Reflections from The Artist’s Way, Week 6: Recovering a Sense of Abundance
This week, we confront a powerful creative block, money, learning how mindset and beliefs about money can hinder our ability to create abundance in our lives. We often postpone creating to pursue financial goals. We convince ourselves that once we have enough money to live comfortably, we will pursue our creative passions. But when do we reach a point of having enough? Cameron writes:
“We cling to our financial concerns as a way to avoid not only our art but also our spiritual growth. Our faith is in the dollar. <<I have to keep a roof over my head>>, we say. <<Nobody’s going to pay me to be more creative>>. We are awfully sure about that. Most of us harbor a secret belief that work has to be work and not play, and that anything we really want to do - like write, act, dance - must be considered frivolous and be placed a distant second. This is not true.”
“Many of us equate difficulty with virtue - and art with fooling around. Hard work is good. A terrible job must be building our moral fiber. Something - a talent for painting, say - that comes to us easily and seems compatible with us must be some sort of cheap trick, not to be taken seriously.”
For a long time, I, too, believed in this rhetoric. That before I can create, I must first pursue a reasonable career, and that creating is something you do on the side. Today, I believe that as long as my basic needs are met, I don't need much else. I don't expect my art to make me wealthy, but I am confident that it will make me happy, and lead to interesting opportunities and money eventually. Today, I consider quality time with my family and creative expression to be true luxuries.
Cameron suggests keeping track of every purchase we make over the course of a week or even a month to see if our spending aligns with our values. This week, Cameron also makes us pay closer attention to natural abundance in our lives by picking interesting stones or flowers. I happened to press some flowers about a month ago and now have them to cherish.
Morning Pages: I returned to Morning Pages and I feel so much better. I do it my way, though: I've begun to draw more when I'm writing. Even though my entries are shorter, the revelations continue to come. For example, when I was writing my Morning Pages, I resolved to spend 30 minutes every morning for my writing practice. I discovered that although I write here regularly, I don't write much more during the day. This prompted me to have morning writing sessions. During one, I wrote about my disability and why I chose to work in public health. Before I knew it, an idea had formed in my head: the best way to discuss it would be to turn it into a graphic novel, which I am currently working on! I've never been so engrossed in a project before, and telling my story has become my obsession.
Synchronicities: I'm going through the phase of devouring graphic medicine and other graphic novels. It turned out that many comics artists and scholars, such as MK Czerwiec, Lucy Kinsley, and Prof. Susan Merill Squier, are based in Chicago.
Artist date: Following one of the exercises from the previous weeks, where I listed the things that make me happy, I gave myself some time to work on jigsaw puzzles, which is something I simply love.
