art classes and started a pottery wheel throwing class for the first time. I had a talk with my artist before the first class to remind her that she has never done pottery and even though it's "art" she will not be good at it and it's okay. I'm enjoying letting myself play, get messy, and am taking advantage of the free open studio time you can book all week long. So I guess I am being creative but just not in my usual way.
mochapickle, I'm so glad you had that Skyspace experience. I saw the one at Rice University in Houston years ago and it was transformational. I've wondered how I could recreate that experience/feeling at home. I feel that way a little about the Rothko chapel in Houston too. I don't live there but I end up there for work often enough to have visited a lot of art.
posted by Bunglegirl at 11:07 AM on July 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
Week 10/11:
Daily pages: The last two weeks were all over the board because I was on vacation (yay!), but I did my morning pages more often than not.
Artist's Day Out: I was in vacation with my family in Maui, so I took a solo trip to the top of Haleakalā to watch the sunrise. It was a cosmic, magical experience. Before sunrise, I could see the Milky Way. Living in Los Angeles, I never get to see starts like that! Watching the sun rise at 10,000 feet is like nothing I've seen before: you could see all the colors of light.
Synchronicity: I'm an academic and, as such, I have to write and publish. I've been between projects for sometime and flailing around looking for the next one. Well, a project fell into my lap last week that I'm really excited about and just a the right time (before the semester begins, I have the time and attention to work on it).
posted by johnxlibris at 10:19 AM on July 23, 2023 [3 favorites]
Daily pages: The last two weeks were all over the board because I was on vacation (yay!), but I did my morning pages more often than not.
Artist's Day Out: I was in vacation with my family in Maui, so I took a solo trip to the top of Haleakalā to watch the sunrise. It was a cosmic, magical experience. Before sunrise, I could see the Milky Way. Living in Los Angeles, I never get to see starts like that! Watching the sun rise at 10,000 feet is like nothing I've seen before: you could see all the colors of light.
Synchronicity: I'm an academic and, as such, I have to write and publish. I've been between projects for sometime and flailing around looking for the next one. Well, a project fell into my lap last week that I'm really excited about and just a the right time (before the semester begins, I have the time and attention to work on it).
posted by johnxlibris at 10:19 AM on July 23, 2023 [3 favorites]
Week 10 I only went 4/7 pages and no artist date, though I did leave the house to socialize in several ways I haven't tried since before COVID. I re-started pages today.
I find "respecting the streak" is a good motivation for my brain, but not always good for my body as a disabled person. My chronic pain can make writing hard, and I need to be careful about picking up habits that encourage me to push myself into the "whoops now I hurt too much to wash my hair" zone (though to be fair that's not just pages, but pages PLUS "I'm going to be a super productive artist and writer now!" thinking). If I continue the pages habit maybe I will get a smaller notebook, lol.
I wish I could be the kind of person who gets consulted about haunted dolls on paranormal reality tv shows, instead of or in addition to being an academic that writes boring papers about how to teach lab report writing. I'm trying to find ways to feed my spooky self.
posted by Tesseractive at 10:57 AM on July 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
I find "respecting the streak" is a good motivation for my brain, but not always good for my body as a disabled person. My chronic pain can make writing hard, and I need to be careful about picking up habits that encourage me to push myself into the "whoops now I hurt too much to wash my hair" zone (though to be fair that's not just pages, but pages PLUS "I'm going to be a super productive artist and writer now!" thinking). If I continue the pages habit maybe I will get a smaller notebook, lol.
I wish I could be the kind of person who gets consulted about haunted dolls on paranormal reality tv shows, instead of or in addition to being an academic that writes boring papers about how to teach lab report writing. I'm trying to find ways to feed my spooky self.
posted by Tesseractive at 10:57 AM on July 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
I missed morning pages one day and then we went on vacation for few days. The whole week went by without writing the pages. Was very busy packing/preparing before the vacation and then the days after, was tired doing tons of laundry. But the vacation was good. We went hiking, picnicking and strolling along the lake side. It was very refreshing as the weather was perfect without rain for few days.
When I started to write my pages yesterday, I saw the pressed flowers ( from one of the exercises) inside the book. I am excited to do some art with that. Will be starting week 10.
posted by SunPower at 1:15 PM on July 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
When I started to write my pages yesterday, I saw the pressed flowers ( from one of the exercises) inside the book. I am excited to do some art with that. Will be starting week 10.
posted by SunPower at 1:15 PM on July 25, 2023 [2 favorites]
So week 10 was all about blocks. Sure, I have some. Here are some thoughts.
- I have a full-time job, a rambunctious young dog, and a long-neglected 1930s house undergoing a lot of DIY restoration. It can be genuinely difficult to figure out how much time I can justifiably devote to writing esp given that my husband's non-job, discretionary activities are almost all house-related and for the common good.
- The biggest avoidance/deflection activity for me, aside from reading general crap online, is stuff exactly like this: TAW, Story Club, and other activities that are supposedly helpful. In other words, doing things that are about, but not what I'm doing.
- I'm not over worrying about what people think. Will I come off as pretentious? (Fine line between pretentious and zany.) Trivial? (Middle-aged middle-class white people literary navelgazing, the kind of thing people on Metafilter patronizingly explain that they hate reading? God forbid I should reveal myself as "one of those people.") I don't know why I give a rat's ass, but that kind of thing bugs me more than I'd like to admit.
I was delighted to read about Bunglegirl's pottery, johnxlibris's sunrise, SunPower's pressed flowers, and I'll keep Tesseractive in mind for all my haunted doll information needs.
This has gone by faster than I expected, even though I dawdled for a few weeks. Off to read week 11.
posted by tangerine at 7:14 PM on July 25, 2023 [3 favorites]
- I have a full-time job, a rambunctious young dog, and a long-neglected 1930s house undergoing a lot of DIY restoration. It can be genuinely difficult to figure out how much time I can justifiably devote to writing esp given that my husband's non-job, discretionary activities are almost all house-related and for the common good.
- The biggest avoidance/deflection activity for me, aside from reading general crap online, is stuff exactly like this: TAW, Story Club, and other activities that are supposedly helpful. In other words, doing things that are about, but not what I'm doing.
- I'm not over worrying about what people think. Will I come off as pretentious? (Fine line between pretentious and zany.) Trivial? (Middle-aged middle-class white people literary navelgazing, the kind of thing people on Metafilter patronizingly explain that they hate reading? God forbid I should reveal myself as "one of those people.") I don't know why I give a rat's ass, but that kind of thing bugs me more than I'd like to admit.
I was delighted to read about Bunglegirl's pottery, johnxlibris's sunrise, SunPower's pressed flowers, and I'll keep Tesseractive in mind for all my haunted doll information needs.
This has gone by faster than I expected, even though I dawdled for a few weeks. Off to read week 11.
posted by tangerine at 7:14 PM on July 25, 2023 [3 favorites]
The biggest avoidance/deflection activity for me, aside from reading general crap online, is stuff exactly like this: TAW, Story Club, and other activities that are supposedly helpful. In other words, doing things that are about, but not what I'm doing.
tangerine, I'm so glad you mentioned this. I've bought SO MANY books on writing over the years and I'm happy to say that I've only bought one since my first pass of TAW last year, and that was more of a book for work-writing than writing-writing. Looking back, I think I knew that I wanted to move forward with new projects but didn't feel confident for whatever reason (so many reasons), so I'd buy a book on writing, grab a little hit of dopamine/self-satisfaction from the transaction because I was buying a constructive tool for writing and therefore I was totally being productive! But instead of making me feel inspired and able to crank out a pile of glorious words, the whole process just did a very thorough job of suppressing my guilt about not producing enough or even at all. A few months would pass and that flailing sense of guilt would return and I'd do it again with a new book, or a new class, or.
What I like about TAW (and like even more this second time through) is that over the course of a few months, you begin to learn what you need to create a more positive internal dialog, building a pattern of looking within yourself and finding confidence there:
I took a Week 10 task to heart -- the one about doing a nice thing for yourself daily. Every morning I made this beautiful bowl of yogurt with granola and heaps of summer fruit on top, and it's so delicious. I've been making iced coffee the night before so it's ready without another thought. I splurged on the Blackwing Audition Pack that I've had my eye on for as long as I can remember and it's been a joy to try out all the different fancy pencils -- the winner, of course, is the matte.
Bunglegirl, I am so excited about your pottery class and your using those notebooks you've been saving. It's such a pleasure to make messes and use nice things. (And I threw out an old sweater the other week in solidarity -- felt good!)
johnxlibris, that sunrise from Haleakalā, just heavenly. And the project just falling in your lap, that's divine.
Tesseractive, I went to a professional conference years ago where someone spent a whole presentation comparing our weird little niche line of work (proposals and bids) the hot novel back then, Fifty Shades of Gray, complete with slides. The presentation was so unexpected, so outrageous, and so weirdly on the nose -- and I've never forgotten it. I would personally read the heck out of a lab report how-to guide written by an evil spy or the ghost of a tragic jilted bride who died on her wedding day.
SunPower, your vacation at the lake sounds so wonderful, it's a delight to return and feel inspired!
I'm off to go start Week 11. I think I spent three weeks or so on Week 11 last time, I'm curious to see if it'll resonate the same way for me. I have a backlog of artist dates so I'll be spending August catching up on those and I'm looking forward to it.
posted by mochapickle at 9:02 PM on July 25, 2023 [3 favorites]
tangerine, I'm so glad you mentioned this. I've bought SO MANY books on writing over the years and I'm happy to say that I've only bought one since my first pass of TAW last year, and that was more of a book for work-writing than writing-writing. Looking back, I think I knew that I wanted to move forward with new projects but didn't feel confident for whatever reason (so many reasons), so I'd buy a book on writing, grab a little hit of dopamine/self-satisfaction from the transaction because I was buying a constructive tool for writing and therefore I was totally being productive! But instead of making me feel inspired and able to crank out a pile of glorious words, the whole process just did a very thorough job of suppressing my guilt about not producing enough or even at all. A few months would pass and that flailing sense of guilt would return and I'd do it again with a new book, or a new class, or.
What I like about TAW (and like even more this second time through) is that over the course of a few months, you begin to learn what you need to create a more positive internal dialog, building a pattern of looking within yourself and finding confidence there:
I shouldn't write on this topic because other people have already written on it before.And I don't think anyone leaves TAW with every issue resolved, every thought pattern determined. But like art itself, that takes time, too.
- Sure, but it hasn't been written BY YOU. That makes it new.
It's so much work though.
- Yes, but the work itself is the best part. Also that scene you wrote two days ago was so unexpected, don't you want to know what else you can think up?
But what if I spend all this time on it and people don't like it?
- Do you like every book you've read? Of course not. So it's perfectly fine and normal if yours isn't someone else's cup of tea.
I took a Week 10 task to heart -- the one about doing a nice thing for yourself daily. Every morning I made this beautiful bowl of yogurt with granola and heaps of summer fruit on top, and it's so delicious. I've been making iced coffee the night before so it's ready without another thought. I splurged on the Blackwing Audition Pack that I've had my eye on for as long as I can remember and it's been a joy to try out all the different fancy pencils -- the winner, of course, is the matte.
Bunglegirl, I am so excited about your pottery class and your using those notebooks you've been saving. It's such a pleasure to make messes and use nice things. (And I threw out an old sweater the other week in solidarity -- felt good!)
johnxlibris, that sunrise from Haleakalā, just heavenly. And the project just falling in your lap, that's divine.
Tesseractive, I went to a professional conference years ago where someone spent a whole presentation comparing our weird little niche line of work (proposals and bids) the hot novel back then, Fifty Shades of Gray, complete with slides. The presentation was so unexpected, so outrageous, and so weirdly on the nose -- and I've never forgotten it. I would personally read the heck out of a lab report how-to guide written by an evil spy or the ghost of a tragic jilted bride who died on her wedding day.
SunPower, your vacation at the lake sounds so wonderful, it's a delight to return and feel inspired!
I'm off to go start Week 11. I think I spent three weeks or so on Week 11 last time, I'm curious to see if it'll resonate the same way for me. I have a backlog of artist dates so I'll be spending August catching up on those and I'm looking forward to it.
posted by mochapickle at 9:02 PM on July 25, 2023 [3 favorites]
Week 11: 6/7
Week 12: 6/7
I failed miserably at the "no reading" (meaning online, podcasts, etc.), when I tried to get it started yesterday. I think it's from week 4? Out of all the tasks I skipped, that is the one I want to do the most, but I'm such a cocaine rat, hitting scroll with my tiny paws, and even though my phone is broken, apparently I managed to spend [embarrassing number redacted] hours online.
posted by betweenthebars at 2:49 PM on August 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
Week 12: 6/7
I failed miserably at the "no reading" (meaning online, podcasts, etc.), when I tried to get it started yesterday. I think it's from week 4? Out of all the tasks I skipped, that is the one I want to do the most, but I'm such a cocaine rat, hitting scroll with my tiny paws, and even though my phone is broken, apparently I managed to spend [embarrassing number redacted] hours online.
posted by betweenthebars at 2:49 PM on August 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
Oof I totally dropped the ball on this; I just moved to India on my sabbatical and it was way more compicated than I thought it would be. I hope to start again where I left off.
posted by dhruva at 6:32 AM on August 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by dhruva at 6:32 AM on August 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
Hi everyone! Turns out I LOVE Week 11 just as much this time, so I'm just going to hang out here in the warm Week 11 glow for the rest of August.
betweenthebars, congratulations on completing the program! I hear you on the Week 4 task. I'm going to try to do offline Sundays in September, where I'm able to read books/magazines but I have to put my phone (my easiest and most certain distraction) in a drawer the whole day. I think it'll be a good exercise for me.... I think that for me, maybe one day a week for a month will be more actionable than a whole week?
dhruva, welcome back! We'll keep this thread open for a while if you like.
Week 11 (aka August) has been good so far -- lots of cleaning, lots of organizing, lots of making the things I want to do more accessible. While I was admittedly more distracted during this year's TAW round for various reasons, I'm still feeling a sense of purpose and focus, which is nice. I kind of feel like I'm scooting everything around to get closer to where I need to be.
There's been a greater sense of connectivity, too, and I've had some astonishing synchronicity: A couple of weeks ago I took Annie for her walk and completely by chance I started talking with this random woman and it turns out she owned my house 52(!) years ago when her children were young, then moved to a bigger house four blocks from here, where she's been ever since. She's delightful and she told me all about what the house was like before the renovation years ago, the weird closet door, the creaky laundry room, the good light in the western window. When I saw her again, she said that when when she told me her old address, she'd had this uncanny feeling it was mine.
I've started the online calligraphy class (fun!) and I've invested in a more formal course on editing for memoir, which is more job-related, but maybe I want to work more with memoir and personal narrative, careerwise?
I'd been substituting morning walks for morning pages and my verdict on that is still out.
Hope all of you are well!
posted by mochapickle at 7:55 PM on August 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
betweenthebars, congratulations on completing the program! I hear you on the Week 4 task. I'm going to try to do offline Sundays in September, where I'm able to read books/magazines but I have to put my phone (my easiest and most certain distraction) in a drawer the whole day. I think it'll be a good exercise for me.... I think that for me, maybe one day a week for a month will be more actionable than a whole week?
dhruva, welcome back! We'll keep this thread open for a while if you like.
Week 11 (aka August) has been good so far -- lots of cleaning, lots of organizing, lots of making the things I want to do more accessible. While I was admittedly more distracted during this year's TAW round for various reasons, I'm still feeling a sense of purpose and focus, which is nice. I kind of feel like I'm scooting everything around to get closer to where I need to be.
There's been a greater sense of connectivity, too, and I've had some astonishing synchronicity: A couple of weeks ago I took Annie for her walk and completely by chance I started talking with this random woman and it turns out she owned my house 52(!) years ago when her children were young, then moved to a bigger house four blocks from here, where she's been ever since. She's delightful and she told me all about what the house was like before the renovation years ago, the weird closet door, the creaky laundry room, the good light in the western window. When I saw her again, she said that when when she told me her old address, she'd had this uncanny feeling it was mine.
I've started the online calligraphy class (fun!) and I've invested in a more formal course on editing for memoir, which is more job-related, but maybe I want to work more with memoir and personal narrative, careerwise?
I'd been substituting morning walks for morning pages and my verdict on that is still out.
Hope all of you are well!
posted by mochapickle at 7:55 PM on August 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
mochapickle, ever since you wrote it I've been meaning to thank you for that second-to-last comment, especially those kind, generous responses to the bolded questions. It's been in my mind ever since, and I've been smiling about it.
Your calligraphy class sounds like fun and so does editing for memoir, even if that's job-related. I'm so glad you feel like you're "scooting everything around." And so cool that you ran into someone who used to live in your house! Re offline Sundays, my dad has been doing them for years now (his are Saturdays though). He and I will be cheering you through September.
betweenthebars, I'm cracking up at "cocaine rat" -- maybe a week is too much to start with? Congratulations on getting through the rest of it.
dhruva, no wonder you took a break during the move. I hope the sabbatical is interesting and rewarding and I'm glad you're picking up again.
You know, for all my constant loud grousing about Julia's terminology and metaphors and assumptions, I'm so glad to be back in the habit of writing down whatever pops into my head every day. That's exactly, exactly what I needed to do. I'm grateful. Thanks to all of you for making it happen.
Also, right now I'm a weeklong conference for alumni of my MFA program. It's been such a great experience! There are so many people here whose work I like and respect. They've found ways through stuck periods and complications and obstacles too. And they're so full of compassion and specific encouragement that I'm feeling generally sanguine and optimistic about my various projects, big and little. I went back and looked at the "negative beliefs" exercise -- yup, that's where I was stuck a few months ago -- and then at the "countering them" exercise, which is basically what I've been hearing from people here, and finally at the "champions" list, which has exploded in the last few days.
As for synchronicity, someone at this conference has made a documentary film about her parents. I had no idea that she and I had even grown up in the same city! But the film was full of images from my own childhood, and it turns out that:
posted by tangerine at 1:53 PM on August 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
Your calligraphy class sounds like fun and so does editing for memoir, even if that's job-related. I'm so glad you feel like you're "scooting everything around." And so cool that you ran into someone who used to live in your house! Re offline Sundays, my dad has been doing them for years now (his are Saturdays though). He and I will be cheering you through September.
betweenthebars, I'm cracking up at "cocaine rat" -- maybe a week is too much to start with? Congratulations on getting through the rest of it.
dhruva, no wonder you took a break during the move. I hope the sabbatical is interesting and rewarding and I'm glad you're picking up again.
You know, for all my constant loud grousing about Julia's terminology and metaphors and assumptions, I'm so glad to be back in the habit of writing down whatever pops into my head every day. That's exactly, exactly what I needed to do. I'm grateful. Thanks to all of you for making it happen.
Also, right now I'm a weeklong conference for alumni of my MFA program. It's been such a great experience! There are so many people here whose work I like and respect. They've found ways through stuck periods and complications and obstacles too. And they're so full of compassion and specific encouragement that I'm feeling generally sanguine and optimistic about my various projects, big and little. I went back and looked at the "negative beliefs" exercise -- yup, that's where I was stuck a few months ago -- and then at the "countering them" exercise, which is basically what I've been hearing from people here, and finally at the "champions" list, which has exploded in the last few days.
As for synchronicity, someone at this conference has made a documentary film about her parents. I had no idea that she and I had even grown up in the same city! But the film was full of images from my own childhood, and it turns out that:
- she and I went to the same elementary school. (Her name was familiar and so was her sister's, but one was a year younger and the other a year older than I am, so I didn't know them well. Still! It was a tiny school!)
- my dad vaguely remembers her parents
- my husband definitely remembers her parents (they were friends of his parents when he was very young; and later, long after he'd moved away, he got to know her dad, who was in a related profession.)
posted by tangerine at 1:53 PM on August 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
How’s everyone doing? Is anyone still limping through like me? Has anyone finished all chapters?
I just finished chapter 8. It’s taken a few months to get through the last chapters but I have been doing morning pages 7/7 most weeks. What’s been holding me up is trying to get all the tasks done before moving on but I was reminded at the beginning someone on here gave us “permission” to skip stuff if we didn’t want to. I’ve actually put off really enjoyable stuff—listening to music for 30 minutes and finding a spiritual quiet place.
Pottery/wheel throwing 1 went well! Most of my pieces went into their second glaze firing last week so I should be able to bring them home soon. Because work is still slow (I will not worry!) I signed up for my second wheel 1. After this I’m allowed to move up in classes. Spending time alone among a bunch of people is really nice and I miss the studio atmosphere my young artist took for granted all through childhood. I keep fantasizing on what my dream studio will look like when I buy a house but this is reminding me that I really enjoy creating around other creative people.
The ideal day exercise was interesting in how much my current ideal day (mostly alone) differs from my ultimate ideal day (with a partner, creatives, and friends). Similarly, I took stock of my list of favorite activities and almost all were alone, zero to low cost, slow paced, and in my head rather than body. I will try to start being more open to different experiences and wonder why I limit myself I this regard.
posted by Bunglegirl at 8:01 AM on August 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
I just finished chapter 8. It’s taken a few months to get through the last chapters but I have been doing morning pages 7/7 most weeks. What’s been holding me up is trying to get all the tasks done before moving on but I was reminded at the beginning someone on here gave us “permission” to skip stuff if we didn’t want to. I’ve actually put off really enjoyable stuff—listening to music for 30 minutes and finding a spiritual quiet place.
Pottery/wheel throwing 1 went well! Most of my pieces went into their second glaze firing last week so I should be able to bring them home soon. Because work is still slow (I will not worry!) I signed up for my second wheel 1. After this I’m allowed to move up in classes. Spending time alone among a bunch of people is really nice and I miss the studio atmosphere my young artist took for granted all through childhood. I keep fantasizing on what my dream studio will look like when I buy a house but this is reminding me that I really enjoy creating around other creative people.
The ideal day exercise was interesting in how much my current ideal day (mostly alone) differs from my ultimate ideal day (with a partner, creatives, and friends). Similarly, I took stock of my list of favorite activities and almost all were alone, zero to low cost, slow paced, and in my head rather than body. I will try to start being more open to different experiences and wonder why I limit myself I this regard.
posted by Bunglegirl at 8:01 AM on August 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
hi I’m interested ~ are we starting a new “season” on September 1? If so, pls count me in. Where do I sign up? Thx.
posted by seawallrunner at 4:48 PM on August 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by seawallrunner at 4:48 PM on August 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
Hi seawallrunner! We're just finishing up the event that started back in May and then the thread will close. I'm so sorry for the weird date on the post -- I had to keep setting dates into the future to keep the thread open.
I hope you do TAW! I've had a lot of great experiences with it and I've learned so much. You're absolutely welcome to start your own thread/event here on metafilter if you like. I'm also thinking of running it again in May 2024 but I'm not sure yet.
posted by mochapickle at 6:45 AM on August 20, 2023
I hope you do TAW! I've had a lot of great experiences with it and I've learned so much. You're absolutely welcome to start your own thread/event here on metafilter if you like. I'm also thinking of running it again in May 2024 but I'm not sure yet.
posted by mochapickle at 6:45 AM on August 20, 2023
Heads up if anyone is looking to buy the kindle book—it’s on sale on Amazon US for $2.99 today.
posted by Bunglegirl at 7:57 AM on August 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Bunglegirl at 7:57 AM on August 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
Hi everyone!
Our thread is currently set as active through September 15, which means it'll just drop off the live page but the system would keep it open to comments until sometime in mid-October before it closes. If you're still in progress and would like this thread to stay open a bit longer, please let me know in the next day or so and I'll reset the date for as long as you like.
I plan to comment again in the coming weeks with final thoughts but in the meantime I'm taking the mending/fixing/doing tasks to heart. I've recolored the hideous blue seats on my secondhand dining room chairs to a nutmeg brown and they look downright graceful and stately now. I put up a wreath by the front door. I'm painting the mailbox today and sewing some painters cloth slipcovers for the guest bedroom. I'm dreaming of a mural or two. My house is old and there's always a lot of work to do.
And I'm listening to music! I wasn't able to do that for a very long time. And I'm walking a lot -- sometimes instead of morning pages, sometimes in addition.
But I'm still a little stuck professionally, and that's going to take some time to figure out.
I should go paint. I hope everyone's doing really well.
posted by mochapickle at 9:24 AM on September 13, 2023
Our thread is currently set as active through September 15, which means it'll just drop off the live page but the system would keep it open to comments until sometime in mid-October before it closes. If you're still in progress and would like this thread to stay open a bit longer, please let me know in the next day or so and I'll reset the date for as long as you like.
I plan to comment again in the coming weeks with final thoughts but in the meantime I'm taking the mending/fixing/doing tasks to heart. I've recolored the hideous blue seats on my secondhand dining room chairs to a nutmeg brown and they look downright graceful and stately now. I put up a wreath by the front door. I'm painting the mailbox today and sewing some painters cloth slipcovers for the guest bedroom. I'm dreaming of a mural or two. My house is old and there's always a lot of work to do.
And I'm listening to music! I wasn't able to do that for a very long time. And I'm walking a lot -- sometimes instead of morning pages, sometimes in addition.
But I'm still a little stuck professionally, and that's going to take some time to figure out.
I should go paint. I hope everyone's doing really well.
posted by mochapickle at 9:24 AM on September 13, 2023
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by probably not that Karen Blair at 8:19 AM on April 10, 2023 [4 favorites]