Recovering a Sense of Identity…
Wow! I got through the second week of The Artist’s Way! …admittedly by the skin of my teeth, as I didn’t get round to starting any of the 10 exercises until Thursday – how did I let that happen?
So, here’s my check-in:
1. How many days this week did you do your morning pages? All 7 – it’s easy to remember to do and I’ve started writing important todos as they pop into my head while I’m writing, which they frequently do.
2. Did you do your artist’s date this week? My first plan cancelled at the last minute and I didn’t think of a new one. Today, by some magic series of events, we found ourselves in a castle on top of a hill, having an adventure with the boys – stories of dungeons and secret pathways and lots of exploring… it wasn’t planned but it was fabulous!
3. Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant in your recovery?
I got my hair cut!! wow – it’s been over a year since it was cut properly. I felt so… functional, afterwards. Like a normal person who can choose to get their hair cut when they want! It did wonders for my sense of identity and not just my artistic one – I can even bear to have my photograph taken!- The plan to fix the yurt studio roof has progressed a notch. Dad has sourced the material and my parents are planning to transport the 50m rolls by sticking one each in a suitcase when they fly over in February – wow! my parents are true art accomplices!!
- The boys stayed at school beyond their normal 2pm finish on Friday – they had a 3 course school lunch – at ‘comedor’, which they loved, and played football with their friends. TheO sat next to his girlfriends in the dining room and told me all about it – he wants to do it every Friday. This means David and I can have some time out together every week, without worrying that the boys are being short changed. A new step towards their own autonomy too.
- I started the Kundalini yoga 10 Bodies series – we did the Soul Body this week and it was so powerful – balancing the power between the heart and the mind. I instinctively know this is good for unblocking creative energy/channels.
- I started running along the beach every morning – a beautiful run in the early morning sunshine along the shoreline near the school – how positive is that? Inspiring too. It felt like I could have been in somewhere more glamorous, like LA or San Fransisco. It was glorious. (And I’m getting fitter!)
There were some tasks carried over from last week, Week 1: Recovering a Sense of Safety:
5. Write a letter to the editor in your defense. Mail it to yourself. I still haven’t done this yet. oops
7. Select & write out one happy piece of encouragement. Write a thank-you letter. Mail it. Still in progress… oops
8. Imaginary Lives: Look over your list and select one. Then do something about it this week! Oops! I need to get more organised to get these tasks completed.
And the actual 10 set tasks for Week 2: Recovering a Sense of Identity?
1. Affirmative Reading: every day read the Basic Principles (below) to yourself. I read them twice during the week.
2. Where does time go? List your 5 major activities this week. How much time did you give to each one?
- Business Planning & Marketing ‘Room on the Edge’ – 6 hours
- Creating website content for both sites – 5 hours
- Developing online art sales facility – 4 hours
- Sorting email & admin – 6+ hours
- Client calls & prep – 3 hours
- (and Being mama: time with the boys, school runs, homework, bedtimes – 30+ hours)
Which were what you wanted to do and which were shoulds? I wanted to do everything except spending so long on admin and email.
Make a Safety Map to support your autonomy. Haven’t done this yet, but will do it tomorrow after morning pages as it sounds very useful.
3. List 20 things you enjoy doing and the last date you did them. Interesting!
- Most of the things on my list, such as walking, cuddling the boys and playing – the simple, homemade things – I do fairly frequently.
- The expensive, but dramatic and more daring things – horse riding, scuba diving and ice skating – I haven’t done for at least a few years. Their time will come again.
- And the one thing that was a shock reminder when I wrote it down, was exhibiting my work – my last formal exhibition, apart from showing my work online, was 7 years ago – just before Hal was born. Enough already, that’s just too long!!
4. From the list above, write 2 favourite things that you’ve avoided that could be this week’s goals. I left it too late, but I’ll make ‘doing collage’ and ‘creating new pathways and maps’ as goals for next week.
5. Dip back into Week 1 and read the affirmations. I didn’t do this. Will do next week
6. Return to the list of Imaginary Lives – add 5 more:
- an Art Director for feature films – inventing and creating strange super-real yet totally fake worlds and seeing them realised to perfection, and then special-effected to make them even more perfect – a lot like the Architect from last week’s list. Hmmm….
- a Pilot – that’s a lot like the Astronaut from last week’s list, only tamer, except I imagine flying fast jets. Like the Red Arrows. Super-fast, super fun. Maybe I would be a test pilot to up the ante on the adventure and danger part…
- an Uber-Rich Art Collector – last year I played The Prosperity Game for a while and got up to about $60,000 per day disposable income. The thing with this game is that you have to spend it on definite, actually exist things, (such as a red 1953 Ferrari Testerosa but I haven’t got up to the right numbers to do that yet!) not just vague ideas – I stopped for a bit because I didn’t have time to research all the good causes out there that might need my help. I just might start up playing again and buy art instead – start my own collection
- a Flamenco Dancer – in Kundalini yoga this week, we did a meditation where we slapped our hands on the floor and shouted ‘har’. It reminded me just how good it feels to stamp your feet in a ‘golpe’ and connect so firmly with the ground, with rhythm, with emotion. I can’t quite imagine how a flamenco dancer’s life would actually be, but it’s fun imagining dancing anywhere close to Joaquin Cortes!
- A professional Horsewoman – Showjumping, carriage driving, cross-country eventing, polo even – I loved riding, showjumping and all things horsey when I was growing up. It would be a strange life, and a smelly one (I love the smell of horses), but pretty amazing to tour the world on horseback.
7. Life Pie: this was interesting too – I put high scores in all the sections and it’s much more balanced now than previous life wheels I’ve mapped out. Progress!! That’s really encouraging.
8. Ten Tiny Changes: my list has some lovely things on it – give more cuddles, cook more thai food, go more places at the weekends – hey, we did these all this weekend!!
9. Select one small item and make it a goal for this week. Simplify my email – cut down on al the newsletters etc., so that I can find my real mail.
10. Now do that item!! It’s in progress – will keep working on it.
On reflection, this has been a great week, and although I didn’t really engage with the book or the exercises until Thursday, lots of little things happened that were all to do with the theme this week anyhow… it felt like there were unseen forces at work, helping me along. I trust they’ll show up next week too…
How is your own sense of artistic Identity? Leave a reply below…
Got your own copy of The Artists’s Way yet? Buy or borrow it – it’s such a great book – then join in…