The Artist's Way: Week 1
For some reason, without fail, during the summer months are always the most unmotivated and unproductive days of the year for me. This year started out really strong in terms of creative endeavors, I was writing, drawing, and doing something creative on a daily basis up until May when the weather started getting progressively hotter and hotter. To be fair, I also have a huge vegetable garden and from April until late August, it's a daily job to manage and upkeep, so that started pulling my attention away from creative pursuits.
However, in the thick of the humid, southern summer months, my motivation for everything was waning by the day. Even working out on my regular routine was difficult and draining and the constant sunlight was frustrating. While winter months can rough, summer months are equally, if not more rough for me. With that being said, I practically stopped doing my daily creativity and undid all the progress I made with my 75 Day Create Challenge and my new year's goals of daily writing, drawing, and filming/photography. I was doing pretty solid until the summer solstice.
Since I've been in such a rut for the entirety of the summer, I've decided to re-vitalize my creativity once more but using The Artist's Way. I bought this book about a year or so ago but never got around to fully trying out the program, I read up until week one but never actually started beyond on that but for this past week, I've been going through Week 1 of The Artist's Way.
I started last Sunday (9/22) and have been doing my morning pages every morning before starting the main part of my day. I even do them before feeding the cats, who protest every extra minute they have to wait. The morning pages are a good way to brain dump all of my thoughts and feelings and free up my brain space to think about other things than all what I was thinking before doing my morning pages.
I've also tackled some of the other prompts for week one, realizing my biggest block of my creative self is mostly just myself. I've never really experienced someone telling straight to my face that I shouldn't pursue something creative but I've convinced myself that creativity won't lead me to the life that I thought I wanted to live. Doing art or writing professionally equals poor or always struggling with money and I spent my entire childhood poor and struggling with money and there was nothing I wanted more in life to break that cycle. And I did break that cycle, I went to college and go a job as a software engineer and somewhere along that journey, I stopped prioritizing art and creativity and there's a gapping hole in my life from doing that.
At the beginning of this year, I was able to find balance again with my art and my full time job and somewhere throughout summer, I lost motivation and feel off the horse and I want to use The Artist's Way to get back up and try again at maintaining that balance and find purpose again in my art. And that all feels possible are we're finally in the 'ber months and I can feel the crispiness of autumn around the corner (even though the last few days have been stormy and humid, I have hope).