The Artist’s Way: Week 10

Week 10: Recovering A Sense of Self-Protection.

This week was a little unusual because it took me two weeks to complete.  I am really great about doing my morning pages, but this week I had a tough time doing anything else.  I had a presentation in the class I’m taking at Portland State and it was just too much, so I decided to take the pressure off and give myself two weeks to complete Week 10.

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So I did all 14 days of Morning Pages and one Artist’s Date.  This time I  spend another hour working on my painting.  It’s still far from done, but started on the boat and the people.  Mixing the skin color was challenging and so were the shadows on the boat.  But it’s coming along.  I keep it on an easel next to my desk, so I think about my “next move” a lot during the week while I’m working.

The rest of the activities this week was focused identifying the  factors that sabotage your creativity.  What is your bottom line?  What do you need to protect above all else to keep your creative goals?  I set a bottom line in December of 2012: to post two blog posts a week, every Tuesday and Thursday.  And I’ve done it without fail every week since.  Sometimes they are great, sometime not so great, but I always do it.  That’s something I’m really proud of.  Now I’m trying to decide how  to use that same discipline to accomplish other goals.

I often give myself too high of expectations.  I find myself thinking about how I can be THE BEST, rather than doing MY BEST.  It’s a big difference.  Compete with yourself rather than with other people.  You’ll never win competing with others.  It’s something I struggle with and I’m trying to be more aware of because it can cause me to sabotage myself.  “If I can’t be the best, why bother?”  Sounds dumb when I type it out but that’s often what happens.

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Coming up next week, Week 11: Recovering a Sense of Autonomy.  I’ll be developing a plan to continue the growth I’ve done over the last two months so I can keep growing and recovering in the months to come.

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