artistsway | Week 02: Recovering A Sense of Identity

If you've spent a whole week recovering your creative self, it's normal to find yourself attacked by stronger doubt and self-doubt. Like ideas and bacteria, our creative blocks adapt. Some common attacks include worries about doing morning pages the wrong way, anxiety about being selfish or self-indulgent, or the need to start a big new project right away. Cameron encourages us to keep doing affirmations, and to make new affirmations out of any new attacks. It's also important not to show your morning pages to anyone, even yourself.

This week, we'll work on separating ourselves from the attackers.

Not all of them come from within. Well-meaning friends may express disapproval or otherwise undermine the unblocking process (Cameron suggests that they feel threatened by our recovery because it challenges their own creative blocks). It's important not to take their doubts too much to heart. Decide for yourself whether what you're doing is silly, a waste of time, etc.. Reserve the right to waste your own time and to be silly and vulnerable if it works for you.

Other people in your life may be generally destructive. If you have friends who constantly sabotage you in large or small ways, who demand attention and support without giving any in return, who belittle your difficulties or your hopes, please take this course as an opportunity to carve out some space apart from them and their shit-stirring ways (That goes double if you find yourself realizing that you are that friend).

A common fear is that creativity is selfish. You may find yourself volunteering to do things for others, or accepting requests for work or favors, as a way of avoiding creative projects. In my case, volunteering to take over this community gave me an excellent opportunity to neglect my own Rejection Challenge. If you're quick to take on tasks that benefit other people but have trouble finding time for your artist, you might be using your altruism as a form of creativity avoidance.

Skepticism – about the course, about your own abilities and commitment, about individual tasks or concepts – is another common attacker. You do not have to become totally credulous to separate yourself from it, and I don't recommend that you try. But skepticism, like robotics, is a valuable tool with the potential to turn against us. What starts out as a realistic self-assessment can easily metastasize into a sixteen-story robot sentinel blasting ideas into oblivion the moment they appear.

If you tend to be wary of new ideas and patterns of thought, or to mistrust opportunities and compliments, try to give yourself an hour every day as a skepticism-free zone. Say, “I am going to turn off my doubt about [. . .] for one hour” (or one day, or ten minutes). Remind yourself that you can always turn it back on after that time. You don't need to reject your doubts out of hand, but do resolve to set them aside long enough to let some of those improbable flowers bloom.

This week, try using physical cues to help give yourself the space you need. Give yourself an hour every day of protected time. Turn off the phone, turn off the computer (or use Zenwriter, TextRoom, or another simplifier), and don't respond to messages during that time. Put on music, change the lighting, or burn incense if those things are effective for you. If you can spare a whole hour at once, then do it. If you can only manage fifteen-minute blocks of time, use those instead.

Please feel free to use these weekly posts as an open thread for thoughts, issues, and observations regarding last week, plans for this one, or anything else you want to talk about that hasn't been addressed.

Don't forget to do your morning pages, and to schedule a date with your artist sometime this week.