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Recovering a Sense of Abundance: The Artist’s Way Month Six Recap (Chapter Six)

Hi! If you’re new here: I’m doing a year-long series where I work through Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way and document it here on the blog. This is the sixth post of the series, all about recovering a sense of abundance; you can find the explanation for this series here and the previous post here.

Before we begin: I started making Youtube videos again! My most recent one is in my small business diaries series and involves cleaning and organizing my office closet.

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Recovering a sense of abundance: authentic blocks

In this chapter, Cameron talks about how we use a lack of money as a block for not being more creative. While I do see where she’s coming from, I also think she’s dismissing this (very real) problem: not having enough money, or having to work long hours to pay for our living expenses, leaving little time for creativity.

She is right in that we can make space for creativity, but it is challenging to want to be creative when you’ve worked all day and come home to do household chores and prep for tomorrow’s day of work. 

However, she goes on to say that the real block is our sense of powerlessness and feelings of constriction, and while I think she’s wrong about money not being a block, she has it right about feelings of constriction blocking us from creating.

Recovering a sense of abundance: perfectionism

There’s one anecdote from this chapter that really stuck with me this month: Alan, whose creativity is so far from what he wants to achieve that he “cringes,” and then quits—or never starts.

Still, six months in, this is something I struggle with! Definitely not to the extent of when I started, or before I became an art therapist, but it’s still there.

But from that comes a desire to push through and create anyway—to write, or paint, or sew something even if it isn’t “good enough.” Which then brings in the question of who decides what’s good enough in the first place (Us! It’s always us).

Recovering a sense of abundance: thriving as artists

Cameron also talks about how, in order to thrive as artists, we need to be open to the universal flow of energy. We need to be able to notice and experience joy and accept the small gifts of life in order to truly harness our creativity.

This is something I found myself slipping away from in recent years. I’d focus all my energy on work (or grad school) and start to lose awareness of all the beauty around me. My grandpa and I were just talking about this on the weekend, actually: slowing down and taking time to notice a sunset, or see the green buds starting on the trees after a long winter.

Now that I’ve noticed myself slipping here, I can come back to where I was before: stopping to look at leaves on the sidewalk. Taking a break from work to watch the clouds drift over the mountains. There’s beauty in every little thing—we just have to slow down and find it.

Morning pages

Morning pages written this month: 26/29

For those of you unfamiliar with The Artist’s Way or morning pages: morning pages are a daily writing exercise where you dump everything in your brain onto the page. You’re supposed to just write—no stopping or reading back on what you read—for three whole pages. If you don’t know what to write, you write “I don’t know what to write” until you do.

Personally, I’ve never been all that good at following rules or instructions (no surprise to anyone who knows me in real life!). However, I do take these as guidelines. So, for the first few days, I was writing my morning pages by the book: three pages, no stopping or looking back. 

But, aside from my morning pages, I have a journal where I write every day: thoughts, ideas, what I’m planning for the day. Basically, morning pages, but smaller. And because I didn’t want to give up this journaling practice, and I also didn’t want to do three morning pages and write in my journal, I ended up combining them, which has worked so well for me.

This month, I did most of my morning pages: 26/29. I’m finding that, during the colder months, I write less in my morning pages. I’m not sure why this is, but I’d like to get back to longer journaling sessions in the coming months.

Artist dates

Another pillar of The Artist’s Way is artist dates, where you (the artist) take yourself on at least one date a week. This could be anything from writing in a coffee shop to visiting an art gallery to making art in the park. The goal of this is to “nurture your inner artist,” as Cameron states in the introduction of the book. 

You can read about how I’ve bent the rules to this in this post.

During February, I took myself on four artist dates:

• Reading at the library x2 (solo)
• Knitting and making art at a cafe x2 (one solo, one with a friend)

Not as many as other months, but it’s just so cold outside. All I want to do is cuddle up at home with a good book!

Tasks

In every chapter of The Artist’s Way, Cameron outlines a list of tasks for the reader to engage in. Each chapter’s list is extensive, and so I choose just a few to do. This month, I chose:

“Natural abundance: find five pretty or interesting rocks. They can be small, constant reminders of our creative consciousness.”

“Natural abundance: pick five flowers or leaves. You may want to press these between wax paper and save them in a book.”

“Clearing: throw out or give away five ratty pieces of clothing.”

—Above quotes are taken from The Artist’s Way, Chapter Six

Some important creative things of note for this month:

• I went through my clothes and got rid of anything that I no longer wanted. During this process, I also pulled out a bunch of clothes I’d like better if I changed them in some way—I spent the weekend cutting and sewing these clothes to make something new.
• I’m back on the novel writing train, and am this close to finishing the first draft of my novel. Right now, I’m at 58,643 words.
• I took my advice from last month and started painting! I’ve only done one so far, but I’m glad I’ve started again.
• I also used my workshop time wisely this month and doodled while listening to the speakers (while taking notes, of course!).
• I got back to editing a book of poems I’ve been avoiding for some time. I’m at the point where just a few poems need tweaking, and then it’s done!
• I’m still knitting the pink hat I started back in December, and am so close to being done.
• I also started knitting a striped scarf to use up some old yarn. I’m taking my time with it, but it’s going to be so beautiful when it’s done.

How did you make time to be creative this month? And what did you create?

xoxo

Catherine

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Thank you for reading! There’s no new printable this week, but you can see all the printables I’ve made previously in my shop, Toad in the Attic.

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Some more posts you may like

Recovering a Sense of Possibility: The Artist’s Way Month Five Recap (Chapter Five)

Digging down into the dirt to find who I used to be: A year of creativity

Blooming, breathing: How no longer setting goals for myself has made life better

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