recovering a sense of strength

This week I think I'll be focusing on Chapter 8 in The Artist's Way, known as Recovering a Sense of Strength. I'm so tired of this spiralled yet paralyzed compulsive momentummy procrastination interpretted dance I've been doing. Hello: T-I-R-E-D O-F I-T. The Artist's Way is an amazing book by Julia Cameron. I am probably breaking a few copyright laws by excerpting this. I apologize. Meanwhile, maybe you'll get something out of this as well.

Creativity requires activity, and this is not good news to most of us. It makes us responsible, and we tend to hate that. You mean I have to do something in order to feel better?

Yes. And most of us hate to do something when we can obsess about soemthing else instead. One of our favorite things to do — instead of our art — is to contemplate the odds.

In a creative career, thinking about the odds is a drink of emotional poison. It robs us of the dignity of the art-as-process and puts us at the mercy of imagine powers out there. Taking this drink quickly leads to a severe adn toxic emotional bender. It leads us to ask, "What's the use?" instead of "What next?"

As a rule of thumb, the odds are what we use to procrastinate about doing what comes next. This is our addiction to anxiety in lieu of action. Once you catch on to this, the jig is up. Watch yourself for a week and notice the way you will pick up an anxious thoughts, almost like a joint, to blow off — or at least delay — your next creative action.

You've cleared a morning to write or paint but then you realize that the clothes are dirty. "I'll just think about what I want to paint and fine-tune it while I fold the clothes," you tell yourself. What you really mean is, "Instead of painting anything. I will worry about it some more." Somehow, the laundry takes your whole morning.

Most blocked creatives have an active addiction to anxiety. We prefer the low-grade pain and occasional heart-stopping panic attack to the drudgery of small and simple daily steps in the right direction.

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Work begets work. Small actions lead us to the larger movements in our creative lives.

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What can you do, right now, in your life as it is currently constituted? Do that thing. Take one small daily action instead of indulging in the big questions. When we allow ourselve to wallow in the big questions, we fail to find the small answers. What we are talking about here is a concept of change grounded in respect — respect for where we are as well as where we wish to go.