Hi everyone! We made it! Week 4 of our 4-week guide to “The Artist’s Way.”
Morning Pages
Not only did I not do any morning pages this past week, I don’t even think it crossed my mind to do them! I’ve always struggled to maintain a regular journaling practice, so I can’t say I’m surprised I failed on this front… yet again. But luckily, repeat attempts are free and plentiful and I hope to someday be a regular journaler.
Artist’s Date
My middle sister was in town this past week, so I didn’t get to do an artist’s date, but we did taken in a ton of art. I think since my entire life is structured around my art, it’s nice to have the periodic break where a loved one is the focal point.
This weekend, I’ll be taking myself to the University of Penn Museum to witness an Indigenous braiding ritual. Attendees are invited to bring an offering and I’m really enjoying thinking about what mine will be.
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Self-Protection
When we are clear about who we are and what we are doing, the energy flows freely and we experience no strain. When we resist what the energy might show us or where it might take use we often experience a shaky, out-of-control feeling. We want to shut down the flow and regain our sense of control. We slam on the psychic brakes.
Julia Cameron is correct but then she ventures into some weird food-shame-y territory, that we’re just gonna skip right over. The point is, we all have our favorite toxic traits we turn to when we want to be our own worst enemy.
No matter your vice of choice, you will find you cannot be creative when you’re numb. You have to be alive to be creative.
If you’re uncertain about what your best-loved blocks are, Julia suggests you
Line up the possibilities. Which one makes you angry to even think about giving up? That explosive one that has caused you the most derailment. Examine it.
These are often the things in our life we believe we can’t go on being without. Either you get brave enough to release them and see what’s on the other side, life forces you to go without at some point and you figure it out, or you keep on clinging and shrinking away from growth. Pro tip: None of these paths are pleasant, but some of them will lead you somewhere beautiful. Choose wisely.
The choice to block always works in the short run and fails in the long run.
Big Cam says if a pal “dropped by with some killer dope” is your excuse for why you didn’t get around to being creative, you are blocking yourself.
Like water forced to standstill, we turn stagnant.
Julia goes on to say,
Blocking is essentially an issue of faith. Rather than trust our intuition, our talent, our skill, our desire, we fear where our creator is taking us with this creativity. Rather than paint, write, dance, audition, and see where it takes us, we pick up a block. Blocked, we know who and what we are: unhappy people. Unblocked, we may be something much more threatening—happy.
I know there’s this idea that we’re afraid of being happy, fearful of our own greatness. But for me, I think what I fear is doing all of this and then still not being happy or worse, being worse off and realizing I didn’t fully appreciate what I had and where I was.
And that’s why it takes audacity to move beyond this fear. I have to be audacious in my belief that I deserve the life I desire. And that that life will be worth all the trouble and turmoil. Sometimes, that audacity is hard to come by because the examples of people who’ve ventured down the same path are not plentiful. It’s important that I seek out role models and people who inspire me, who will keep me motivated to keep going. I have to refuse to remain comfortable where I’m at.
What comfort will you have to risk for the life you want?
Next there’s a little section on workaholism and a quiz to check out whether you are one or not. I think we go too hard on workaholics as if we aren’t all living in a Capitalistic hellscape where most people are one missed paycheck away from calamity. I predict there’d be a massive drop in workaholism if this country abandoned capitalism for socialism and I hope to see the day.
What you should take away from the section, is whether or not you’re using work as an excuse not to chase your creative pursuits. Like do you really need to be answering emails at 8P or can your inbox wait until the morning.
Step away from your laptop and pick up a hot glue gun, my friend.
Juju says we have to “guard against rationalization.”
This one got me because I sure will try to rationalize why I have to do THIS THING instead of THAT THING that I actually want. Julia encourages us to establish a “Bottom Line.”
These specific behaviors make for more immediate recovery than vague, generic resolve to do better.
If you really have no time, you need to make some room. It is more likely, however, that you have the time and are misspending it.
When I freelanced full-time writing content for startups, I found that it was hard to get to actual writing. That my “work” often seeped into my weekend and stole my writing time. I had to make it my “Bottom Line” that any work that didn’t get done by Friday at 5P just wasn’t going to get done until the next week.
My weekends were a sacred time where the only writing I did was for myself. And guess what? Nothing awful happened. There weren’t any important deadlines blown or money loss. Turns out, I’d been using work to block myself.
Cam Cam has some advice for what to do when a creative drought hits. She suggests you continue to show up to the page and try not to get down on yourself.
I am a firm believer that you don’t have to write everyday to be a writer. If it ain’t coming, I think it’s futile to try to force it. Whether that’s a writing block in the moment — get up and go for a walk — or you’re in a fallow season — Step away from writing for a bit and invest your time in low-stakes art. That means if you’re a writer, take a painting class. Something you don’t have to measure your talent against.
On this creative journey we have to be careful that we don’t get waylaid by ideas of fame.
Fame is a spiritual drug. It is often a byproduct of our artistic work, but like nuclear waste, it can be a very dangerous byproduct. Fame, the desire to attain it, the desire to hold on to it, can produce the “How am I doing?” syndrome. This question is not “Is the work going well?” This question is “How does it look to them?”
The point of the work is the work.
I’m gonna save y’all the spiel, but obvs this applies to AI too! The point of the work is the work.
[F]ocusing on fame—on whether we are getting enough—creates a continual feeling of lack… [W]anting more will always snap at our heels, discredit our accomplishments, erode our joy at another’s accomplishments.
Now let’s be real, again, we live under capitalism and I believe that does put some weight behind this desire for fame and fortunes. There’s also a general lack of resources for artists (See: What’s going with the NEA).
But we have to find some kind of way to foist this focus on fame away from the front of our mind. Because obsessing about this doesn’t allow for you to get the work done regardless of whether or not you’re doing it for the love of the game or because your rent is due.
I’ve also personally witnessed many a writer focus more on what they want to achieve than on getting the actual writing done. Even today on Threads, I saw Roxane Gay respond to someone’s post saying next year is the year they finally write their book, but how do they get an agent and get published?
Roxane rightfully pointed out that first is getting the book complete. There will be time to figure out those next steps when they’re actually relevant. But none of that matters if there’s no book.
Fame is really a shortcut for self-approval.
Think about all of the famous artists who feel boxed in by people’s expectation that they continue to do and make whatever it is that made them famous in the first place. Suddenly, their creativity has become limited to the range of their audience. GAAAAAG.
When you’re early in career, you don’t have those problems. Sometimes obscurity is a license to create freely.
The last thing Julia touches on in this chapter is competition.
When we are ogling the accomplishments of others, we take our eye away from our own through line. We ask ourselves the wrong questions, and those wrong questions give us the wrong answers.
Competitiveness will have us acting jealous over not having things we don’t even want! Back in my startup days, the director of an organization that I freelanced for was invited to give a talk for a popular morning series. I knew she definitely deserved to be asked, but why had no one thought to ask me? I remember standing in the crowd, listening to her list of accolades and thinking about how little I’d accomplished in the startup space.
The startup space.
In other words, not my space! I was a proud member of the startup community and believed I was changing it for the better, but it was not central to who I was. Writing was my domain. If getting invited to speak meant I had to succeed on those terms, then did I really want to be invited?
Well, I definitely still wanted to be a speaker, and so it was quite fortunate that the areas where I was successful made me the ideal person to invite to speak on a different topic. I got what I wanted, went where I wanted, but succeeded on my own terms. Succeeded by doing what I loved.
What if I’d chased a different set of accomplishments out of a hunger for recognition?
“Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle” is a silly movie. But I’ll never forget one of the opening scenes where Kumar is interviewing for medical school at the behest of his parents, but he has zero desire to go. The school official is like but your tests are perfect?! Harold his best friend is baffled Kumar won’t “apply himself.” Kumar says something crude about the size of his package and how that doesn’t mean he has to do porn.
Like yes, I can succeed at any number of things, but what is it I really want to be pouring my heart and soul into? Do that. Do that and I will find my audience (and I have! That’s you — Hi!).
I’m also reminded of the time I flipped to the back of an anthology I had an essay in and immediately realized everyone else’s bios were more impressive than mine. I started fretting about how I didn’t stack up. Then I had to remind myself I was already in the anthology. So clearly I was good enough to be included, right? The desire to diminish yourself can be so pervasive, you have to remain vigilant against it.
Autonomy
I have to free myself from determining my value and the value of my work by my work’s market value.
The idea that money validates my credibility is very hard to shake.
In other words:
[I]f I have a poem to write, I need to write that poem—whether it will sell or not.
I need to create what wants to be created. I cannot plan a career to unfold in a sensible direction dictated by cash flow and marketing strategies.
This feels like a bit of a target attack because I am some who likes a certain amount financial comfort even as a creative. The Capricorn in me does not allow me to have a Devil May Care attitude with my debit card. And I’m certainly at one of those crossroads in life where it seems as if I’m being pushed to choose between my passions and pocketbook.
We live in a reality where writers and other artists are regularly underpaid for their creations. And it’s endlessly frustrating that the math often doesn’t add up when it comes to our cultural contributions and our income, which is why we often find ourselves compromising.
Because what are we gonna do? Not write the poem? Not paint the picture? Not sing the song? What kind of life would that be?
Then JuJu goes on and on about inner child stuff and a list of performative quirkiness before it begins to get good again.
To kill your dreams because they are irresponsible is to be irresponsible to yourself.
She pushes us to surround ourselves with other people who want to nurture the artists in us right alongside of us.
I often describe myself as having a restless spirit. I’m always striving for these places of stability, as if I don’t already know that once I arrive, I will get busy tearing everything down again.
“Can’t I rest?” we wonder. In a word, the answer is no.
As artists, we are spiritual sharks. The ruthless truth is that if we don’t keep moving, we sink to the bottom and die. The choice is very simple: we can insist on resting on our laurels, or we can begin anew. The stringent requirements of a sustained creative life is the humility to start again, begin anew.
It is this willingness to once more be a beginner that distinguishes a creative career.
I have a book client I worked with this fall that’s turning 70 next year. I turned 40 this year and it’s been a topsy-turvy time. Reading her life story and witnessing the reinvention she underwent every decade or so, made me realize what I’ve been going through is just another chapter in my own—and the chapters and their plot twists keep coming (if you’re lucky!).
It’s a waste of my energy to strive for some mythical steady-state in my life. That’s attention better served powering through the obstacles immediately in front of me.
Then Julia tells us not to let success dictate our art or we and it will grow dull. Check.
JC tells us we don’t have to be athletes to move our bodies. And moving are bodies comes benefits our creativity. She gives an example of some runners. I don’t have the ankle reliability to take up running but I love a good long walk.
When I first got laid off, to get myself out of the house everyday and orchestrate routine, I began walking 4-6 miles daily. Since the weather has turned I' haven’t gone on any morning walks, but I think they served the purpose I needed them to.
You walk long enough and you kind of fall into something like a meditative state. There’s time to think through your writing. There’s time to be inspired by nature. There’s time to find joy just being with your body.
Exercise teaches the rewards of process. It teaches the sense of satisfaction over small tasks well done.
Julia closes out the chapter with some guidance on building an artist’s altar, if you’d like to create one for your own practice and are looking for ideas, check out the end of the “Week 11” chapter.
Faith
This is the final chapter of “The Artist’s Way.” Oddly, I didn’t underline a single thing from this chapter in my reading of it.
There’s some stuff about having faith in our dreams, the dark gestation period of an idea, tapping back into imagination as play just like you did when you were younger, and that we were put here to create.
JC talks about how bad boyfriends, bad bosses and big checks will boomerang into your life to sabotage your movement away from what was and toward what you want. And that sometimes we let them because who doesn’t love a lil’ nibble of self-sabotage every now and again?
And then the book ends. There’s a brief epilogue, but mainly, this is it.
After four weeks, I’m more than ready to return this book to my shelf.
Final Thoughts
On this read of “The Artist’s Way” it was hard not to feel like the book wasn’t a round up of the Internet’s “Best Of” life and writing advice social media posts. Maybe I’m too online (I’m definitely too online…) or not in space where I feel in need of a creative recovery.
It’s like if you’re a real swimmers, floaties would just feel like they’re holding you back. Right now, I’m crackling with creative energy. But if I were drowning in misery, maybe an easy to digest bit of motivational content would be just the right thing for me to grab onto.
I’m still thinking about what a contemporary version of “The Artist’s Way” would look like. This week’s task is to write 2026 You a letter. What are the doubts you know will creep next year and how should Future You dodge them?
