March Reverb: Last Month / WITW

 

If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine, and my tunes were played on the harp unstrung,
Would you hear my voice come thru the music, would you hold it near as it were your own?

Bear with me, like everything, I'm a bit late on the posting but full of good intentions.  I've been following this online initiative led by some incredibly thoughtful bloggers to encourage thinking and planning towards the development of personal goals to manifest them into becoming real.  I'm a huge fan.  They deliver monthly prompts right to your inbox that you can use for thinking, journaling, art making, and you can sign up here. 

I've been using these prompts as an opportunity to gather my thoughts and piece them together with photos taken during the month.  I think it will be cool to look back on at the end of the year.  And on to the prompt...

It's a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken, perhaps they're better left unsung.
I don't know, don't really care. Let there be songs to fill the air.
Ripple in still water, when there is no pebble tossed, nor wind to blow.

If March 2011 was your last month to live, how would you live it?

This one is a question I periodically think about, and have been more so lately.  I'm watching friends buy houses, have babies, set up lives.  I have my education, my job, and I am certain I must make a difference in my little way.  But I need something more meaningful.  I want to make a ripple.  I want my existence to mean something.  I want a house and babies.  I want to travel the world.  I want to work with and reach as many people as possible.  Which I'm not sure I've actually thought out loud before. 

Its not possible at this time to do all of those things.  So I'm constantly compromising one for the other.  Each choice requires a gamble that plays on the odds that I have more rather than less time, that my husband and I will remain able to work, we will keep our jobs and our physical health.  On a daily basis, I learn from my clients that this gamble does not always pay off.  A hiccup can mean debt, loss, profound changes in the way you function in the world.  The first order of business for many is surviving. 

For me, I am lucky that surviving means getting up and going to work, paying my bills and putting gas in the car, buying groceries and calling my mom.  Kissing my husband, making art, keeping up with my paperwork.  If I'm able to keep doing this, I'm doing good. 

But then if I'm gambling for the long term, what am I sacrificing and what am I really working towards?  I don't have a retirement plan.  And as much as well meaning souls point out that I am young and "still have time" - I turn 34 this year, and I'd like to have babies soon.  We drop all our money into rent and student loans, with no hope of much of a pay raise.  Imagine the tough conversations occurring in our tiny apartment:  we have had some serious arguments and much needed reality checking recently.  I don't have any answers to this right now.  Just an odd sense of a priority shift, and a realization that we may have waited too long for some things that are deeply meaningful to us.

So that's all a real downer, eh?  I have fun answers, I promise! 

If this was my last month, I would go bowling, skydiving, base jumping, climb some mountains, ride in a hot air balloon, travel the world, make some art, go through all my stuff in storage and throw it all away (or donate it!).  I would go to a beach and spend good time with my husband.  I would sell everything.  I would wear flip flops and t-shirts, and laugh a lot.  I wouldn't bother with makeup and blow drying my hair.  I'd sign the forms to donate my body to science.  I'd eat cupcakes and cheeseburgers.  Anything that took too much time, I'd say, "I only have a month, I ain't got time for this."  I would say what I meant, I would tell people how I feel.  I would mourn all the things I couldn't do, all the books I couldn't read, and the babies I didn't get the chance to have.  I would say good goodbyes.  I would dance to the Grateful Dead, and drive long distances late at night with all the windows down and eighties music blaring.  I would be fearless.

Reach out your hand if your cup be empty, if your cup is full may it be again,
Let it be known there is a fountain, that was not made by the hands of men.
There is a road, no simple highway, between the dawn and the dark of night,
And if you go no one may follow, that path is for your steps alone.

And I have one little update...

Walking in this World
I started reading the book Walking in this World by Julia Cameron, and following along with a small online group, writing my daily journal entries, facilitating my artist dates, and taking time for walks and wanderings.  This all took a lot of time ... and then the small group disappeared (and has since picked up with limited explanation).  So I was left with questioning if this is something that I want to spend my time doing.  The daily writing was a chore, but it did organize my thoughts and helped me keep on target for the next day.  Everything else was a practice I already had in place, so that is not going anywhere.  But reading and synthesizing the activities from the book is tough to do week to week. 

Over this past year, I've made it a point to try as many things as possible, and push myself as far as I can.  And I want to share what I do with others.   And I want it to have meaning.  I want the things that I spend my time doing to mean something, and come together into something greater.  I keep hoping that it will.  Sometimes I feel angry that I don't have time for these things.   But the truth is, I ain't got time for this.

So I am deciding to stop doing this one indefinitely. 

Ripple in still water, when there is no pebble tossed, nor wind to blow.
You who choose to lead must follow, but if you fall you fall alone, 

If you should stand then whos to guide you?  If I knew the way I would take you home. 

- Ripple, Grateful Dead

Reverb
http://www.reverb10.com/

Walking In This World: Week Two and Three

Walking in this World is an online, 12 Week journaling journey, guided by the framework from the book of the same name written by Julia Cameron. 

Week Two:  Proportion

This is the week when we set forward on our journey by re-identifying our identity as Artist and began the process to shift ourselves into that identity.  I re-learned that I have always wanted to be nothing but an artist.  When I was a child, this is how I defined myself; and my family was very supportive of this.  However, none of us knew what to do with it.  I come from a working class family, we set art aside to make ends meet, or we used it to help us do what we needed to get done that we can't afford to buy (make curtains, sew clothes, give presents).  My basic offerings were accepted if they fulfilled a semi-practical function.  And so I continue to struggle with wanting to make things that are relatively functional.

Beyond this, I can't seem to make the leap to the next stage, whatever that may be.  I can't ignore that inner call, but I also can't figure out what to do with it.  Cameron writes "something is telling us to make art.  We must trust that something."  She also states that "when we are ready to transform, transformation will come to us."  Great, but again, what do I do with it?

My favorite exercise in this chapter asked that we write a letter from our adult selves to our inner artist.  Wow, this was an enlightening letter.  I wrote that I put my artist self aside to learn to be a healthy grown up, learning discipline and how to be in control.  I realized that being creative makes me emotionally vulnerable, and forces me to balance and recognize the more intense sides of myself, both joyous and painful.  I think that art making is not actually about making something semi-practical - it is really about keeping my own self balanced while entering into the act of being creative.  Cameron anticipates this and shares:

When we are changing sizes, we feel large, clear, and powerful one day, tiny and defenseless the next.  We feel euphoric and then we feel enraged.  This is good.  This is healthy...If you are panicked, tell yourself, "Ah! Good sign:  I am getting unstuck."

Week Three:  Perspective

I found this chapter a little odd, and struggled to get into it.  I thought that Cameron spent a lot of time talking about how artists are mislabeled "crazy."   This feels like a perpetuation of a misbelief:  an artist designs our clothes, our furnishings, our television shows and movies, our magazines, not to mention the art on our walls.  Maybe I'm naive, but I just don't see artists as "crazy".  And then she debates art making as therapeutic, not therapy but states she does not want to talk about the mental health system.  While I greatly respect most of what is written and I can roll with it, I get the sense that she had a terrible experience with psychiatry and therapy, saying things like "therapy aims at making us normal" and that many therapists "are controlling and intrusive in their premature questioning and direction." 

While I see where she is coming from - and sometimes she is right - I need to say something.  There are therapists, like myself, who don't operate this way.  I wish I could tell her that, on a daily basis, I do "stand knee deep in the rapids of the human condition, accepting that life, by its nature, is turbulent, powerful and mysterious."  I am an art therapist, and I strongly believe that is is possible for art to be both therapeutic and therapy.  Great thinkers who are both therapists and artists have been writing and researching on the topic for many years.  Being a therapist is hard, painful, aching work.  I hold it akin to art making, and sometimes deeper than.  There, I said it.  Since I entered this field, I find art easier to do. 

She also asks us to make a list of 50 things that makes us angry, and challenges us to identify action items from those angry items.  I made a choice not to make this list.  I get the point, but the journaling pages and my perceptions of her attitude towards therapy are stirring up the waters enough for me.  I know exactly what makes me angry; I pride myself on actively changing it on a daily basis.

I'm sorry to be such a lame-o on this one, this chapter just didn't sit with me well.  Maybe I just over think everything!

1. How many days this week did you do your Morning Pages?

Over these past two weeks, I've done my pages every evening except for a shortened version last night because I wasn't feeling well.  One night, I even talked my husband into trying writing!  I enjoy it because it is literally a dumping out of thoughts.  When I wake up in the morning, I am focused on what needs to be accomplished, and by the end of my day, I've done most things on my list.  I just feel more clear and a lot chiller.  Conversely, I am not spending much time on art making.  I don't know why.

2. Did you do your Artist’s Date this week?

Yes. Both weeks I wandered around and took photographs.  And totally lost a ton of awesome ones when transferring my images to my computer.  Boo.

3. Did you do your Weekly Walk?

I've been able to do this also.  Yesterday, my husband and I walked around Jamaica Way Pond and I took a ton of photos.  I'm trying to build in time at work to take walks too!  That is sooo much easier said than done.

Walking In This World: Week One

It has been a slow start to Walking in this World...I suppose that's the Universe telling me to slow down and shift gears.  Walking in this World is an online, 12 Week journaling journey, guided by the framework from the book of the same name written by Julia Cameron.  I am still waiting on my copy:  Amazon is taking its good ol' time shipping out my book (and some new CDs!).  I've just been making room for the journaling, and finishing up last month's projects.  Here is this week's check in...

1. How many days this week did you do your Morning Pages?

Morning Pages are meant to be done in the morning.  Hmf.  So I set my alarm early on the first day, and slept through the whole thing (that's a lie - I got up, turned it off and returned to bed).  I silently berated myself all morning and on my way to work, where I learned that my first client had canceled.  I started to in turn curse that person, and then I switched and offered them a silent thank you. 

For the next thirty minutes, I grabbed a plain pad of paper, sat down and wrote.  I struggled.  I felt like I should be working (even though I came in an hour early that day just to meet with that person, and this hour was technically my hour).  I wondered why I was doing this, I thought about my next client and confronted my feelings about that person.  And I decided that Morning Pages could just as easily be Evening Pages, and so they have become.  I have done them faithfully every night. 

2. Did you do your Artist’s Date this week?

Yes.  Every weekend I make time for some sort of art making.  This weekend, I finished up my February project, prepped my journal for more art journaling, tracked down some photos and took some more.  I'd like to take this further:  getting together with other people to make art, going to a museum or three (and these dates are supposed to be by yourself, but I might cheat and go with my fella), something else to take this time to a new level...

3. Did you do your Weekly Walk?

I had to do a compromise here, but I promise to try to find a way to do both.  This weekend, I chose to use my time to go running outside.  It was so warm (50 degrees!), it was a simple, sheer pleasure.  Ideal would be scheduling in a walk during the week at work...

Walking In This World

Tomorrow morning, I am starting a new challenge:   Walking in this World. 

The challenge is a 12 week course to follow along with Julia Cameron’s Walking In This World.  She is the author who created the Morning Pages, in which every morning you are required to write three pages of just pure thought, every week you take a walk and also go on an Artist's Date.  Oooh, I love the idea of an Artist's Date:  a museum, making things with other people, going to the craft store...

I've been feeling like I want to spend more time writing, and using my journal again.  But I'm not going to lie - I feel a little uncertain about what to expect and if I can do it.  But I'll give it a try...

And, I am almost done my February Thing A Day...