There are few things I can say have changed the course of my life… this book, meeting my husband… discovering leave-in conditioning. You know, big stuff.
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron is a secret weapon. Seasoned artists, like Elizabeth Gilbert, swear by it; it paved the way for her famous artist guide Big Magic. Other artists in my sphere, like Maylise Urrutia of Joint Movement, have also turned to it in times of creative guidance. The Artist’s Way is a workbook with lessons and exercises to tap into your creative potential.
It’s one of those books that’s been sitting in my “To Read” list for months. I guess the right books fall of the shelves and into our life just when we’re meant to take in their pages.
Morning Pages = Life
Morning pages are a stream of consciousness journaling to be completed upon waking up using paper and pen (no computer). Meaning, you forego the iphone or email or anything else and get straight to writing 3 pages. The length and time are highly important… if you don’t have anything to say, you are free to write that down… until you reach 3 pages.
Like the dutiful type A I am, morning journaling was not a problem, but I didn’t know exactly why morning pages are every human being’s saving grace until I stuck with it.
After some time following these instructions, magic happened. Once I got past recording dreams, writing to-do lists and venting, real-life insights began to appear. At times, a voice that didn’t feel mine took over. In some cases I found myself writing prayers that were actually answered by outside events that same day. I have no explanation for why these things happened! They were like sacred synchronicities that began to spring up more and more. What I can say for sure is Cameron has stumbled onto something that is infinitely valuable. Something with the consistency and 3 page minimum is enough to pull insights, solutions and creative ideas right out of us.
Don’t Take It All So Seriously!
At first, my morning pages all began the same way: “last night I had a dream…” Actually, in my case, it’s always a nightmare. I have nightmares practically every night. I’m definitely not one of the lucky people who get to fly in their dreams. Instead, I often find myself in faulty elevators that plunge to the depths of hell right as I walk in. These are the things that filled my morning pages at first.. then one morning, a particularly upsetting nightmare showed up with a message.
In my dream, I saw my grandmother die. I lost her at the beginning of last year and I was not with her when she died, so this dream drudged up really painful feelings that I definitely hadn’t worked through. As she was dying in my dream, she told me to write down three or five things. when I woke up, I could only remember one: don’t take it all so seriously.
According to some theorists, your dreams are actually your subconscious trying to communicate with you. Our brains do not work with language, they work with visual symbols. So the more intense a dream is, the more intensely vital the message is that your mind is trying to communicate.
Don’t take it all so seriously. I hadn’t really thought of that advice before but it stayed with me. If those words came to me in such a vivid way, there must be value to it.
Art Is Supposed To Be Fun
An artist date is something fun and creative that you are to do once a week alone. There are pretty much zero parameters on this activity–– definitely not as many rules as the morning pages. The only rule is you must do it alone and it must be fun… It could be anything from taking time to put stickers in your agenda, playing the guitar, going to a museum, looking at leaves outside and collecting your favorite… The list goes on and on.
At the end of every week, as I did my recap, I realized something was always missing. Did you complete your morning pages and artist date for the week? My artist dates were never completed.
I was horrified to find that I could not think of one artist date each week despite my best intentions to do so. I realized it was really hard for me to simply relax and that made it difficult to think of things to do to feed my artist. I found myself googling: “Ideas for Artist Dates.” Insert face plant here.
For five weeks I could not complete one for the life of me and not for lack of trying. Was I really so boring? A message began to emerge in the pattern: I take myself and my art way too seriously.
No wonder I’ve found myself in a creative standstill. I lost the essence of why creating was so fun…
What is art but playing?
Perfectionism is Ego and it’s dumb
I hate the word perfectionism because it feels overused and misunderstood. The truth is perfectionism is a negative feedback loop fueled by ego. Only your ego would be upset or find the need to create something perfect or to compare a beginner’s work to a master’s work at the height of their career. It’s only the ego that gets in our way thinking that we must be THIS good or it’s not worth even trying. I never thought of perfectionism in that way. It always felt benign to me, a consequence of being the kind of person who wants to succeed.
Even knowing this, it’s tough to get past my own drive to be THAT good at something new and the disappointment that often follows when I come up shorter than my expectations. It’s a crap pattern that shows up when I have new ideas that start fun, like creating a youtube channel, but quickly become derailed by my own desire to be at a certain level... which in turn ends up killing my mojo and results in dropping a project because it starts to feel like a job.
Making Fun And Silly Stuff Will Actually Save Your Creativity and Your Life
My turning point came one day when I decided to make a photo book. I realized that I love editing photos. I can lose hours putting together collages and picture books. I love documenting our memories together. I decided that I would allow myself to create as many picture books as I wanted… And one afternoon I spent at least two hours doing just that.
It had been so long since I lost track of time and space doing anything… and for no useful reason at all! Making these photo albums does not further my career or my art. They’re just for me. Over the course of that week, I noticed the good mood began to spill onto other areas of my life. All of a sudden ideas were coming to me for things that were artistically satisfying and of value to my work! I felt like I had finally discovered a secret… The secret the Cameron wanted me to discover all along.
After that I couldn’t help myself, I wanted to make all kinds of pretty things that were not useful but brought me joy. I baked a blueberry pie from scratch. I made zucchini risotto on a Tuesday night for no reason at all other than to be more creative. All of a sudden, every area of my life became an open opportunity to be playful. It was life-changing. It was life-saving.
I still have 3 weeks worth of lessons from The Artist’s Way to go. I’m a bit sad I’ll finish soon. But I know this is one of those sacred texts I’m going to revisit at many points in my life.