The Artist's Way Check-in: Week 4

This week finds me a bit down in the dumps though I do have some small good things to report about my writing life. I'm trying to work on being open to receive good things as they come my way and even try to expect them. This is a hard thing for me, an adult child of an alcoholic because I've been conditioned to be afraid of any form of communication, especially mail, phone calls and even email. (In fact, I can't remember a time in my life when I wasn't afraid of getting big envelopes in the mail. That is - psychologically big.) But, I'm trying.

(engraving by Pierre-Joseph Redouté)

Here we go with a ho-hum check-in.

Morning Pages: Here and there, but no real dedication to them.

Artist's Date: Again, I was going to say "no" but this afternoon I went to meet my boyfriend at the library and they had an exhibit of antique books with hand colored plates. They were beautiful and mostly relating to nature. So, I snuck in another 15 minute artist's date before going to meet him on another floor. 

Issues: Well, the above mentioned attitude issues, plus working on things when they show promise.  The editor that asked me for my best article promoted it on Facebook over the weekend! On Friday when I found out she  was doing it I spent some time tweaking and polishing my other articles on that site so at least I did something in response to the news, which is my goal after all -- I need to build up a little universal momentum in these things but the wheels are squeaky and rusty. I also started researching a new article for them and then got some more writing work from a previously dead source. I am grateful because I let two Al Anon friends talk me into a day trip to NY in October and this will pay for the bus fare -- if I get it done.

I didn't do any of the Time Travel excervcises in Chapter 4 of The Artist's Way. I just didn't care to do those. I didn't do the reading deprivation either, but I substituted something else, which became much more beneficial to me.  That, my darlings, will be a whole other post as I have quite a lot to say about it.

*Sigh* -- Service in Al Anon

It has been a busy week but not necessarily one of growth. I only made one Al Anon meeting this week and afterward my good feelings were undone by a difficult group conscious meeting. Let's just say people were acting like family -- the dysfunctional ones we all came from. As this was my home group full of people I really admire I was pretty upset afterward. In fact, I was so upset that I had to call my sponsor for solace and found that she was also pretty disturbed and so we talked for an hour trying to settle down and cheer each other up.

(photo by Svilen Milev)

I do love this group but I have to admit it is not as healthy as it could be. The person that was the most vocal during the meeting has been in a service position longer than I've been in Al Anon. No one talks about rotating him out, but instead talks about how much he gives to the group. I think somewhere in Al Anon literature it talks about how people should not hold on to these positions as it activates the controlling aspects of their personality.

I used to go to a small group that ended up with only myself and another member coming on a regular basis. I felt weird being the one to open the place and run the meeting each week as the second person couldn't commit. It wasn't my meeting but a meeting for all. So, the few of us left decided to close the group, with me being the most vocal about it. So people few step up for service that it leads to one person controlling the group, unfortunately. I did so much service for that group that after that I only volunteered for functions like luncheons and other activities not related to meetings.

Another group I know did a Al Anon group inventory. I was glad they did as I felt it was another good group falling apart but the inventory got things back in check. Ha - maybe suggesting that and possibly getting that going might be a good way to do service for my home group.

The Artist's Way Check - in: Week 3

This week was rather busy and then we went away for a long weekend to the beach. But, since I didn't have a chance to read I brought The Artist's Way with me and worked through some of the exercises. While I felt that the "rediscovering your childhood interests" applied to me that wasn't what I really wanted to work on this week. I did find other things to think about, though.

Morning Pages:  I did some writing most days but only on a few days did I do the whole 3 pages. Like I said, it was busy for me during the work week.

(photo by kslyesmith of stock.xchng)

Artist Date: Surprisingly, I did 2. On Wednesday after work I squeezed in a 15 minute visit to a museum within walking distance of my job. They had an exhibit on antique writing instruments that I wanted to catch before it closed over the weekend. Then, yesterday morning while I was still at the beach I borrowed a bike and rode around with my camera at about sunrise. That was great and something I'll likely repeat the next time I'm down there.

Issues: I got a lot out of the reading on synchronicity, which Julia Cameron defines as positive coincidences that help us progress with our art. I liked the part about how we don't act on synchronicity because we are afraid. Last week I started to be aware of synchronicity but over the weekend I examined why I am afraid of it and why I don't act on it. It seems like I do a lot of work and it goes nowhere. So, I'm going to change my attitude about it and when I see synchronicity I'm going to think of some action(s) to take, no matter how small. Like they say in Al Anon "Do the legwork and let go of the results."

For example, in last week's check-in I mentioned a new writing opportunity.  So I decided on 2 things I could do to help this along, which were listening in on a conference call for their writers (if I get home from work on time) and working on a new article so I will have more of a body of work in my preferred area. Well, I've been away and haven't had a chance to start a new article but I did get back to find an email from the editor asking me which of my articles she should look at, but only one. It looks like the email is a few days old so I knew I should get on the ball and reply.

Well, what did I do? I went downstairs and read the paper. I knew which was my favorite and best (though not necessarily the most popular) article and it would have taken me two minutes to reply, but no.... I thought I would do it when I got to work but I've got another full boat today and so finally I made myself come up here and do it. Well, I am The Resistant Artist.

I think my problem is that today I'm feeling a little overwhelmed. I had four blissful days without the internet and now I have an email inbox full of stuff from work, writing, and friends that need attention. Plus, stuff around the house and another busy week ahead. My cure for this is to find a quiet spot and make a to-do list. That way I can tackle one small thing at a time without over-thinking it.

Also, the day I wrote out my fears about synchronicity I had a chance to talk to my boyfriend about it and he also shared his concerns about his own work. So, it was good to open up and bond with him a bit.

Resistance and Art Gallery Openings

Today one of my graduate students invited me to a group art show of people from her program. It is only in the building next to mine and I'm going to try and make it. This officially represents a change in attitude. Usually I get invited to these things all the time and then don't bother to go, even if the show is literally in the same building that I work in. In the past I was too grumpy to stay at work even one minute past the end of the day but now I'm going to make more of an effort to look at the art here. Plus, it will help me bond better with my students and perhaps I can even call it an Artist's Date.

(Photo by Brendan Gogarty)

For some reason I've been prompted to think about why I hate art openings. I mean, I hate them with a passion and they give me a headache. I try to think of reasons why I hate them but I can't. I say that I hate the pretentious art scene (true) but I can't quite figure out the real reason. They are a real flash point of anger for me and I can't figure out why.

In writing this I tried to remember if I ever liked art openings. I can remember one rainy Saturday when I was in my late teens (18 or 19) and I was out exploring the city neighborhood we had recently moved in to. As I was walking home I saw a little gallery that had an opening and I went it. At that time I didn't have any art education and didn't even have a GED. The opening represented a world that I hoped to be in one day. I went in and looked at the art and had some free finger food. The artist was an older man who painted watercolors of cityscapes so he wasn't a pretentious art person. It was a positive and pleasant experience. I went home thrilled with my new experience.

In art school I went to my friends openings a lot for shows on campus. These were informal student affairs where someone baked cookies and the art was hung on the walls of one of the school hallways or tiny exhibition spaces. I also went to the more formal shows that the school put on featuring established artists in their bigger public exhibition spaces. Those were fun, too because I generally knew everyone and the art was usually interesting. Since I was in school I could get more out of what I saw and relate it to what I was learning. Plus, the Exhibitions Director was a notorious spendthrift and the food was very fancy and expensive -- he even ordered sushi on occasion!

I think at the end of Art School the art opening thing went sour. Four of us had a senior thesis show in one of the school's galleries, including my studiomate. By then I had been through lots of drama with her because she broke up with her longtime boyfriend and spent a lot of time drinking and getting into trouble. Her mom swept in and took control of the food and everything for the opening. The rest of us were upset by their attention grabbing and crazymaking.

Then, a couple of years after I graduated college my father had an important show but he didn't care about the opening and so I ended up doing the food. I hated his passive aggressive approach to it as he didn't ask me but let the work fall on me anyway. Then, I had to hang around at the opening but I couldn't be an artist, people only saw me as the daughter of the artist. (This is another issue I have -- people have openly implied that I'm not a "real" artist, I'm only copying after my dad. In my private writing I recognized the main perpetrator of this idea as someone who has serious issues of their own so perhaps I can let this go soon.)

Anyway, so I've avoided openings ever since. I want to go back and enjoy them as fun again and be an artist in my own right around other artists.

The God Box

One way that I know my Higher Power is working on me is that I go to several Al Anon meetings each week and the same idea or theme carries through all of them. This week's theme is using the God box for detachment and other issues.

(photo by Teodora Vlaicu)

If you don't know what a God box is, it is a fairly simple device that some people in 12 step programs like to use. To make one, take a box and put a slot in the top. Decorate it if you like. The next time there is a problem that you obsess over and can't control, write it down on a piece of paper and put it in the slot. There! God (or whatever you call your Higher Power) will take care of it.

Some people say never open the God box and it should be permanently sealed forever. Others like to open it and measure their own growth by thinking about how they have or haven't improved in terms of these issues.

I actually have a God can instead because last year at our Al Anon group's district workshop the organizers collected coffee cans, decorated them, and gave them to everyone as a door prize. The chirpy message pasted on the front says:

"I can't
God can
I'll let Him!"

I have never cracked mine open yet, but I don't feel it is time yet. I don't want to never open it because I tended to be superstitious in the past and I want to let go of the idea of external forces controlling me. The past me would have thought the God box was really some kind of Pandora's box and if I opened it and looked at it I would unleash all of the problems again. Nope. Tool for growth.

Some people put events or situations in their God box but mostly I put the names of people, usually when they are such an overwhelming ball of wax that I can't figure out what to do anymore except to say let it  go. After yesterday's meeting I have several issues that I was more specific about and I just put those in the box. 

Some days I really need it, some days I forget about it, but it has always been useful.

The Artist's Way Check-in: Week 2

I thought I hadn't been into The Artist's Way much this week but then I realized that I went through a number of the exercises in the week 2 chapter before life got too busy over the weekend.

Morning Pages: 6 1/2 of 7. I got derailed over the weekend and never got back to it. Considering my resistance, I'm not too unhappy that I didn't do them.

Artist's Date: Once again I thought I was going to say "nothing" but I got an invitation to a party at a yarn store a few blocks from me. Really, it was to show off the new line of artisan yarns from different small dyers and spinners. I like this particular yarn shop because they have good relations with the community and once in awhile I participate in their charity knitting projects. But, their yarn is super expensive and I can't afford to buy it. (I knit a lot and when I tell people this they think I am finicky about my yarn and shop at places like this all the time. I don't have the heart to tell them I'm a sale at Michael's kind of gal.) I just thought I'd look at the pretty new yarns and perhaps talk knitting.

(photo by Alicia Jo McMahan)

Well, I wasn't feeling too social when I got there because it was Sunday afternoon, normally a day of family for me, which wears me out. Surprisingly, a number of people wanted to chat me up about the food. (Chocolate, finger foods, fudge, ect.) It was excellent. The cupcake icing was so tender and light that I've never licked anything like it before. The yarn was pretty and fun to play with and I got some free patterns. I also had a Dixie cup full of white wine -- a real oddity for me because I rarely drink because it reminds me of growing up with alcoholism. Well, I decided to not be so uptight but I did relish the chocolate more than the wine.

The yarn was beautiful and the colors were amazing, but again, not while I'm on a budget. One artist named her colors after local landmarks and there was a beautiful deep red named after a building that my boyfriend has a pleasant association with. Well, when my budget gets better perhaps I'll go back and make him something with it.

Issues: hating writing and having no self motivation. I kind of put it on the back burner but now that I think of it, it kept me from doing my morning pages and posting some things I wanted to say in this blog. Plus, I thought more about why I hate to draw.

In going through the week 2 excercises in The Artist's Way I discovered that I'm not bad with self care, but it is mostly lumped on the weekends. I stopped going to my Wednesday night Al Anon meeting  because after some crime was reported I didn't want to go out alone at night. But, I do plan to call my sponsor on Wednesday evenings now and I often poke in on the meetings on Step Chat.  I'm not using any of my self care time for "small creative acts" (as Julia Cameron says in the book) so perhaps that is something to work on.

Good Stuff: Just when I got on the computer this afternoon I got an email from a web site where I wrote about 5  articles for fun and then left off of because even though it was positive, the articles weren't money makers. Well, they sent me an email saying they were putting one of my articles in their fancy new web magazine, which means more exposure and probably more money. I'm not sure what this is all about yet, but the topic was something that I like writing about a whole lot better than the stuff I get paid for.

Fear of the Blank Page

This is the second week of school and I'm beginning to see a lot of distressed students struggling with their first writing assignments of the semester. I have to  keep quiet about what the teachers do though it isn't easy. This year a teacher asked his freshmen class to write a paper analyzing a Sartre piece for their first college paper ever.

So, it was interesting to talk to this one kid because he seemed so much like myself. He is a transfer student (like I was) majoring in the same thing I majored in at art school. He has a terrible fear of the blank page and that extends to both writing and drawing. We talked about the drawing issue in conjunction with the writing issue.

In light of this, I must confess that I hate to draw. I'm sure that this is also the fear of the blank page, which I assured the kid that many artists have (myself included). I mean, I really hate drawing. I freeze up and make little inept things that I hate. I can't even draw cartoons anymore, which was my passion for a long time.

(Photo by spekulator of Stock.xchng)

In college I always had this idea that I was drawing retarded or something. I hate painting, too, for reasons that I haven't explored yet. In community college I took a lot of drawing classes and I enjoyed them but in that school we didn't advance very fall. When I was putting together a portfolio to get into art school I took a  lot of the art school's adult education classes to build my portfolio. There, I took a great class where I felt I finally learned well. Actually, it was based on the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. (Many public libraries have it.) I really felt I had an excellent teacher and I bonded with her. She was a gifted person who spent a lot of time with us. I want to write about her at one point because I took a class with her again later, but that is for another entry.

I got into art school but always had the impression that it was by the skin of my teeth and that my drawing was not strong enough. The only drawing class I enjoyed in art school was nature drawing, probably because I love nature and I enjoy drawing organic subjects. They lend themselves well to the expressive line work I like.

I haven't really drawn much since I left school. A.R.T.S. Anonymous recommends doing your art at least 5 minutes a day. Well, with drawing I can't even do that. I don't even want to look at a sketchbook. Somehow, I feel like I can't draw anything significant and it is almost like I am back to the beginning again -- I think I've forgotten how to draw.

So, anyway, thinking about this kid. sometimes I go through phases where I think I hate my job and then soothe myself by realizing that God keeps me here for a reason. So, this semester I'm going to try to be a little more open and try to learn more from my students and the other people around me here.