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

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 fifth post of the series, all about recovering a sense of power; 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 possibility: sending gifts back

In this chapter on recovering a sense of possibility, one of the first things that stood out to me was a comment made on sending gifts back, and boy did I do that this month. I had a lot of time to myself outside of work hours, and I didn’t do what I really wanted to, which was to start painting again. 

Instead, I found myself freezing up again and not actually allowing myself to create things that don’t fit into what I label as “safe”—in other words, writing and knitting. I want to draw and paint, but every time I have a spare hour, I end up reading, writing, knitting, or cleaning something. Which is especially frustrating, because I’ve had the time, but haven’t used it in the way I truly want to be. I’m not sure what caused me to slide back in this way, but in February I want to work on getting back to a place of curiosity with art making (and doing the things I want to do!).

Recovering a sense of possibility: listening to the creator within

Connecting to the above section, I very much was not listening to the creator within, who only want to paint! It seems that, this month, I did everything except what I really wanted to be doing.

In February, I’d like to push myself to do a couple things: first, really dig into myself and figure out what it is that’s keeping me from doing what I want to be doing creatively. Second, I want to talk back to myself! When I think I don’t have enough time to paint, or there’s fear stopping me, I’m going to do it anyway. I want to give myself exactly what I want creatively—that’s the whole point of doing this workbook!

Recovering a sense of possibility: finding the river

If you’ve read The Artist’s Way, you know there’s a lot of talk about the spiritual connection the being a creative person. This chapter was especially heavy on this, but something in me has shifted: where I used to be uncomfortable with this sort of talk (because of childhood connections to it), I’m now finding ways to connect my own, current experience of spirituality to what I’m reading.

I think it was this chapter that really helped change this for me. When talking about spirituality, Cameron mentions being true to ourselves. And really, that’s all this workbook is—building a connection with our creative selves. Spirituality and god don’t have to mean what they mean to the larger world—they can just be something between you and your creative spirit.

Morning pages

Morning pages written this month: 26/31

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: 26/31. I feel like I’ve been doing less of these now that I’ve started my love letters series. But I’m still writing, and that’s all I care about!

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 January, I took myself on four artist dates:

• Writing in a cafe x1 (solo)
• Knitting in a cafe with a friend x1
• Making art in a cafe x 2 (solo)

Not as many as other months, but I’ve been working a little too hard. I’m hoping to get back to doing more artist dates in the coming months!

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:

“If I were twenty and had money…List five adventures. Add images of these to your visual image file.”

“If I were sixty-five and had money…List five postponed pleasures. And again, collect these images.”

“Honestly, my favorite creative block is… TV, over-reading, friends, work, rescuing others, over exercise. You name it. Whether you can draw or not, please cartoon yourself indulging in it.

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

Some important creative things of note for this month:

• I finished a number of knitting projects I kept putting off, including two pairs of mittens (one pair for myself and one pair for my niece), as well as a pair of slippers for myself.
• I started knitting a rainbow scarf to use up all my old yarn balls—most of which are too small to do anything else with.
• I also started knitting a pink mohair hat. I’m currently restraining myself from buying two more balls of the same yarn to make a scarf.
• I started working on a different novel, and am now at 10,000 words. I will finish the other one—I just need to decide how it ends!
• I’ve been making Youtube videos more regularly now that I’m working on opening my business! You can find the most recent one here.
• I bought myself a set of earth toned pastels for my birthday, and have been seriously buying some oil-based pencil crayons (if you know of a good brand that isn’t super expensive, LMK).
• I’m still working on the quilt for my mom, but it’s been somewhat sidelined with work and all my other creative projects. I’m hoping to finish the front piece in February, though!

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 Integrity: The Artist’s Way Month Four Recap (Chapter Four)

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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