Week 04: Recovering a Sense of Integrity
Jun. 16th, 2014 08:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. —Seneca
Well. . . sometimes.
For some of us, building a stronger sense of self is part of this process. Cameron says the morning pages allow us to distinguish between our private feelings and our official or public feelings. While it's common to say "it's okay" about things we don't feel entirely ok about, it can be important to acknowledge, at least to ourselves, when things are not so ok. Extreme emotions, positive or negative, can also push us into avoiding the morning pages when we need them the most.
The morning pages also, she says, show us our self, a necessary thing for the self-expression that is one important aspect of art.
What do I want? What do I feel?
Who am I?
Finding out or confronting answers to these questions can be painful and unpleasant. Be sure to acknowledge this pain when it occurs. Responses might vary widely, with some people experiencing "emotional pyrotechnics" and volatile emotional states, some noticing gradual changes, and others no changes at all. You might find yourself changing things about your environment, your appearance, the kind of music you listen to -- or you may simply resist any feelings of change or awareness because they feel silly or self-absorbed. Try to observe without judgement.
At this point, Cameron suggests again using affirmations in the morning pages. "I trust my perceptions." "A stronger and clearer me is emerging." "I recover and enjoy my identity."
Try the following exercise, writing down answers as fast as you think them up:
1) List five hobbies that sound fun.
2) List five classes that sound fun.
3) List five things you personally would never do that sound fun.
4) List five skills that would be fun to have.
5) List five things you used to enjoy doing.
6) List five silly things you would like to try once.
Cameron closes the chapter with an exercise that she says is mandatory: a week of no reading.
What?
Why?
Cameron believes that cutting yourself off from reading is a way of avoiding distraction and forcing greater attention to the sensory world. She suggests that procrastinating reading for a week is common and surely one can use the same techniques that one uses to avoid reading to. . .avoid reading. To fill the time, check back with those lists you just made, or listen to music, or knit, or exercise, or cook, or meditate, or sort closets, or do watercolor painting, or go dancing, or fix broken things or . . . She adds an exception for this week's tasks.
I'm a TA in a creative writing workshop this summer, so I can't actually complete the “reading deprivation” task without letting my class down in a major way. Cameron's portrayal of this objection as a self-important tantrum strikes me as unnecessary. I can deprive myself of recreational and research reading for a week, so that's what I'll be doing, even though (because?) my skepticism is through the roof on this one.
I encourage you to make the exceptions you need in order to fit the Reading Deprivation Challenge into your circumstances. I'll be making exceptions for work emails, my creative writing class, and this community. I won't be checking my personal email, reading any other blogs, books, or other publications, or hanging out on Fandom Secrets. On the other hand, I won't bother to take the poems down from my walls or take off my glasses when I pass street signs and banners to avoid being able to read them. We'll see what happens, I guess.
Don't forget to go on a date with your artist sometime this week— note that one of this week's tasks is to plan a whole day's worth of artist date—and do your morning pages every day!
Well. . . sometimes.
For some of us, building a stronger sense of self is part of this process. Cameron says the morning pages allow us to distinguish between our private feelings and our official or public feelings. While it's common to say "it's okay" about things we don't feel entirely ok about, it can be important to acknowledge, at least to ourselves, when things are not so ok. Extreme emotions, positive or negative, can also push us into avoiding the morning pages when we need them the most.
The morning pages also, she says, show us our self, a necessary thing for the self-expression that is one important aspect of art.
What do I want? What do I feel?
Who am I?
Finding out or confronting answers to these questions can be painful and unpleasant. Be sure to acknowledge this pain when it occurs. Responses might vary widely, with some people experiencing "emotional pyrotechnics" and volatile emotional states, some noticing gradual changes, and others no changes at all. You might find yourself changing things about your environment, your appearance, the kind of music you listen to -- or you may simply resist any feelings of change or awareness because they feel silly or self-absorbed. Try to observe without judgement.
At this point, Cameron suggests again using affirmations in the morning pages. "I trust my perceptions." "A stronger and clearer me is emerging." "I recover and enjoy my identity."
Try the following exercise, writing down answers as fast as you think them up:
1) List five hobbies that sound fun.
2) List five classes that sound fun.
3) List five things you personally would never do that sound fun.
4) List five skills that would be fun to have.
5) List five things you used to enjoy doing.
6) List five silly things you would like to try once.
Cameron closes the chapter with an exercise that she says is mandatory: a week of no reading.
What?
Why?
Cameron believes that cutting yourself off from reading is a way of avoiding distraction and forcing greater attention to the sensory world. She suggests that procrastinating reading for a week is common and surely one can use the same techniques that one uses to avoid reading to. . .avoid reading. To fill the time, check back with those lists you just made, or listen to music, or knit, or exercise, or cook, or meditate, or sort closets, or do watercolor painting, or go dancing, or fix broken things or . . . She adds an exception for this week's tasks.
I'm a TA in a creative writing workshop this summer, so I can't actually complete the “reading deprivation” task without letting my class down in a major way. Cameron's portrayal of this objection as a self-important tantrum strikes me as unnecessary. I can deprive myself of recreational and research reading for a week, so that's what I'll be doing, even though (because?) my skepticism is through the roof on this one.
I encourage you to make the exceptions you need in order to fit the Reading Deprivation Challenge into your circumstances. I'll be making exceptions for work emails, my creative writing class, and this community. I won't be checking my personal email, reading any other blogs, books, or other publications, or hanging out on Fandom Secrets. On the other hand, I won't bother to take the poems down from my walls or take off my glasses when I pass street signs and banners to avoid being able to read them. We'll see what happens, I guess.
Don't forget to go on a date with your artist sometime this week— note that one of this week's tasks is to plan a whole day's worth of artist date—and do your morning pages every day!
no subject
Date: 2014-06-16 05:53 am (UTC)From:The reading deprivation exercise, lol. I read it on the bus this morning and had all sorts of feelz which may or may not have included words like "oblivious, privileged bitch" and "fuck her." Like you, I'm putting it in context in a way that makes sense for my life: No reading for the purpose of killing time or distracting myself, no making additional work other than what's currently on my plate. The rest--work, research, correspondence--I don't count as reading at all, at least not for the purpose of this exercise. Maybe Cameron figured her readers would make this kind of adjustment on thir own and she purposefully set herself up as the bad guy to force them to figure it out, but her tone is still off-putting.
I've been in deprivation for the better part of today and was shocked at just how reliant I was on reading to distract myself. I had planned to listen to an audiobook while proctoring an exam this morning, and with that option out the window I found myself scribbling in my phone about how miserable and bored I was. I also started playing card games on my phone.
The prospect of post-class lunch without reading material was almost unbearable. I usually enjoy these Monday lunches alone, and this time I had more to celebrate since this was my final class of the semester. This time, however, without a longform article or book ready on my phone (whose battery had buckled under the weight of my whining anyway), I dreaded the downtime.
And it was boring without my usual reading material, so boring I started examining the gleam of sunlight on chairs on the deck outside the restaurant, and the way a car went backward down an alley. I daydreamed briefly about time turning back, then about a car that went around the world in reverse. Then I started planning parts of my novel in my head, mulling over character names and... hey, this wasn't so bad. Since I was going to have some more free time this week, I decided to put up some blog posts I was procrastinating on. (I won't count necessary research as reading, since it's neither aimless nor distracting.) I also planned to carry my tablet and keyboard with me to write on bus commutes.
I wonder if Cameron meant the deprivation to cover just reading, and specifically whether she thought of other pastimes such as television. Certainly at a time of infinita range in portable distractions, people might not miss reading as much as they did in the early 90s when Cameron wrote the book. I was still mad at her, though.
no subject
Date: 2014-06-16 09:08 am (UTC)From:If I remember correctly, I read somewhere that she updated this to cover all electronics usage as a "cleanse." Yeah, right.
no subject
Date: 2014-06-16 02:11 pm (UTC)From:I watched back-to-back Epic Rap Battles on my way home from work. I'm not at all sure Cameron considers this as kosher as jazz listening, but I got some good laughs out of it.
And does Julia Cameron understand technology? Like, at all?
no subject
Date: 2014-06-16 03:05 pm (UTC)From:I think the answer is basically no.
A big semi-related peeve for me is how she routinely refers to television as though it were obviously just a delivery system for commercials (as though it were still the 1950s?) and doesn't seem to realize that it's also the home of some of the best contemporary storytelling and has been for a while now. I'm sure she'd be similarly dismissive of video games if anyone had informed her of their existence.
Her treatment of "distractions" in general is weird to me, to be honest. in ways I'm not sure yet how to articulate.
She does later emphasize the importance of "fun" music over "arty stuff," so who knows?
no subject
Date: 2014-06-17 05:23 am (UTC)From:Your mention of television as storytelling reminds me of Shonda Rhimes' commencement address for Dartmouth this year where she talked about how she wanted to be Toni Morrison but ultimately discovered that television is her medium. I'll give you the money quote to help you resist the temptation to click:
"Years later, I had dinner with Toni Morrison. All she wanted to talk about was Grey’s Anatomy. That never would have happened if I hadn’t stopped dreaming of becoming her and gotten busy becoming myself."
To be sure, television in the 1950s and 60s was not a time when a Shonda Rhimes could have written for television, not to mention direct and produce a hit show. And like you said, I think Cameron's conception of television along with a lot of other things is fixed around that time.
So Cameron definitely has her limitations, and it's great that the workshop participants are recognizing that and interpreting her instructions in ways that fit their lives and understanding. In a way I think that's the real use of the exercise--to think about what are distractions for each of us and paring them down for a week.
no subject
Date: 2014-06-17 01:09 pm (UTC)From:I don't think she's caught up with the times, though…
no subject
Date: 2014-06-17 05:04 pm (UTC)From:The TV thing is totally understandable given her background, and my edition is from 2002 and doesn't really seem to have been updated much from the 1992 ed. in any case. It's just one of those things I've gotten jumpy about in the present, and am unfairly taking out my frustrations on a book from the past.
no subject
Date: 2014-06-16 01:02 pm (UTC)From:Plus, we've already been introduced to the idea that if things make us angry, they must be important. So if reading-dep makes you really angry, it must be really important.
It would be possible to present the reading-dep challenge without making assumptions about how reading functions for her audience, or presenting that function in negative and dismissive terms, or pre-emptively waving off concerns that, for people whose job is something other than "unblocking creatives" may actually be both serious and easy to work around -- but if she were more flexible and understanding, the anger effects (and the illusion of wow-this-must-be-working they create) would be less.
That's my theory, anyway. I'm not sure if I like it altogether.
no subject
Date: 2014-06-16 02:03 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2014-06-16 09:18 am (UTC)From:So far, I've found my "no reading" week to be productive, but it's only Monday. I worked straight through my lunch break knowing there was no book waiting for me and I got a lot done at work without the temptation of sitting down to read School Library Journal for "research purposes." I've done this challenge before and I actually found it very rewarding, and I remembered that I suddenly took up drawing and coloring during my reading deprivation, so the first thing I did during work time (after arriving half an hour early to write at my desk) was print out a mandala and dug out some colored pencils to keep on my desk for break times.
I'm allowing myself to check Twitter during snack, lunch, and the end of the day (to keep in touch with my friends) and while I'm on my laptop if new messages pop up; I'm allowed to check my email if I get a notification. I check my work email three times a day (morning, just after lunch, afternoonish) and I can read and respond to Tweets and texts from my friends. When I go out to dinner, I'll read my friend's writing; that's why we're there. I'm cutting out blogs of all kinds, books (except audiobooks, see my reply to
no subject
Date: 2014-06-16 12:37 pm (UTC)From:I do take day-long breaks from the computer / electronics, and would happily do a week-long one if my job weren't 95% computer-bound (and maybe if it weren't busy season) This is because I get a lot of eyestrain from bright screens and getting my eyes isolated helps out. But calling something a "cleanse" is a good way to make me not want to do it. :\
Cameron's characterization of "words" as "like tiny tranquillizers" for artists is fairly dissonant with my own experience: I can and do distract myself with reading, but I also find that I write more when I get the chance to read more. I do use reading as procrastination a lot, but right now it's mostly been directed and work-or-writing-relevant (though still procrastinatory). I'd actually love to have a week to dedicate just to "aimless" recreational reading and think it would be super helpful for my own creative unblockage. I suspect today I'll do a lot of miscellaneous cleaning and updating my lists of things to read in the future. But who knows? The week is young.
brides_koneko again too lazy to log out of other journal
Date: 2014-06-17 02:43 pm (UTC)From:Mostly because i can't do that for crap on my own; i've tried it in a couple forms but my discipline on this sort of thing sucks. Basically I let myself read, I just don't let myself get stuck READING ALL DAY. Someday I will go on one of those weekend silent retreats just to experience it, but until then i don't really.
Re: brides_koneko again too lazy to log out of other journal
Date: 2014-06-17 05:10 pm (UTC)From:What I'm finding is that the awareness of how hard it is for me not to read is valuable in itself. (I picked up a story and started reading it yesterday literally without realizing that I was doing it, and then did the same thing with a magazine an hour later. And of course since I made an exception for this community, I've been checking comments a lot more often than usual).