Continuing The Artist's Way

I started Week 4 today after a month off due to travel, not feeling well, etc. I never abandoned the morning pages; in fact, I just finished up a composition book full of them yesterday.

This is the Reading Deprivation Week. Ruth talked about that; many people apparently use reading to numb out a bit. I've met people who do. This is a bit of a conundrum for me, though, as I've just resumed reading for pleasure. Every time I go back to school, which seems to happen every ten years, I get so sick of reading (because it is required) that I don't do it again for a couple of years. The activities Cameron suggests you do instead of reading, such as working out, rearranging the kitchen, etc, is what I have been doing for years instead of reading!

Can this reading restriction be retroactive?

I read Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft over the last two days. I borrowed it from the library; this am I bought my own copy as it was full of gems. One of those gems totally flies in the face of what Julia Cameron says: "If you don't have time to read, you don't have time to write." He posits that to learn how to write, you must read. Of course others say that as well.

Needless to say I am going crazy.

Cameron also suggests baking. I'm still baking bread at least once a week, sometimes twice. In fact, while typing this a new shipment of baking goodies from King Arthur Flour arrived. So tomorrow morning I'll do some baking before I run errands.

Errands tomorrow include a CT scan. I had an xray and a bunch of labs last week due to my under the weather condition; the labs were great, the xray was inconclusive. I have some lumps along my left lower rib that seem attached to it and are getting bigger, so my doc wants to check those out. When I lay on my left side a certain way, it feels as if I'm laying on marbles. They didn't show up on the xray, so thus the CT.

Off now to attend a lecture by Linda Hasselstrom at the public library. The library also will provide lunch. All of this is paid for by a grant so I get a free lunch and a great lecture!

Changing

Monday morning and up comes my head for a bit of blogging. My energy has been directed elsewhere--like my morning pages. I've been kinda under the weather for a week--no get up and go, just blah--so what energy I do have has been parceled out carefully. I've been on Facebook much more than here, and even tweeting a bit.

Julia Cameron says in The Artist's Way that your truth will reveal itself in your morning pages. Mine is coming out loud and clear. So I'm experimenting with changing a few things that really are not bloggable, but that I seem to write about each and every day in the morning pages! These are good things, I think. But if nothing else, a huge change in my daily routine.

I got up early this am for no reason except that I couldn't sleep past 0230. I had my coffee, wrote, ate some of my homemade bread toasted with a bit of jam, and listened to the birds sing at dawn. I felt like I was on vacation, strangely blissful. I even saw one of the Dippers (Big, Little? Not sure) in the western sky. Easy to say one's prayers on mornings like this.

During the last week I read a book with the improbable title Crazy Woman Creek. It is an anthology of women's stories about community--how to find it in different circumstances, when it works, when it doesn't. The anthologies came from women who live in the West, although one of the stories was penned by a woman living in the very midwestern town of Warrensburg, MO, where I went to college. Two of the editors were involved in a discussion of the work at our local library. Although all 17 copies of the book were checked out, which forced me to buy it to get it read, only three women showed up. We already knew each other from DIA, which was interesting! This book was compelling, very difficult to put down and wonderful to discuss (glad I bought it!). Linda Hasselstrom, one of the editors, is hosting a lunchtime lecture on Wednesday which I will attend.

I cancelled the composition class I had signed up to take online--but that was done in order to take another class which is longer, more comprehensive, and more valuable I think for what I need. That won't start until June 11th. In the meantime, I checked Stephen King's On Writing out of the library and will begin to read that today.

Time to take a walk while it still is cool. The temperature is supposed to reach a high of 88 today!