Open Water...

“I write to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” was quoted by Joan Didion and something I hold very dear to my heart. I’ve been writing in a journal for as long as I can remember. My first “diary” was given to me when I was about eight years old. My second grader handwriting graced just a few pages in sporadic entries. I have unfortunately lost this precious artifact but the act of writing has followed me throughout my life. I wrote (but never finished) articles I wanted to submit to Seventeen magazine when I was in high school. I never shied away from writing projects as a student. I seldom wrote in a journal while in school for some reason. I have only recounted a few events. I started keeping a journal on a very regular basis after turning twenty one and beginning my career as a hairdresser after attending a technical college and beginning employment as an assistant first. I later completed a book of short stories about my clients and have since dreamed of tightening up those stories to create a novel that tells a more fluid story of my life behind the chair, intertwined with the world beyond it.
I currently have another blog(www.thegrievingladybug.blogspot.com) that began nearly three years ago when I lost a love in a car accident. I never thought I’d keep a blog. My writing has always been a very sacred thing I keep strictly to myself. What I felt though, when I met and lost Rob was something so intense, so extreme I still have trouble grasping it that I didn’t know what else to do but write. Constantly having to answer the dreaded “how are you?” question from well meaning friends, family member, clients, co-workers, innocent bystanders etc…after he died was so excruciating at times that I felt the only thing I could do was write and pass along the directions to my little space out here on the web to both share and distance myself at the same time (if that’s really truly possible…) during a time where I’ve never been so shaken before in my life. I didn’t want to push anyone away, I just didn’t know how to “be”. The emotions I felt were so complex and ever-changing that it was most uncomfortable.
That being said, I believe the time has come to move on to something else. I will not abandon my ladybug blog, I just want to adjust, refocus and move into another stage of life. I’m looking for a life that lets me expand creatively, without my usual judgment, excuses, and procrastination. This is a tall order. I am a master procrastinator and an eloquent excuse maker and the harshest judge my little artist self has ever experienced. I’m shy when it comes to my art as well as my writing. I’m looking for and needing a place to come to and share these vulnerable parts of myself.
A client of mine told me about “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron. It is a twelve week program that is intended to carve out a “spiritual path to higher creativity.“ I eventually bought the book and for the past eleven weeks have been diligently writing, completing the tasks for each week and contemplating the required weekly “artist date.” The two requirements for this program are number one…the “morning pages.” They are three pages written every morning in a “stream of consciousness” style of writing. The idea is to keep the pen moving no matter what. It doesn’t matter if all that is written for three pages is “I don’t know what to write.”, as long as the writing is happening. These can’t be typed either. Handwriting taps into a different kind of process that is needed for accessing this spirituality that is crucial to recovering from the not so nice things we tell ourselves, dreams we’ve squashed with addictions, work, excuses and the like. Number two, the “artist date” is something that is done weekly. This is an outing that you do with your “inner artist” self which is a childlike self that in many of us desperately wants to escape it’s adult world to play.
Morning pages aren’t a problem for me. I write every single morning without fail. Being that this is supposed to be about whatever I want, whatever comes to mind, I feel no pressure to write about something I feel I’m “supposed” to write about or something I “should” write about. It’s freely done, sometimes fragmented, or written sloppily. It’s open, it’s honest, it’s what I truly feel at that moment. It’s sometimes energetic, sometimes lethargic. It’s sometimes angry and cussing some fool out, or apathetic. It is usually positive and excites me but can also bore me to tears. It’s repetitive and not always grammatically correct, and I never ever ever indent my paragraphs. Simply put, it’s delightful.
Now the artist date has been a tremendous challenge. I’ve done a few things here and there. I’ve written a long list of things that I want to see, do and experience, but…don’t make time for them. I let other life parts get in the way. I tell myself that meandering through a toy store, coloring, drawing, maybe taking a piano lesson, or walking around outside on a bright clear day to take pictures of whatever I find interesting is a waste of time. I’ve got it stuck in my head that if I’m not being “productive” at all times, I’m a failure at life. There are miles to run, hair to cut, errands to race to, people to see, procrastinating to do, a face book page that needs checking, laundry that can be started and dishes to clean. You get the idea. I am afraid of the intimate connection I know I will make with myself when I give myself the opportunity to grow by taking the time needed to get outside my head and into the world as I see it. I crave this connection in so many ways but avoid it altogether. It feels scary to get to know a part of myself that I don’t entirely know and that may show me something surprising, possibly disappointing or so utterly lovely that I can’t believe it’s actually me. Entering into the unknown isn’t something I usually do with gusto. I currently feel I’m treading water in a vast, open body of water looking for a piece of land to get to. I admit though, my curiosity is taking over and I want to find out what is on the other side of the many walls I put up between the person I think I’m supposed to be and the person I actually am plus the walls I put up between myself and other people.
Enter “The Artist’s Way” course at the Bodhi Center near Fullerton ave. here in the lovely city of Chicago. Two clients told me about the center and the course and when I mentioned it to a co-worker, and we looked it up one afternoon online the details couldn’t have fallen into place more perfectly. The course takes place every Monday evening which is perfect being Monday is a day off for both of us. We signed up, we’re in and here we go…
Tonight was the first night. There was a lot of logistic information being given, meeting and greeting of our facilitators and each other, a little bit of reading and a few writing tasks. One task was to write about five different lives you would like to live. For me, if I weren’t a hairdresser, I would like to be…
1. An (published) author
2. A pianist
3. An energy healer
4. A singer
5. An illustrator.
Yourself? What lives would you live if you weren’t immersed in your current one? I could add ten more things to this list but for now, these five got my imagination stretched just a little bit beyond where it normally goes, placing myself in each position, trying it on, seeing how it feels before writing the next one.
I’d like to share my time through this course and beyond with you chronicling all the adventures it promises. Thank you as always for reading.