Week 06: Recovering a Sense of Abundance
Jun. 30th, 2014 08:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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artistswayWow, do I ever have mixed feelings about this chapter. This is a hard one for me to approach, because I feel like there's a lot of good and bad mixed in together. Here's a summary of sorts (reprinted and adapted from alexconnal)
Luxury, says Cameron, is a thing we often deny ourselves because it is too expensive. Time to do art is a thing we often consider a luxury. Most of us think work should be work, not play, and if we want to do it, it is a frivolity.
Cameron says that we must have a little luxury to create art. It doesn't need to be much luxury—see Emma Goldman's quote up top—perhaps a twenty-dollar magazine subscription, or a couple-dollar basket of raspberries, or a wildflower in a cup on the table, free. Cameron describes people whose luxuries are new fun music, new watercolors; she might add that free time and space can be a luxury. One must be able to enjoy life, one must be able to enjoy art; one must do self-care.
Even if all the space we get for ourselves is a bookshelf and a windowsill, even if all the time we get for ourselves is fifteen minutes for morning pages and ten minutes to relax in the bathtub after work, we need the luxury of that space, we need the luxury of that time.
Cameron's exercise for the week is to track "every penny" of how and where you spend your money, and she suggests you keep it up for a month or more. The point is to observe yourself, not to judge yourself; to observe what you spend money on that you don't truly need or want and what you don't spend money on that you truly do.
We've talked before about how unexamined class privilege sometimes clouds Cameron's advice, and I feel like this is an example. This exercise is not going to make sense for everyone. If you don't have enough money to spend money on things you don't need or want, I don't know that it will do much good to remind yourself of it with extra bookkeeping. I am in this position currently, but I'll be trying the money-tracking exercise anyway this week to see how it pans out.
If having and spending money isn't a relevant issue for you, you might think of other resources that you have and spend – time, energy, emotion – that it might be worthwhile to record without judgement.
Don't forget to go on a date with your artist sometime this week and do your morning pages every day!
alexconnal)Luxury, says Cameron, is a thing we often deny ourselves because it is too expensive. Time to do art is a thing we often consider a luxury. Most of us think work should be work, not play, and if we want to do it, it is a frivolity.
Cameron says that we must have a little luxury to create art. It doesn't need to be much luxury—see Emma Goldman's quote up top—perhaps a twenty-dollar magazine subscription, or a couple-dollar basket of raspberries, or a wildflower in a cup on the table, free. Cameron describes people whose luxuries are new fun music, new watercolors; she might add that free time and space can be a luxury. One must be able to enjoy life, one must be able to enjoy art; one must do self-care.
Even if all the space we get for ourselves is a bookshelf and a windowsill, even if all the time we get for ourselves is fifteen minutes for morning pages and ten minutes to relax in the bathtub after work, we need the luxury of that space, we need the luxury of that time.
Cameron's exercise for the week is to track "every penny" of how and where you spend your money, and she suggests you keep it up for a month or more. The point is to observe yourself, not to judge yourself; to observe what you spend money on that you don't truly need or want and what you don't spend money on that you truly do.
We've talked before about how unexamined class privilege sometimes clouds Cameron's advice, and I feel like this is an example. This exercise is not going to make sense for everyone. If you don't have enough money to spend money on things you don't need or want, I don't know that it will do much good to remind yourself of it with extra bookkeeping. I am in this position currently, but I'll be trying the money-tracking exercise anyway this week to see how it pans out.
If having and spending money isn't a relevant issue for you, you might think of other resources that you have and spend – time, energy, emotion – that it might be worthwhile to record without judgement.
Don't forget to go on a date with your artist sometime this week and do your morning pages every day!
