The Artist's Way - Week 6

Week 6 of the 12-week course to build creativity

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Last week, I wrote about Week 5 of Julia Cameron’s Artist’s Way course to build creativity. If you purchased the book and are following along, I hope this past week was fruitful. To the rest of you, I invite you to join in and comment how the course is helping (or hindering) you in your lives!

Week 5 saw us embracing the possibility inherent in life - in particular, to note how we put greater limits on our progress and satisfaction than we feel from the world around us. Since I tend to relate the Artist’s Way work to my transgender experience, I wrote about how fear prevents us from doing what we know we love and being who we know we are. For my journey, I spent 52 years afraid the world would reject Amethysta, only to find I was welcomed.

If there is anything the Artist’s Way attempts to teach, it is that being true to our deeper selves is the path to sustainable contentment in our lives. Caring for ourselves and living our truth brings further abundance into our existence - more love, more wisdom, and more happiness.

Week 6 focuses on recovering our permission to love ourselves - finding the abundance in our lives.

Week 5 recap

Once again…the Weekly Recap!

The past week went well enough for writing in my journal; I did not miss a day. In fact, I am beginning to feel distress when I do not write in the morning, which I noticed as I wrote Evening Pages more frequently than Morning Pages last week.

Because I noted Evening Pages vs. Morning Pages last week (and in the interest of science), I evaluated how writing at both times made me feel. I intend to publish my findings as a real article this coming Thursday. Stand by for more information!

An interesting side effect of the Artist Date is my ability to take missing a self-imposed deadline less seriously. I drove to meet a new friend of mine (hi, Tara!) last Thursday, and we had such a great time (I did, anyway) that I got home about 45 minutes after my Artist Date was scheduled to begin. I intended to skip the Artist Date altogether…but something prevented me from doing so.

When I arrived home, I immediately left for my Artist Date because I knew I was tired. I knew I had worked hard that week. I knew I had an article ready to publish that night and a podcast the next day. I realized - on my own - that if I needed rest, I must take it.

I am amazed by this behavior. Truly amazed. I am learning to care for myself in ways I never expected to do. Again, I have more to say on Thursday about this phenomenon.

Our sense of abundance

Week 6 of The Artist’s Way course is titled “Recovering a Sense of Abundance.” Cameron points out we tend to lavish gifts on others while being incredibly stingy when it comes to providing for ourselves. I made a note almost a month ago wondering if I, Amethysta - not the work I do, not the salary I make - only me, my existence, is sufficient purpose for a life.

Cameron summarizes this concern with the question “am I enough?”

Western society emphasizes hard work. Puritan ethics imply virtue must be difficult or - at the very least - distinguishable from vice. Vice is play, vice is idleness, vice is anything that isn’t producing 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.

Work cannot be fun - otherwise, it would not be eligible for a salary. Exertion is required for an activity to create value. Even nutrition must be effortful - which is why broccoli tastes terrible and candy tastes great.

Cameron rejects these Puritan ethics - her god does not want humanity to suffer. Her god wants humans to wonder at the beauty of the Universe. Her god wants humans to live their lives as they are, not just to live rational, sensible lives. As Cameron puts it:

Creativity is not and never has been sensible.

Instead, we must live life by doing what we love. When we find the activities we love to do, we also find what we were meant to do. The answer to the question “am I enough?” is a resounding “YES!” That we live at all is reason for us to enjoy life.

Our sense of luxury

As an example of the ethics described above, let me define “luxury.” I define the word as “anything I cannot afford.”

But affording goods and services is contextual. While I would spend $2000 on a computer, I certainly would not spend $2000 on a jar of peanut butter.

I really enjoy peanuts and peanut butter. Why would I balk at a $2000 jar of peanut butter? What if it was the World’s Best Peanut Butter? What if it were The Goddess’s Own Peanut Butter? What if I shared it with my ancestors in a bag lunch around the Well of Wisdom? Could I afford not to buy that jar of peanut butter if it enriched my life that greatly?

Cameron writes life is not only work. Humans are not meant only to toil. Yet we harbor such guilt at not working. That guilt fueled my entire software career - I could work 80 hours in a week, but if I did not finish every task available, I believed I did a terrible job.

And the greatest foolishness of the situation is I could never complete every task available. Never.

As a result, Cameron writes we must learn to pamper ourselves, to find what gives us true joy, and to give that to ourselves. That may not be the jar of peanut butter I describe above - maybe it is only good paper for writing, your favorite cheese, shoes that don’t hurt your feet.

What if our writing is not good enough for high-quality paper? What if we use the cheese in boxed macaroni? What if we never walk across the country in our shoes?

We deserve them anyway. That we do something is enough - the choice is not between “do the best ever” and “do nothing.” If we do nothing, we die.

Instead, we need possessions that are special - possessions that are ours alone that we cherish. Sometimes those possessions and activities will be silly. But as Cameron asserts, a good Artist Date is silly. That is why it is so valuable.

So what's next?

Finding the abundance in life is very difficult for me. I am accustomed to denying myself - a side effect of gender dysphoria. But the more frequently I go on Artist Dates, the more deeply I care for myself, the longer I write Morning Pages to empty my head of useless worry, the more I learn my life is exceptionally abundant.

Once again, Morning Pages are on the agenda. My Artist Date was scheduled by Sunday morning. I’m on the train - it’s going the direction I need to go.

This week, I will think about what gives me life, what fuels my joy. I doubt it will be a $2000 computer.

This week, I will do my best to pamper myself.

Until next week!