Cirque du Malaise

I’ve written a lot about being a big fan of the Julia Cameron book The Artist’s Way. I’ve followed this 12-week program several times in my life, and it has really made a difference in the way I see myself and my potential for creativity. The last time I “did” The Artist’s Way project, I blogged about it every week. You can see the archive here.

One of my favorite things about The Artist’s Way project is that you make a creative date with yourself every week. This is a habit I have tried to carry over into my life as a permanent fixture. Not every week, necessarily, but regularly. This year, I decided to take one workday off every month and play creative hooky.

This is how my first creative hooky day of 2012 went:

First, I went to the Mill Valley Library and read magazines.

My intention was to find new magazines to submit my writing to. However, I will admit that O! Magazine sucked me in for a while. I hate it when I am an obedient example of the target market. But I did also (re) discover the McSweeneys publication The Believer, which you betcha I will be subscribing to from now on. I particularly liked this piece: Hatorade — about the phenomenon of hateful internet commentary. Been there.

While I was at the library, I checked out a free pass to the De Young Museum in San Francisco.

(Yet another reason the library system rocks the house.) If you haven’t been to the De Young in Golden Gate Park, definitely check it out. It’s my favorite museum in San Francisco. I particularly love that it doesn’t seem to have a theme. It’s not, like “modern art” or “heritage art” or “Asian art” or anything like that. It’s just a mishmash of cool stuff. The main exhibit right now is classic Venice masterpieces (oil paintings). The next one is going to be a Jean Paul Gaultier exhibit. My favorite things at the De Young this time:

The Art of the Anatolian Kilim (Ottoman empire rugs from like 400 years ago)

A very cool mobile sculpture with accompanying shadow art. (More on this.)

Stopped at The Village Market in San Francisco for a mocha.

And while I was there, bought some very expensive rice with bamboo powder in it. I don’t know; I’m a sucker for things that should be really cheap but are actually exorbitantly expensive. $7 for rice? Sign me up! But it was actually quite delicious.

And last but not least, went to pottery class.

The perfect way to top off a day of 100% creative activities. Ah, good for the soul.

Oh also, you guys, because I talk about The Artist’s Way so goddamned much, someone from their publishing team recently gifted me a free trial of their brand new web site service and iPhone app, My Artist’s Way Toolkit. The intersection of creativity and technology is something I’m really passionate about, so I was very excited to try this out.

It’s pretty cool. Whether you are interested in making a commitment to the 12-week Artist’s Way program, or just want a place where you can jot down ideas, receive Artist’s Way journaling prompts and “Artist Date” ideas,  and feel like you are really doing something for your inner artist and still being a cool, hip, technical sort, check it out. And they gave me a code you can use to try it for free for one month. Go here and type in: AWTOOLKIT

Make me proud!

I was editing an article for a client, Dr. Susanne Babbel, in which she described a simple journaling exercise about hope. This exercise is intended to give trauma victims a purpose in their life, but it’s basically straight out of the pages of The Artist’s Way, one of my favorite creative projects.

Hope is kind of a hangup for me right now.

Last year while at a retreat I was given a piece of red string to tie around my wrist with a wish. The idea? When the bracelet wears off, the wish comes true. I wished for “hope” — in other words, the possibility of some of my personal dreams coming true. The red string was tenacious and stayed on for months until it was ratty and gross. It finally fell off on one arbitrary but markedly hopeless day.

Recently, I’ve been re-reading Viktor Frankl’s masterpiece Man’s Search For Meaning, which recounts his experience in Nazi concentration camps in the 40s, and his theory that only those with hope and a purpose for their survival made it through the war, despite their physical conditions and the things that happened to them in captivity.

Hope. It’s all about hope. Freud thought it was all about desire, but it’s all about hope.

I need to work on this. So, I decided to try Susanne’s Hope Exercise.

First, you make a list of things you genuinely enjoy doing. Things that give you peace and put you in your right brain (that’s your creative mind — the one where you lose track of time). Not things you think you should like doing. So not, in my case, things like “practicing yoga” or “going to Burning Man” or “eating mushrooms.”

1. Writing
2. Reading novels
3. Hiking Mt Tam
4. Cooking
5. Going to the movies
6. Taking pictures (heart you iPhone)
7. Making pottery
8. Picking flowers (especially late at night off the neighbor’s lawns)
9. Making things for my imaginary spice company, Simple Basic
10. Lying around listlessly in the sun

Second, make a list of things you would like to achieve in your life. This is big picture, blue sky stuff.

1. Write a book
2. Make actual money off a personal creative project
3. Have a family (not picky about what kind, very picky about the participants)
4. Go to France
5. Learn to speak another language (ideally, French)

Third, make a list of baby steps you can take to get going in that direction. This takes an “off the paper, into the world” mentality that I rarely possess.

1. Take a writing workshop (I’m trying to manifest one at Esalen later this year. And by “manifest” I mean “get around to putting a deposit down for it.”)
2. Spread the gospel about Recovering Yogi relentlessly while working on my side project with Matthew Teague Miller, a children’s book we’re writing called The Clam Before the Storm.
3. Steal a baby. (Just kidding.) Alternate plan: Elope with gay BFF in Thailand later this year. (Again, kidding. Sort of.)
4. Pray to money gods while making a plan with my cohorts Leslie and Vanessa to really do this France thing. Next year.
5. Pull out those Rosetta Stone CDs I bought off Craig’s List and develop an iota of self-discipline about my French lessons!

Now, the good part: you share it (like I’m doing here). This turns it into an incantation. Saying things out loud makes them real!

How amazing does Wilbur Hot Springs look? They have flowers and cows! That's my kind of retreat. What can I say; I'm a country girl.

I'm going to be leading writing sessions at Christy Brown's weekend-long retreat at Wilbur Hot Springs in late September, and I'm excited/anxious because this is going to be my first time teaching writing. I taught yoga for about ten years and I've been a manager of enough small businesses that I'm comfortable teaching employees this and that: how to fix the danged printer, how to fill a paper towel dispenser, how to keep a smug smile on your face when customers are totally obnox. Obviously, I'm a big believer in teaching mostly by example. But I've never taught writing, and this is minorly intimidating to me.

To be fair, I'm not going to be teaching anyone how to write. I am not qualified for that. I'm just going to be leading short journaling sessions in between the yoga classes. This is mostly Christy's retreat, and let me just take a sec here to say that Christy is one of my worldwide favorite yoga teachers and someone who I consider a "real" yogi... she's one of the most authentic people I know. Whatever that means. I guess we are all authentic by its very definition, but Christy's authentic is more authentic than a lot of yoga teachers I know. She's kind, she's compassionate, she doesn't judge, and she leads 100% by example. (Kind of like me with the smug condescending attitude toward customers. We all have our niche.)

Regardless of the low level of pressure associated with this job, I am taking it seriously and really looking forward to it. I've been brainstorming things to lead as far as journaling goes, and my mind keeps coming back to one particular exercise I've partaken in through The Artist's Way and the phony yoga superstar I used to work for. It's always been a real powerful experience for me.

Here's what you do:

Write a letter to yourself, as if you had a split personality disorder. The personality writing the letter should be your kindest, most compassionate, most tactful, and most generous one. The personality receiving the letter is your bratty, wounded inner 5-year-old. Gay-sounding, I know, but once you've received one of these letters, you get the power of it. The key is that the letter gets mailed to you (by someone else, obvi) like six to nine months in the future. Just when you've forgotten you'd ever written it.

I've done this exercise a few times and, although I was at first a little eyeball-rolly about it, I did in fact get profoundly moved when I later received this letter to myself. The first time I did it, I had written myself a letter with my goals for the next six months. I picked some pretty outlandish things, figuring, why the hell not? I was astounded and quite pleased with myself when I got the letter in six months and realized that most of my goals had come true.

(As an aside, this is where I do in fact believe in the Law of Attraction or whatever the freak you want to call it. When you put stuff down in writing, you're far more likely to follow through with it. It's not about manifestation; it's about holding yourself accountable, even on a sub-cognizant level.)

I have another idea for a workshop exercise:
Use random celebrity tweets as jumping-off-points for free writing. My favorite muse in this arena is actor Rainn Wilson, who plays Dwight on The Office. His tweets are hilariawesome. Example:

"What if I told you you only have 50 more years to live?"

And then there's Neil Patrick Harris, formerly of Doogie Howser fame and now of the intellectually riveting How I Met Your Mother. He's actually the one who coined the seminal term "hilariawesome."  (FYI I am using the word "seminal" here in its fourth definition, not it's first.)

And another great sitcom star, Mindy Kaling, also from The Office. She's head writer, so has an edge when it comes to tweeting I suppose.

I've been staying in a lot. Can you tell? My imaginary best friends are all celebrities.

Ever since I re-joined the cult of The Artist's Way I've been spending a lot of time doing insidious self-therapy disguised as silly creative tasks. This week, one of the tasks was to make an Anger Collage.

Step one: think of something you're angry about

Step two: make a collage loosely based on this theme

Step three: write about it

Kind of thing.

I had an inexplicable hard time with this considering that the last task—Write Down 50 Things You're Angry About, Super Fast—was unsettlingly easy.

(This chapter is about how anger might be blocking your inner artist, obvi.)

But maybe because I spent about ten hundred hours in front of my computer this week and am a mush-for-brain at this point, the Anger Collage was tough. I didn't really get very far with it. Which was kind of disappointing, because I really do love to make collages.

You know what I did get far with? Ordering a pair of shoes off the Internet.

This might seem like, yawn, what every girl would do if she tried to flip through the Anthropologie catalog when bored on a Friday night, but ordering things off the internet isn't really my style, and I pretty much never buy shoes. In fact, some of my girlfriends (and quite a few of my maybe-gay ex-boyfriends) have been mortified when they saw my shoe collection for the first time.

I currently own seven pairs of boots, one pair of hiking shoes, six pairs of flip flops, and one really awful pair of cheap TWT strappy shoes I bought at a mall somewhere like ten years ago. Those only come out for sudden wedding emergencies.

My entire collection of shoes. It's sordid, I know.

Now, I know in a third world country this would be a hell of a lot of shoes to own, but in my girlie Western universe, it's almost shamefully sparse. I can fit all of my shoes in a basket next to the door. (The basket-o-shoes was another thing one of my probably-gay ex-boyfriends wasn't that keen on.)

I actually hate buying shoes, find it thoroughly stressful, can never find any I like, and when I do, change my mind almost immediately. So when I saw a pair of shoes that I loved unconditionally, I jumped on it.

I pushed aside my stack of bills, the unopened envelope from my CPA announcing my taxes owed, and my list of uncollected invoices, and discovered that it takes literally under a minute to order a pair of shoes from Anthropologie.com. Nice job, marketing execs and web developer geniuses. You got me.

DISCLAIMER: If you are one of my ex-boyfriends reading this right now, I swear I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about the illiterate one.

Twelve weeks ago I embarked on a monogamous relationship with myself, and I am pleased to report that this relationship is only getting better with time. Have you ever wished you could find that perfect partner, the one who likes all the same things as you, the one who always wants to do exactly what you want to do, when you want to do it… the one who totally just gets you?

Good news. You already have that person in your life. It’s you.

Over the last twelve weeks of The Artist’s Way, I’ve taken myself on at least one date a week. And we’ve had a lot of fun. We...

1. Spent an hour wandering around the Botanical Gardens in Golden Gate Park in winter, enjoying the dormant plant life while blasting Yo Yo Ma on our iPod headphones
2. Took a creative writing workshop at Green Gulch Zen Center and wrote some stories, and picked up some freshly-baked-by-monks bread
3. Spent the afternoon kicking around Fairfax, wrote some letters by hand at a not-a-Starbucks, and went to see Avatar in 3-D (incidentally, 3-D glasses over regular glasses is a really hot look)
4. Sold a gold necklace and used the cash to buy new plants at Home Depot, then spent an afternoon repotting them and sprucing up the house
5. Went to see an award-winning play at an underground theater and sat right next to the playwright
6. Went rock and flower hunting and bushwhacking in Tennessee Valley, and then came home and pressed the flowers in my dictionary and arranged the rocks in a bowl
7. Checked out a free pass to the De Young Museum (love you, Mill Valley Library) and geeked out to psychedelic Amish Quilts
8. Took a yin yoga and skin scrub-making workshop with the lovely Kelsey Riley of Naya Organics
9. Dropped into an author talk at Book Passage and learned about the history of Buddhism from the mouth of an “expert"
10. Planted a baby herb garden to devote endless hours of squandered love and overprotection to
11. Ran around San Francisco in the middle of the night installing renegade street art (Okay this one I did with Vanessa, but it was a special occasion and besides, Vanessa is simply another side of myself.)
12. And lots of other mad creative things like making decoupage dreamboards, stealing myself a bouquet of flowers out of the neighbor's yard, learning to cook lots of new things, journaling, journaling, journaling, journaling like a maniac, reading novels, rearranging the elements of my Maggie B., drawing on my chalkboard wall, making spice blends, making bath salts…

The best part of The Artist's Way? When you realize that there is creativity in everything you do.

I’m starting to wonder how I ever had time to date someone else.

I have a nasty habit that stems from my phobia of confrontation and my fear-based 6 personality. When someone in my life is bugging me, I find it very challenging to go straight to the source. Instead, I tend to act out sideways by bitching heavily to my cadre of besties.

I rely on them for their opinions, their backup, and their support. But this weekend, I realized that I am committing a sort of spiritual self-violence by not simply trusting my own judgment.

Actually, this is something that I've known in the way back of my mind for a very long time. But awareness doesn't always bring immediate change, sadly. This week—already Week Eleven of The Artist's Way—I came up against a powerful instance of synchronicity in the form of a blood pressure-raising confrontation with one of my very best friends.

Basically, she wanted to know why I didn't just come straight to her when I was having a problem with her. Instead she suspected that I was complaining about her behind her back.

She was right. I was.

At the end of every Artist's Way week, we do a check-in, and one of the questions is, "Have you noticed any issues that are significant for your recovery?" Well, this is a big one.

Not coincidentally, we just started in on the Metta (Loving Kindness) practice in my Dharma course. With Metta practice, your responsibility is to practice compassion and unconditional love toward absolutely everyone. In the world. In theory, that is.

It's a practice, and obviously not something that's possible for us mere mortals in every moment. But, at least during the twenty minutes you are meditating—and ideally beyond—you practice practicing it.

When my friend busted me for being a sideways complainer, I realized that I've been doing her, and myself, a great spiritual disservice by not practicing Metta with her.

So, here's my commitment: from here on out, I'm going practice going straight to the source when I have something to say.

You can consider that a declaration.

This week was about workaholics, and figuring out if we are one. I didn't need to read a chapter or do any journaling to solve this one. I'm not. Nope, that's not something I've ever been accused of. My mom is a workaholic, and so is my brother. I got my dad's genes. We like to sleep late. And we're good delegators.

This week was also about noticing how, now that we're at Week Ten of The Artist's Way (wow), things have indeed shifted. I took inventory, and was pleased to note some positive changes over the last few months.

1. I haven't had to rescue a cat out of a tree in quite a while, thank you Jesus.
2. I have developed a quasi-successful amateur meditation practice.
3. I'm fully engaged in mindful eating these days. In fact, I haven't had processed sugar or wheat in almost two weeks.
4. I've been experimenting with fierce and unwavering sobriety as a pathway to mindfulness.
5. I've been spending more time outside.
6. I've been reading a lot.
   

   A dreamboard I made this week.

I've also been indulging my frivolous creative side as if it's a fragile child that needs a lot of attention. I took a cue from Vanessa and started making all my gifts. That's been fun. For me. Maybe not so much for my poor friends who are now getting homemade salt scrubs and repotted cacti from me on their birthdays.

And most importantly, I haven't been giving myself a hard time when I forget to meditate, or "accidentally" eat wheat, or indulge in the occasional other sort of vice.

And I guess I've been feeling more creative, especially in regard to writing. I spent some time this week creating the following three new pages for this blog:

• Words I like
• Words I don't like
• Books I love

Appreciate feedback, always.

For my artist date this week I made a miniature herb garden for my back deck.

Yesterday was the vernal equinox—the first day of spring.

As a real wildwoman of a healer I happened to meet this weekend usefully noted, “Winter is hideyhiderton time, but spring is showyshowerton time.” In other words, the time when it all comes to light. The days are longer; the crocuses are blooming (and the poppies and the irises, out at Tennessee Valley!); the animals are coming out of hibernation and acting crazy… and so are we.

According to the Christian calendar (which was so usefully and not so coincidentally built around nature’s own calender), we’re coming right up on the time of Christ’s resurrection. That’s right, Easter. Resurrection is a powerful symbol this time of year. And this week’s Artist’s Way chapter came right on time.

This week, we had to read back on our morning pages thus far and note any revelations, insights, droning incessant complaints (check), and what odd. Wow was that humbling. Here are some things I think (and write) about pretty much daily.

1. My weirdo bad dreams about tidal waves and people I love turning into monsters.
2. I need to get better at speaking with conviction.
3. I'm pretty much obsessed with getting enough sleep.
4. Loneliness and fear are big troublemakers in my life.
5. And more things that I am, believe it or not,  slightly too embarrassed to share.

It reminds me of a statistic I once heard about how 99% of our thoughts are thoughts we’ve already had before. Only that rare brilliant 1% is ever a new thought.

Part of the point of doing exercises like this is to learn how to put it all behind and start again. Resurrection, Phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes, this winter didn’t kill me… it indeed made me stronger.

And I’ll leave you with everyone’s favorite Anais Nin quote, that I myself was reminded of at the radical healing circle whatchamahoosee I was invited to:

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

So true, isn’t it? I adore Anais. 

One of the things that is emphasized over and over in The Artist's Way is how we have to get past the tactics that our parents and other early critics used to condition the innate creativity out of us. In this week's chapter we did an exercise called "Early Patternings" to quote/unquote try to excavate what happened to our poor, abused early artist.

I'm extremely well behaved about reading all the chapters, following all the rules, and doing every single task. However, the "early patternings" stuff simply doesn't resonate with me.

As far as my early artist goes, there weren't a lot of scathing critics. My parents—both being young hippies and aspiring artists themselves—weren't exactly the types to look down on creativity. In fact, a lot of my earliest memories were about doing artsy things with my parents. We didn't have any money, and we lived in a severely rural part of New England, so most of our entertainment was self-made.

They sent me to a communityWaldorf-style school when I was 3. They (tragically) let me and my brother dress ourselves from the time we could walk. They indulged my harebrained delusions of becoming a ballerina. They didn't blink an eye when I said I was going to go to art school and major in pottery.

Early on in the process of doing The Artist's Way I wrote this letter to my mom. I have been wavering on whether or not to send it. Judith doesn't really like the mushy stuff, and she's pretty private. So if you too don't like the mushy stuff, and you don't want to be a part of me outing my mom, better stop reading now.

Judith was 27 in this picture. That's right, 11 years younger than I am now.

Dear Judith

I remember being very young and sitting at the kitchen table coloring with you. You always encouraged us to do creative things with our time instead of watching TV or playing with stupid plastic toys. We were constantly undertaking projects like making our own Christmas tree ornaments or baking cookies or painting murals on the walls of our rooms. At some point you brought home an old piano that someone had been getting rid of, and we all took turns really sucking at playing it.

Your own creativity was always an inspiration to me. You made clothes; you gardened; you cooked; you quilted; you made jewelry; you had that awesome Quaker-esque weaving loom that took up half your bedroom.

I am so grateful to have grown up in a home where creativity and art was encouraged and the consumer bullshit was kept to a minimum.

And beyond that, thank you for sending me to Syracuse, for being supportive of my decision to go to art school and to get a degree in photography and ceramics. Thanks for not being the kind of parent who encouraged or demanded that I pursue a more "practical" career. You've never once given me advice to do anything other than what I am already doing, and while it has taken me quite a while to find something I actually like to do, I appreciate your patience and your occasional financial support over the years.

If I could have one wish it would be to see you get back to your own creativity and re-embrace your abundant talent and passion for making things. I know that it's your calling.

Love,

Joslyn

This week's Artist's Way chapter was about turning my old boring story into a proactive new plan.

And in a moment of synchronicity (something we Artist Way savants are always watching out for) I was complaining to a friend who I haven't seen in ages and she said, "Oh shut up, your story is so boring!" (Thank you Amy, love you!)

My story IS boring. To myself most of all. I think we all feel that way, on some level.

The trick is to figure out how to shift it.

The particular story that Amy was referring to is my story about how I am always so poor, never going to have any money, whine, cry, complain. Every time I hear myself say "Oh I wish I could, but I can't afford it," I want to roll my eyes at myself. I can think of a handful of times this week alone that I've said those words.

The thing is, I really can't afford it. It's not just crazytalk that I'm making up for attention.

But there has to be a better way to approach this story. Maybe it's true that I am resigned to a lifetime of struggling around money. But I could stand to have a better attitude around it.

In an effort to shift my vision (thanks for that platitude, Walter)—and out of another task we did this week in the Artist's Way where we mapped our jealousy issues (good times)—I am working on having a different attitude.

So next time you ask me out to dinner, instead of saying "Oh I wish I could, but I can't afford it" please expect me to say "I already have some soup on the stove at home. Maybe next time!"

And check me if I don't.