The Artist's Way: Week 4

As promised, I will be blogging lessons and activities from Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way" every week to help you (and ME!) unleash the artist trapped underneath work deadlines, household responsibilities and the new fall TV lineup. So often we allow outside stressors keep us from finishing that script or novel or blog post, even though, out of everything we do all day, it's the one thing we want to do the most. Cameron's workshop is not a cure-all, but rather a way to get in the habit of putting your creative life among the other immediate priorities on your list.

WELP! Another week gone by where I swore I'd be more diligent about this but instead let life get in my way. But this weekend no kids = writing and workshopping til my fingers bleed. I'll even post pictures of my crumbled appendages/digits on Monday (not really. stop being gross!) In the meantime, Week 4...

In this week's chapter, Cameron dares us to be true with ourselves and what we end up pouring out onto the morning pages. She points out that we're too accustomed to saying we're "okay" when in fact we're everything but. Therefore you're invited to (re)discover your true self: the one that can admit their marriage is a failure, their friendships are toxic, their job is stifling.

"The process of identifying a self inevitably involves loss as well as gain," writes Cameron. "We discover our boundaries, and those boundaries by definition separate us from our fellows."

While doing this workshop you might realize that you'd rather keep the veil on all these truths, maybe even quit the morning pages that forced you to come face-to-face with it all. But this is precisely what you must not do. Stick with it. Be your true self. Live your true life. It will ultimately help you create!

Week 4 exercises include one that helps uncover your 'buried dreams' (oh that's going to be interesting!) and another that challenges you to participate in 'reading deprivation' (GASP!). The latter is meant to remove distractions from your life and help you BE in the moment.

Cameron invites us to surrender to these truths and let go of the things holding you back that you didn't even know were holding you back! "Art lies in the moment of encounter: we meet our truth and we meet ourselves; we meet ourselves and we meet our self-expression."

Remember that when your reality make you want to give up. Until next week...

xoxo,
Raquel Ivelisse