Bliss Habits Book Club: The Artist’s Way, Week One

Welcome to Tuesdays with Chel.

“We want to be great- immediately great – but that is not how recovery works. It is an awkward, tentative, even embarrassing process. There will be many times when we won’t look good – to ourselves or anyone else. We need to stop demanding that we do.” – Julia Cameron

Welcome to the Bliss Habits Book Club! For the next several weeks, we’ll be discussing and working our way through The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron.

This week, we are discussing Chapter One/Week One. (pages 25-40). Next week, we’ll be discussing Chapter Two/Week Two.

“All too often the artistic urges of the artist child are ignored or suppressed… if the child is encouraged to consider art in job terms at all, he or she must consider it sensibly… Timid young artists, adding parental fears to their own, often give up their sunny dreams of artistic careers, settling into the twilight world of could-have-beens and regrets. There, caught between the dream of action and the fear of failure, shadow artists are born.

Too intimidated to become artists themselves, very often too low in self-worth to even recognize that they have an artistic dream, these people become shadow artists instead. Artists themselves but ignorant of their true identity, shadow artists are to be found shadowing declared artists.” – Julia Cameron

Here’s my story:

I think I always dreamed of being an artist. I mean, making art was pretty much all I wanted to do when I was a child. There was no better toy than a new box of crayons (perfectly pointed-but-flat tips, all organized according to the Crayola color chart) and a big blank “tablet” of paper.

But for some reason I always believed that I was not good enough to make art. I honestly don’t know WHERE that “core belief” came from- maybe a teacher, or a classmate, or someone else. That requires more digging.

However, despite my lack of confidence in myself, I loved art so much I just wanted to envelope myself in it. I was very interested in art history, and the idea of being a curator sort of moved into my soul and took up permanent residence there (and it still sits there, to this day). The idea of working long hours in a museum made my heart sing. To be around all that magnificent art, all that history, all those stories… it made my eyes fill with tears. I spent hours at the museums in NY City, not only studying the art, but also the people who worked there. I was fascinated by the people who wore the laminated name badges and slipped in and out of the concealed doors that led to secret spaces in the heart of the museum, where magic happened and the public was not allowed. It felt to me like a magical secret society and I wanted in. Desperately. I knew that’s where I was *supposed* to be.

The issue was this- I was going to be one of the very first kids in my huge Italian family to go to college and have a “real” career. Not one that I trained for as an apprentice or sort of fell into, or one that I took over from a relative, or one that I found by applying for a blue-collar job in the want ads, but a career that I could design myself, by attending college and making personal decisions on where to go from there.

My family very much believed that I should be a lawyer because my teachers told them I was good at two things- writing and talking. I wasn’t interested in the law. But I thought maybe I could pull it off if I majored in women’s studies and sort of focused my career on that, and social science. Maybe change the world for women and children. You get the idea…

But after one semester at college, and a few courses in political science and women’s studies, I knew in my heart that world was not for me. And when I got a life-threatening bone infection and landed in the hospital on Thanksgiving, I made my decision once and for all. I was changing my major to Art History and going for it. I was going to become a curator. If I couldn’t make art, I would become a servant to it. I would happily devote a life to caring for and organizing information about art and history to the public.

So, when my family descended upon the Atlanta hospital I was in for the first round of treatment, I announced “I’ve left the women’s studies program and I’ve changed my major to Art History. I’m going to become a curator.”

This announcement was greeted with silence. Of course, my family had just flew in from New York after getting a frantic phone call that I was hospitalized with a Very Serious Problem. I don’t think they really gave my *career* much thought. But I wanted to get it off my chest and see this whole thing as a beginning to a new part of my life. I’d heal and return to school, start fresh.

So after a moment of silence, someone I love DEARLY, someone whose opinion has always meant a great deal to me, spoke up. “But you are a TERRIBLE artist. That’s the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.”

“’Wait a minute! I am too an artist!’ The dreaded response may come back, ‘How do you know?”’ And, of course, the fledgling artist does not know. There is just this dream, this feeling, this urge, this desire. There is seldom any real proof, but the dream lives on.

… Shadow artists did not receive sufficient nurturing. They blame themselves for not acting fearlessly anyhow. We tell ourselves that real artists can survive the most hostile environments and yet find their true calling like homing pigeons. That’s hogwash.” – Julia Cameron

After that response, all I could do was shoot back a curt comment about how art history had NOTHING to do with creating art, and if that person had gone to college themselves maybe they’d be smart enough to understand basics of the human language.

Yes, I KNOW that was a terrible response. But I was 18, and had just been told I was about to battle an epic health thing that would likely keep me in bed for about six months. I wasn’t exactly being thoughtful, you know?

Anyway- that was it. That was the day my core believe about my abilities as an artist were created and then cemented in the hardest concrete known to man. I’m now 38 years old, and it’s been twenty years since that event. And I still remember it like it was yesterday, and I still believe what that person said to me was the truth. Even though I *am* an artist, the work I do is somewhat masked. Meaning, it’s art that’s formed (beads, intricate drawings of circles) and then colored in. Nothing is straight up art. I don’t do illustration, or free-hand paintings. But that’s what I YEARN to do. I just can’t do it- every time I sit down to do something like that- just PAINT, just draw- I physically can’t make it happen. So I work with what I can do.

“In order to move from the realm of shadows into the light of creativity, shadow artists must learn to take themselves seriously. With gentle, deliberate effort, they must nurture their artist child. Creativity is play, but for shadow artists, learning to allow themselves to play is hard work.” – Julia Cameron

Clearly, this week’s chapter resonated with me. Clearly, my “creative recovery” is going to be getting over this core, critical belief that I am not a good artist. I had no idea going into this “book club” idea that this was going to emerge and be the center of this process for me. But there it is. And it will be hard work. Letting go of those beliefs that have formed the structure of my creative life is almost overwhelming to me. Where do I ever begin?

Here’s Julia Cameron’s take on what to do next:

“In recovering from our creative blocks, it is necessary to go gently and slowly. What we are after here is the healing of old wounds—not the creation of new ones. Progress, not perfection, is what we should be asking of ourselves. … Remember that in order to recover as an artist, you must be willing to be a bad artist. Give yourself permission to be a beginner. By being willing to be a bad artist, you have a chance to be an artist, and perhaps, over time, a very good one.” – Julia Cameron

But first, how to begin making sense of the muck that is critical core beliefs that someone else inserted into our brain?

“Stripped to their essence, our multiple negative beliefs reveal a central negative belief: we must trade one good, beloved dream for another. To become unblocked we must recognize our either/or thinking. ‘I can either be financially successful or an artist.’”- Julia Cameron

Cameron goes on to suggest that positive affirmations are the way to go. And then she promptly adds that affirmations feel hokey. Yes, yes- they do. They feel very “Stuart Smalley” to me. That’s going to take some getting used to.  I do like the process she recommends, though:

“Just try picking an affirmation. For example ‘I, ______ (your name), am a brilliant and prolific potter [painter, poet, or whatever you are].’ Write that ten times in a row. Listen to the objections. Write them down. These blurts flag your personal negative core beliefs. They hold the key to your freedom in their ugly little claws. Make a list of your personal blurts. It’s time to do a little detective work. Where do your blurts come from? Mom? Dad? Teachers? Using your list of blurts, scan your past for possible sources.” – Julia Cameron

So, this week is pretty much about cataloging those core beliefs- the good AND the bad, mapping them back to their origins, and basically dismantling them one at a time.

In order to make that happen, Cameron recommends the following for the week ahead:

–       Morning pages, every day .
–       Work with the “affirmations” and “blurts”- turn core negative beliefs into positive self affirmations.
–       Artist date.
–       Letter to the editor, which she describes as the following:  “Write a letter to the editor in your defense. Mail it to yourself.”
–       FOUR (yes, 4!) “time travel” writing exercises.
–       An Artist Walk. (No, this is not the same as the Artist Date.)
–       Something she calls “Imaginary Lives”, and says the following about:  “If you had five other lives to lead, what would you do in each of them? The point of these lives is to have fun in them— more fun than you might be having in this one. Look over your list and select one. Then do it this week. For instance, if you put down country singer, can you pick a guitar? If you dream of being a cowhand, what about some horseback riding.” – Julia Cameron

It all makes sense after reading the chapter, and all sounds very rewarding and useful, but… who has the time? I’m not trying to be difficult- I’m being honest. The only way to do all the work she recommends is to pretty much move out of my house and go live in a shack somewhere and JUST work on Artist’s Way stuff. I’d prefer not to do that.

So my approach is: I’m going to give myself permission to work on these things a little every day. To mull them over. To jot things down. When I’m standing at the kitchen counter and waiting for water to boil for my morning tea, I’ll give these things some thought. When I’m swimming, I’ll give them some more thought. When I’m showering, I’ll give them a little thought, as well. You get the picture. If I wind up not getting as thorough as she recommends, it’s fine. To be honest, I think a little bit is better than none.

The idea is to get these ideas and memories flowing, get them uncovered, so that dismantling them can be easier. It’s sort of like plugging a lamp into an outlet in the wall- once that electricity is flowing, the lamp is much easier to light.

In an effort to keep up with the chapter, and keep the “electricity flowing”, I’m going to post the exercises as discussions on the Bliss Habits Facebook page- one each morning. I’d love for you to join us and play along. If you’re not on Facebook, please feel free to answer the following questions in the comments below:

Finally, the check-in (please leave your responses to these questions either here in the comments or over on Facebook!):

1. How many days this week did you do your morning pages? Seven out of seven, we always hope. How was the experience for you?  My answer: none. Again, honest. But now that I have some dismantling to do, morning pages might be a good space for that. But not until after I have my cup of tea. Sorry, Julia.

2. Did you do your artist date this week? Yes, of course, we always hope. And yet artist dates can be remarkably difficult to allow yourself. What did you do? How did it feel? Yes! I went to a local art/craft supply store and looked in a part of the store I have NEVER been in- the textiles. The yarn. I felt things, examined things. It was very refreshing (and I may have left the store with some crochet hooks and some skeins of beautiful soft yarn in colors I love.)

3. Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant for your recovery? Describe them. See above….

The discussion is continued on Facebook, as well. Please join us.

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Chel Micheline is a mixed-media artist, curator, writer, and avid gardener/reader/swimmer who lives in Southwest Florida with her husband and daughter. When Chel’s not making art or pondering the Bliss Habits, she’s blogging at gingerblue.com (come say hi!) or posting new things in the gingerblue etsy shop.