Visiting a local art store
Well it feels like if you can make it through week 5 of this course, then you’re in it for the long haul. Actually…possibly sooner than that, depends on how your own personal experience goes. Time has been flying by fast and this course is no exception to that feeling, despite trogging through those daily morning pages. I personally really enjoyed the lessons present in this week’s chapter. It was like having a tough-love friend slapping you in the face with some hard facts about yourself. Let’s dive in!
Chapter five is called Recovering a Sense of Possibility. While the first half of the chapter DOES highlight recovering your sense of possibility by calling out not to limit yourself with limiting beliefs, I think my real punch in the gut came from the section of the chapter called the Virtue Trap. The Virtue Trap is when you continually people-please by prioritizing others’ needs or opinions over your own. I constantly struggle with this by belittling my own needs instead of advocating for myself. I am getting better at recognizing when I’m doing this to help build awareness for this behvior. If you don’t, you just become a self destructive shell of yourself and that’s just not helpful for anyone. Yikes!
The chapter also had a great point about the desire to be alone and that we need to prioritize this alone time to help feed our creative spirit. I love my alone time and feel I’m most creative in this space. It would be incredible to have an opportunity to take a solo weekend trip and just use the time to work on artwork and explore a new area. This chapter validates that need and that I’m not being selfish for desiring that for myself, and neither should you. If you struggle with finding alone time in a busy household, I recommend getting up extra early (or staying up extra late, whatever works for you). I personally get up early for this time, even my dog doesn’t get up until a couple hours later. It’s ideal to do my morning pages, meditiation, and enjoy coffee without a lot of external noise.
Speaking of getting up early to do morning pages, I actually did NOT get up early every day this past week. I still did my daily morning pages, but it really throws off my day when I eat up even more time writing these when usually at that time I would already be working on something else. So it was a good reminder to make sure I stay on close schedule with my usual routines.
This week’s artist date brought me to a local art store I haven’t shopped at in years. It was like browsing in a new store and upon entering, I was happy to find a large carousel of stickers and coloring books. The coloring books reminded me that I need to map out the coloring book concept I want to do. The sticker carousel spoke my language with some kawaii koalas and fluffy alpacas that I had a dream about the other day (alpaca drawings, not real ones sadly). Hey, I suppose that’s a good synchronicity there: see an alpaca illustration in a dream and then seeing some on a sticker sheet! The Artist’s Way course has been known to highlight fun coincidences that may pop up as the weeks progress. I browsed some more and finally located my favorite type of sketchbooks: the 5.5 x 8.5 inch black hardcover ones. And they were half price on sale, even better! As a bonus I went to this store by myself, so I didn’t have the usual anxiety of feeling worried I was looking too long. I used to shop at this store back when I took art classes in college and it was nice to revisit. I think a future good idea for an artist date would be to revisit my old college campus, stay tuned!