“I am a CREATIVE! I am a CREATIVE! I am a CREATIVE!”
Say it Loud & Proud!
“I’m a CREATIVE!”
“I’m a CREATIVE!”
“I’m a CREATIVE!”
As you know, in my STUDY, SAVOR, & SUPPORT Each Other CHAT☕️🍵, we’re doing a deep-dive into The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron (“JC”). This week is WEEK #11 of The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron: Recovering a Sense of Autonomy.
In Chapter 11, JC emphasizes the importance of seeing ourselves as “Artists,” and encourages us to nurture and accept the Artist inside of us, no matter how far we’ve come on our journey.
Interestingly, she starts this examination by noting that us Artists may not fit the mold that’s common for the rest of society. Where other people work a typical 9-to-5 job, we may find such structure to drain us of our creative energy.
This reminds me of a lovely post by Amie McNee, one of my favorite Creatives on Substack, who works as a Creative writing fiction and non-fiction full-time. By her own admission, it took her a while to realize that she didn’t have to work for 8 hours straight to be “productive” as a Creative. And she doesn’t beat around the bush about this. In true Amie fashion, she proudly proclaims, “I am a full-time writer, and I still only write about 500 words a day.” (THIS! This is why I love her so much. The honesty! The healthy dose of reality! The wake-up call that we all so desperately need!)
Likewise, many masters of art allowed themselves to have a well-paced approach to their artistry, like Picasso and other famous painters, who worked in two to four hour blocks, with ample time set aside to mix, mingle, and be inspired by other artists almost every day.
Whatever time we have at our disposal, JC says it’s important to experiment with our schedule, to find what works for us as individuals.
We must not measure our worth by the clock, as long as we are pursuing our creative work.
Likewise, we must not measure our worth by the amount of money we make. As JC normalizes, “Good work will sometimes not sell. People will buy, but not pay promptly. The market may be rotten even when the work is great. [We] cannot control these factors.”
We can only control our creative output and our internal satisfaction with it.
Perhaps most important of all, JC says that we cannot take a heavy-handed approach to planning our artistic careers. We cannot over focus on pursuing a “sensible direction dictated by cash flow and marketing strategies….”
This is probably the hardest part for artists whose brains are more left-hemisphere dominant, and/or who were encouraged by society or their upbringing to pursue “safer,” not artistic, professions.
It’s a fair warning for artists, too. Because all artists are at risk of finding success doing a particular thing, becoming well-recognized for having done that thing well, and then falling prey to the pull of simply repeating that thing endlessly.
In that regard, maybe we should look to artists, like the musician David Bowie, who refused to be boxed in and continually reinvented themselves throughout their careers. Until they became known for their creative capacity to reinvent themselves.
There seems to be so much freedom in pursuing a creative career that way.
But before we can even get to that point, JC reminds us that we must also allow ourselves the freedom of doing creative work “badly.” As she puts it, we must remind ourselves, “sometimes I will write badly, draw badly, paint badly, perform badly. I have the right to do that to get to the other side. Creativity is its own reward.”
At its core, this is all about honoring ourselves as INDIVIDUALS.
It’s our RIGHT to be seen and valued for who we are.
Yes, OUR RIGHT to simply BE!
To exist the way we CHOOSE to be…in the now & in the future.
Must that be such a radical idea?!
It shouldn’t be.
And, yet, our society — with all of its rules and boxes and hierarchies — tries so desperately to make us believe in the false notion that we do NOT have the right to exist as individuals.
I say, “SCREW that mentality!”
I say, “I have the RIGHT to exist as I am, as I choose to be, and I AM a CREATIVE!”
Not only that, I want every single person on the face of this Earth to exist as SHE or HE is, as SHE or HE CHOOSES to be!
And it is my heartfelt hope that each and every one of us EMBRACE the CREATIVE inside of us.
Let us SEE ourselves as the Creative Individuals that we are!
Let us GIVE ourselves enough GRACE to allow the Creativity inside of us to flow & grow freely, no matter how close or how far we are from reaching our goals.
Let’s embrace this fundamental TRUTH: Our Creativity is the source of all our INTELLIGENCE and POWER!
Are you ready to BREAK FREE, by being CREATIVE with me?
Then,
TRUST IN WHO YOU ARE!
Now, take a Mindful Minute to reflect on your life:
⭐️ Does any of this resonate with you?
⭐️ Can you identify how your current work situation helps or harm your creative workflow?
⭐️ Are you working as a full-time Creative? If not, is your 9-to-5 job preventing you from having enough energy to pursue your creative work?
⭐️ Are you approaching your creative work with an experimental mindset that allows you to play with many different paths to success?
⭐️ Or are you trying to force your creative work to fit a particular mold based on what you think you “should” or “must” do? What kind of feelings does this evoke inside of you? Do those feelings help or hinder your creative work?
⭐️ What steps can you take to honor and take better care of the Artist inside of you?
⭐️ Do you want to enlist the help of a Fellow Creative, to help keep you accountable so you can commit to accomplishing a specific Creative task?
👭 If so, in the Comments or in the CHAT, tell us what you’d like to accomplish this upcoming week so we can all support & cheer you on.
The “I’m-A-CREATIVE!” in me honors & respects the “I’m-A-CREATIVE!” in each of you,
Marisa
⭐️ Remember, we don’t have to figure everything out, all alone. ⭐️
We can find solutions, together!
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This is a special group for Writers, Artists, & Creatives like us, to have deep conversations about the Books that we choose, so we can implement what we learn, and unearth our truest, most Authentic Selves.
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Share Our Recipes for Happiness:
🔮 Have fun together;
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🔮 Take a lighthearted approach to private journaling & Artist’s Dates; and,
🔮 Grow the CREATIVE GENIUS inside all of us! 💐🌺🌷🌸🌹🌻🌼
Share Our Work (allow our True Self to be Seen):
🚀 With Notes Boost Challenges (NBC), we can share our favorite Notes of the week.
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🚀 So we can Like, Comment, and/or Restack each others’ work to…
Share Our Joy (experience Connection with a kind & supportive Creative Community):
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Feel free to share your latest Note or Post of the week, so we can Like/Comment/Restack yours & you can do the same for others, so we can all GROW!
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