The Artist’s Way – Week 1: Recovering a sense of safety

1. Morning Pages

I’ve done the morning pages every day since I started reading the book.

It’s been surprisingly nice and grounding. I started out trying to make sense. Then I realized I don’t have to, and I just started following my thoughts, wherever they went.

You don’t have to make sense to anybody. This space is for you, and you alone.

Many small things came up. Some big things. Others just kept coming back. I found myself getting annoyed with myself. I’m already getting repetitive – it’s only week 1! Then I realized it’s probably better to write it down. That’s the tape that’s playing on repeat in my head, day after day after day.

When you’re conscious of your thoughts, you get to change them.

2. Artist Date

I had had a busy week and found myself on Sunday, trying to find something to do before the week was up. I had enough ideas, but many of them felt “too hard”.

We’ve been in lockdown for months, and the barrier to leave the house for anything other than running or getting groceries is getting higher every day.

Inside, I have food and comfort and sweatpants and instruments and all the books I could ever need. Outside, there’s Covid. You get what I’m saying?

I ended up dressing up for a ReWilding workshop. It was fun, but I was mostly resistant, impatient, and thinking about all the work I had to do after. I can see this might take a while to get into.

3. Reflections

I learnt that I have many more supportive people around than I do “creative monsters”, but the latter impact me more than I’d like to admit.

I’m so excited to have committed to this program, I’m thrilled to do the work, and I love working my way through the book, but there is an underlying layer of grief.

It hurts to see how many things I didn’t do, because I was afraid of the judgment of one or two people (who – in hindsight – weren’t really that significant).

For years (since I was about 17 years old) I’ve been telling myself it is too late to start over. What?! It still feels really daunting, but I realized Future Me is out there somewhere, trying to figure out whether she should laugh or cry, because I’ve decided I am already “too old” to do anything interesting. I’m not about to let her down now.

One thing was clear: I really really really really really want to be on stage again.

(More about that in my reflection of week 2!)

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Love,
Flora

Is there anything in particular you’d like to know about this book? Let me know in the comments!