Recovering a Sense of Integrity
I hope this post finds you well, and enjoying the first few days of September. Here in Toronto, there’s been a noticeable chill in the air over the last few weeks, the leaves on the trees are starting to burn red and gold, and I’ve been happily trading my tank tops and shorts for sweaters and warm blankets. Like many others, after the brutal summer we’ve had, I’m more than ready for fall.
The focus of The Artist’s Way this week was recovering a sense of integrity. It encouraged participants to introspect and become more self-aware.
Reflections on Morning Pages and Tasks
In the text, Julia Cameron discussed the daily morning pages as a powerful tool in recovering one’s sense of integrity. Morning pages, if done properly, allow us to both identify and work through problems in our lives. Morning pages force us to verbalize and engage with every thought that happens to cross our minds while writing them (the good and the bad, the big and the small, and, most importantly, the back-of-the-mind thoughts we don’t want to think about at all). In bringing to light all of our thoughts and feelings, including those we would rather ignore, we are forced to see ourselves as we truly are, “warts and all”.
Through the morning pages as well as some of the other tasks this week, I reflected on places in my life where I feel “stuck”. Without getting into too much detail, there are quite a few places in my life where I feel “stuck” (body image issues, relationship issues, etc) but resist getting “unstuck” because it feels more comfortable to keep dealing with the same, manageable thought patterns and problems rather than moving forward onto new challenges and an unfamiliar landscape. This is something I must work towards changing.
A task I wanted to accomplish this week, but ultimately did not get to, was discarding an outfit from my wardrobe (“a low-self-worth” outfit). Decluttering is my personal bread and butter– I’ve identified with minimalism for a decade. This ties into the theme of recovering a sense of integrity- when you get rid of belongings you don’t like or identify with, you make room for new ones you do.
The Reading Deprivation Week
This week, Cameron also tasked participants with having a “reading deprivation week”. A reading deprivation week is as it sounds- literally, a week of no reading (for fun, entertainment, school, work, etc).1 Cameron’s rationale for this exercise is that artists tend to use reading as a distraction, and that, without distractions, artists are forced to create and engage with their sensory worlds. She reasons that, “with no newspaper to shield us, a train becomes a viewing gallery. With no novel to sink into […] an evening becomes a vast savannah…”.
It’s impossible to talk about the reading deprivation week without addressing the elephant in the room- that school and work require many of us (if not, most of us!) to read on a regular basis. Cameron (unhelpfully and irreverently) addresses this concern by cheekily claiming that she, too, has had jobs and gone to college and “many times wriggled out of reading for a week due to procrastination.” The way this (very real!) logistical concern was brushed off by Cameron was a big turn off for me, and led me to largely throwing the baby out with the bathwater for this exercise. I did not attempt a reading deprivation week.
This being said, since beginning The Artist’s Way four weeks ago, I have already been undergoing my own content deprivation exercise. As you may remember, before starting the program, I deactivated a number of my social media profiles and strictly curtailed my use of others. I did this for ostensibly the same reasons as Cameron promotes reading deprivation. By cutting down on the amount of media I consume, I have more time and energy for creative pursuits and my “creative well” is regularly being filled through sensory experiences.
Artist Date
My artist date this week involved taking my newly-rehabilitated, 10+ year old Nikon D3100 to my old university campus. My old university is one of my favourite places to be- across undergraduate studies and law school, I spent 7 years of my life there.
The main purpose of this artist date for me was to re-learn how to use my camera on manual mode- something I have gradually forgotten how to do over the years. It was a success. Here are some of the pictures I ended up taking:
Other Artistic Endeavours
In addition to all of the enumerated tasks for the week, I also painted 3 watercolour pictures (largely guided by YouTube tutorials) and made 2 new recipes with my partner (no bake peanut butter oat cups and chicken noodle soup). I am finding that as I work through The Artist’s Way, it is becoming easier and easier to create without fear of making mistakes. It is becoming easier to be a beginner. I’m no chef or watercolour painter (yet), but I’m confident that if I keep practicing, I’ll eventually become more comfortable with new artistic media.
Until next week-
Laura Kate
- The Artist’s Way was originally published in the 90s. Obviously, the world has changed dramatically since then, and artists today are distracted by a lot more than just books and newspapers. When doing some cursory research online, I read that Julia Cameron now advocates for a broader “media deprivation week” which encourages artists to take a break from a broader range of media, including social media platforms, podcasts, music with lyrics, texts, and e-mails. Unfortunately, I cannot find a source to link to. ↩︎
Laura Katherine 