Still working with the Artist Way book...

A sense of strength- week 8- using a perception of time, you will identify immediate and practical changes you can make in your current life.

(Artist way book by julia cameron.)

Survival
Difficult tasks, artistic survival.
Artistic losses can be turned into artistic gains and strengths but not in the isolation of the beleaguered artist's brain.
In order to move through loss and beyond it, we must acknowledge it and share it.

 Change the things I can.

The Ivory Power- encouragement. Most of us know how to take something apart but not how to assembled it.
conform to a norm that was not their own- (lately what matters most is conforming to my norm. and letting go of what other think or I think I should be doing from the influences of others...going it alone but with others that are saying yes to their norm.)

Gaining autonomy from malignant artistic mentors..

Making his/her peace with the lost years... Like the career of any athlete, an artist's life will have injuries. The trick to survive them, to learn how to let yourself heal. Give yourself the dignity of admitting your artistic wounds. That is the first step in healing them.

Gain disguised as Loss -Every end is a beginning. We know that but we tend to forget it as we move through grief.  Questions to ask, How can this loss serve me? Where doe it point my work? The trick is to metabolize pain as energy.

 area's of energy...angry, jealous, and now pain...

Stop complaining about the lousy curves you get thrown and stretch, reach for what you really want,

 JC-I listened to this conventional wisdom for a long time, racking up loss after loss. Finally, after one loss too many, I began to look for the other door, the one I had refused to walk through. I decided to catch the ball.. became an independent film maker. 

 it's not about asking "why me?" as it's more about asking How?

or it might be What's Next?  Key to career resiliency is self-empowerment and choices.

When every avenue for her creativity was blocked, she found another.  Don't let the bastards get you down.

 When faced with a loss immediately take one small action to support, your artist.   I go for a walk or I turn to food or I buy some music or some supplies.

Age and time: product and process-I'm to old...ego-saving nonsense, it's always used to avoid facing fear.

Creativity occurs in the moment, and in the moment we are timeless.

 focusing on the length of the trip is the ego playing tricks on you...instead taking one small action or motion toward a goal is very enjoyable. This attention to final form ignores the fact that creativity lies not in the done but in the doing. My favorite place to be is to be in the piece I'm doing right now..

 It simply means that doing the work points the way to new and better work to be done.

 The grace to be a beginner is always a best prayer for an artist.

 Filling the Form-Obsession will strike and when it does, telling yourself that you will take care of it later and turn back to doing what the next right thing is.   to not listen to the first think...and to get back in you game plan.

Having unacknowledged expectation that if I turn my life into a full creative swing I ell be abandoning life as I know it...That's hog wash...but the thinking of looking at changing their whole life in one fell swoop, is a form of grandiosity  is it's own undoing...by setting jumps to high and making the price tag too great, the recovering artist set defeat in motion. 

Creative people are dramatic, and we use negative drama to scare ourselves out of our creativity with this notion of wholesale and often destructive change. Fantasizing about pursuing our art full time, we fail to do it part time. ( I feared to think of my creative life that far in advanced and it scared me to think of being some famous artist but I had a goal of being the best collage artist I could be and was a door that opened)

We fail to see the many small creative changes that we could make at this very moment. This kind of look at the big picture thinking ignores the fact that a creative life is grounded on many, many small steps and very, very few large leaps.

My favorite part of the book...No one is asking you to leap. That's just drama, and for the purpose of creative recovery, drama belongs on the page or on the canvas or in the clay or in the acting class or in the act of creativity, however small.

Creativity requires activity, and this is not good news to most of us. It makes us responsible, and we tend to hate that. You mean I have to do something in order to feel better?  What's the use?   instead of What's Next?

this I do have to keep a vigilant on... Anxiety over action,  Watch yourself for a week and notice the way you will pick up an anxious thought, almost like a joint, to blow off-or at least delay -your next creative action..

Most blocked creatives have an active addiction to anxiety.. We prefer the low grade pain and occasional heart stopping panic attack to a the drudgery of small and simple daily steps in the right direction.

To fill the form in life  we must work with what we have rather then languish in complaints over what we have not.

This is me....Engages in a very healthy sort of creative restlessness.

This is all probably way to much to post on a blog but who do I have to own up to on this but myself...I've been working the artist way for along time and it's been my guide post for a creative life that when I don't engage in it I'm a lost puppy.. and right now not being blocked I can still use all this very good information about how to deal with life situation that will help keep me moving in a good orderly direction... With the onset of a big show there is a level of anxiety but I feel that and I'm not trying to control as much as to be real with that anxiety and work with it...being aware is the the first step in many things we do...Yesterday I spent the day running around and then getting the studio in order and pulling old work out of frames and getting it in to plastic sleeves for bin work and then gearing for a big frame order and supplies I need...so for what every all this means to anyone else it's my signage for the next right thing... I'm engaged in a very healthy creative restlessness...I think I've always been that way...and acknowledging that for me is kind of like a good acceptance...or a Yes that is who I am..