My Journey Through The Artist’s Way [Week 4]
making space for the new you ~ going on a digital detox
Welcome to my Artist’s Way journey! The Artist’s Way is a 12-week program created by Julia Cameron, intended to help you reconnect with your inner artist and expand your creativity. I am documenting my journey right here on Substack; if you’re new here, check out my Week 1 post. Thanks for following along! ♡
⋆˙⟡♡ In this article…
TL;DR & spiritual chiropractic
Quotes & Passages I Loved on clarity driving meaningful change
This Week’s Task: closet declutter
This Week’s Artist Date: the Indy Public Library book sale
Plus! Song of the Week
Okay, I had beef with this week’s chapter… well, part of it!
This week focuses on introspection (more on this in the TL;DR section). As part of this journey, Julia proposes a week-long exercise called Reading Deprivation during which you are not allowed to read at all. She argues that artists 1) distract themselves with books when they could be creating art and 2) reading too much of other’s opinions creates noise that drowns out our thoughts.
The Artist’s Way was definitely written in the 90s–in the days of the very primitive internet–because how sweet is it that Julia thinks books are an artist’s biggest distraction?!
Respectfully: I am not going to lose my almost 200-day reading streak and sacrifice my nighttime routine for the Artist’s Way, especially when books are certainly not my problem!
But Julia is onto something here. Our distractions just look different nowadays, from the bottomless social media algorithm to entire seasons of bingeable TV shows at the click of a remote to podcasts on repeat. Art is no longer art, it’s “content,” and artists are “content creators.”
So in the spirit of Julia’s reading deprivation exercise, I am going on a content deprivation for one week starting today. It’s easy enough for me to stay off Instagram (I hate it there), but Substack, Pinterest, and YouTube is going to be HARD! I will be allowing myself to read books, watch movies, and listen to music–I’m making the argument that these are forms of art and not “content.”
I will report back on this little experiment next week!
p.s. today, August 19th, is my mom’s birthday! Happy birthday mom, thank you for reading my Substack and always for supporting my creativity. Love you 4ever
Week 4: Recovering a Sense of Integrity (TL;DR)
Integrity can be defined as 1) the quality of acting in accordance with one's moral principles and 2) the state of being whole and undivided. Both are important for artists. For one, perhaps the most miserable task for an artist is making soulless, meaningless art. Two, if we do not feel whole in our sense of self, our art is going to suffer.
I loved this quote from playwright and writer Anton Chekhov:
“If you want to work on your art, work on your life.”
Basically, in order to have self-expression, you must first have a self to express. In the birth chart, the 1st house of self and identity makes a harmonious trine to the 5th house of creative expression. How beautiful is it that these principles, self and creativity, are cosmically linked? It’s human nature to be creative beings and express ourselves through art.
Julia writes that the process of identifying a self is both a gain and a loss. You gain confidence, freedom, and integrity… but it can also feel like you’re losing your old life. It can be scary to realize that you’ve outgrown a friendship, that you haven’t worn your favorite shirt in over a year, or that you actually hate your job. It can feel almost traumatic: “I don’t know who I am anymore, I don’t recognize myself.”
She describes the “spiritual chiropractic” that happens when you start realigning with your values. Essentially, when you make shifts in the intangible, astral realm (sense of Self, hopes, wishes, dreams, creativity, etc) you will begin to notice changes in the tangible, physical realm (your body, environment, relationships, etc).
For example, that lingering cold that just won’t go away after you pushed yourself to burnout, the perpetual stomach ache you feel as soon as you step into the office, the head-splitting migraine you get after dealing with that one particular person… yep, these can all be signs that something is no longer aligned with you.
I have a friend who was dealing with toxic drama in her friend group and was constantly under the weather. Since cutting those people out of her life, she hasn’t been sick once. Coincidence? I think not!
There are other signs that can suggest growth and identify shifts. For example, you may suddenly get the urge to declutter your house, donate old clothes, and get rid of old furniture because these items don’t feel like ~you~ anymore. This is our way of making room for the new and more suitable.
You may notice a change in your energy patterns. You may experience stronger and more meaningful dreams. Your taste in music, fashion, or food may change. You may find yourself being more frank and speaking your opinion more clearly. All of these are signs that you are growing!
Quotes and Passages I Loved
“The process of identifying a self inevitably involves loss as well as gain. We discover our boundaries, and those boundaries by definition separate us from our fellows. As we clarify our perceptions, we lose our misconceptions. As we eliminate ambiguity, we lose illusion as well. We arrive at clarity, and clarity creates change.” ~ Julia Cameron
“We are always doing something, walking, reading, listening to the radio, planning what next. The mind is kept naggingly busy on some easy, unimportant external thing all day. ~ Brenda Ueland
This Week’s Tasks
My favorite task this week was…
Open your closet. Throw out or donate one low-self-worth outfit. You know the outfit. Make space for the new.
Simple but impactful. Get rid of that outfit that makes you feel like you’re too big, too small, too boring, too frumpy, too exposed. Now here’s a task from me:
If you were a cartoon character, what would your default outfit be? In other words, if you had to always wear the same outfit and be known for it, what would it look like?
This Week’s Artist Date
I doubled down on hating the reading deprivation so much that this week’s artist date was the Indianapolis Public Library Book Sale! This is one of my favorite events… it’s so fun to browse for books and, if I'm being honest, collage material.
I follow a “right place at the right time” mantra when I go to the book sale, or thrifting in general. I trust that the universe is going to present me with just the right thing, despite if I know I’m looking for it or not. This time I found an album on CD that I’ve been wanting to listen to, a book on nonfiction writing full of practice exercises, and TWO books on my to-read list! Kinda perfect!
In total, I picked up four CDs, six books, eight children’s books for my niece and nephews, and two 1970s magazines for collaging… all for $19! Support your local library! ♡
Song of the Week
Just because I bought the CD this weekend. One of the dirtiest nastiest sexiest bass lines ever recorded…
And with Week 4 of 12 completed, I am one-third through the Artist’s Way journey!!!