I am working my way through Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way again. For the third or seventh time? I’m not sure—I do know that even though she often annoys—nay, infuriates me—Julia Cameron once gave me permission to call myself an artist, and that changed my life.
Week 1 is about “recovering a sense of safety.”
Some of my favourite quotes from this week:
‘Try it and see what happens.’
‘Artists love other artists.’
‘Judging your early artistic efforts is artist abuse… Mistakes are necessary! Stumbles are normal.’
Cameron introduces work with affirmations in this chapter, and she has this to say about them:
‘Affirmations help achieve a sense of safety and hope. When we first start working with affirmations, they may feel dumb. Hokey. Embarrassing. Isn’t this interesting? We can easily, and without embarrassment, bludgeon ourselves with negative affirmations: “I’m not gifted enough/not clever enough/not original enough/not young enough…” But saying nice things about ourselves is notoriously hard to do.’
My big task for the week is to take myself on an Artist’s Date. I don’t think I’ve had one since the Pandemic started!
The Artist’s Date is “a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist.” You do it alone (no spouse, friend, children) and it NEEDS TO BE FUN.
Not work.
^^^OMG, has this been hard this past year!
So. Wish me luck.
Any ideas as to what I should do for an artist’s date given we’re still in effective lockdown here?
mjanecolette
TellMe@mjanecolette.com
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