The Artist’s Way: Week 4

Week 4: Recovering a Sense of Integrity:
A lot of great stuff happened this week.  I completed my morning pages every day!  I even finished one entire notebook.  120 pages of writing over the last month!  It’s was a really good feeling to graduate to a new spiral binder.  Of course none of it is anything I want to read again or should read again.  Stream of conciousness writing is so theraputic but as content goes it is SO BORING.  I find I write a lot about how to structure my day and what I need to get done each day.  That’s not all I write about, sometime I write about movies I want to make, projects I want to pursue, relationships I want to work on, tasks I’ve been putting off, but mostly, its boring.  What will I do today?  How will I get it all done.  As the book promises, Morning Pages are becoming critical for me. I ask a lot of myself, and this the best way I’ve ever found to keep my brain from spiraling out of control and my keep spirits up.

I also did my artist’s date this week!  Yeah!  I spent one hour working on a painting I started last spring.  I worked on a it a few time over the summer but it’s been un touched for months.  It was fun to remember some of the things I learned in my painting class last winter and spend some time thinking about color.  I’m painting  a picture of me, Jacob and Emmi in a boat on Lake Merwin.  I’m rowing, Emmi is drinking a beer and looking fabulous and Jacob is trying to help me not spin in circles.  I just love the colors and perspective.  I think it will make a really great painting eventually, but I’m struggling with the water right now.  I think I need to consider my brush strokes as well as the paint colors….

The week was not a complete success.  Again, I didn’t do all the excercises in the book.  I ws suposed to do a reading deprivation.  Which I did not do.  I really need to, but I just couldn’t get myself in a situation to try it.  I still want to though… I’ll have to come up with my own rules as there is absolutly no way I can work at a news station without reading.  I’m going to attempt this in the future though.  The book says it is a critical experiment.  How can I say no to that?  I did do some writing about what I was like at age 8 and what I HOPE to be like at age 80.  That is a tough question.  Have you ever thought about it?  I’m still mulling it over.  I hope to be reading a lot, walking  lot and cooking a lot.  One of the tasks I did do, was getting rid of an outfit in my closet that gives me low self-worth.  Done.  It’s a dress.  It’s in the donation pile now.  See ya!

At first I  didn’t feel that great about the week, but looking back on it now, I feel much better.  I did a huge chunk of the work.  That reading deprivation task is just hanging over my head.  But on to next week.  Week 5:  Recovering a Sense of Possibility.   I’ll be examining what I’d do if I had unlimited resources: money, faith & courage.