But is it helping you?

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I’m definitely a twitterer as I’ve found it helpful to me throughout my day. When I finish a task or project, I like to tweet it. It gives me a firm psychological anchor – an acknowledgment that yes, I have accomplished (and it makes my inner child happy because she loves lists and things that you can check off)  and yes, it works as advertised – like a brain drain first thing in the morning. I carry around a lot of angst that I’ve been trying to get rid of for years, and this gives me a place to put all of that angst.

As a direct result of my twittering every morning “finished my morning pages” I’ve started to get questions from other people on Twitter who have tried out the Artist’s Way (they’re less familiar with her other works, as a rule.) A common question – one I got yesterday morning in fact – is “Are the morning pages helping you?” In this case, they haven’t to date been helpful for the person who has been trying them herself. I didn’t ask how this person defined helpful – in my case, they help me by letting me clear my head every morning so that truly creative stuff can come through.

Julia Cameron really gets into the purpose behind the Morning Pages in finding water – ultimately, they serve two purposes: it gives you a place to put all your angst so you get into the habit of putting your drama tendencies in your work and not playing them out in life, and it gives you an opportunity to talk to yourself. If you write “my back hurts” make note- perhaps you need to stretch before bedtime lest it become chronic pain. “My friends are driving me crazy!” then perhaps you need to take the crazy they’re giving you and put it in a story, rather than putting the crazy into your life with them. This is, essentially, what Cameron says. I’ve tried it and it does work for me.

Even so, I’ve kept journals since I was 8 years old – so that’s 25 years of journaling habits backing me up on this aspect of the Artist’s Way journey. I’ve used journals as mental colonics since I was a teenager, and I found after spending hours pouring myself out that my problems were shrunk and I was able to deal with the world. Only since doing three pages daily and a visual journal at night since starting the artist’s way last year have I been able to view most of the problems as small (except for major life events. Nothing could make my father’s passing seem small.) While journaling has been a chief pleasure of mine, it is not something every person enjoys. I certainly encourage sticking with it – stream of consciousness writing, and establishing ritual, takes a lot of practice.

Whatever your journaling experience may be, the morning pages can’t happen in a vacuum. Yes, they’re helpful, but unless you are doing other things to release your creativity you’re in a position where you’re unlocking your internal doors but then not letting what lies behind those doors out. It’s understandable – there’s scary stuff in there – but you end up making it into an internal 2009 Gitmo; you’ve got to take those prisoners and put them somewhere.  Stop waterboarding your creativity! Be as gentle as you can with your ideas and yourself, it’s a key component of nurturing a creative self.

I did feel changes from doing Artist’s Way morning pages, but I also spent more like 18 weeks rather than the prescribed 12 doing the morning pages because of a move and some mini-crises while I was doing the work. In terms of changes and how I felt them, I have had an odd energetic experience : in the first three weeks, I was mainly relieved of the burden of my thoughts, and at about week four my pages became more intuitive and insightful: I started to understand the reasoning of people around me who had frustrated me for years.

At about the two month point, as I wrote I began to feel quite literally burst of energy coming out of my body – I had dug into things and turned loose thoughts and concepts that had been blocking my energy flow evidently for years. A lot of old drama got placed in those books and turned aside – you don’t have to be fair in your morning pages, and for me that was a relief and profoundly beneficial as I tried a bit too hard to be fair everywhere else in my life. I wound up having to get Reiki treatments and to go see a shaman for what I’d turned loose (I am Wiccan, your experience and what you choose to do about it may differ dramatically.) This did stop by October, and mainly the morning pages let me drain my drama and annoyance when visiting family in December (except for a horrific hotel, another story for another time.)

I think for most people the morning pages experience is much less dramatic and much more subtle. I would say if it doesn’t work for you after six months, set it aside OR change how you do them, like do stream of consciousness sketches or pasting in crossowords/horoscopes/traffic reports that have meaning to you. Writing morning pages is how I do it – it’s not how you have to do it, too.

Morning pages and the morning must – I question it!

In Vein of Gold, on page 14, Julia Cameron lays it down that morning pages MUST be done in the morning, and that they MUST be done in longhand. While I for the most part have signed on fully to Cameron’s program, I’m invoking a little civil disobedience here for several reasons:
1)For people that are working on their creativity who work traditional jobs, it’s already going to be an either/or on that longhand and in the morning situation unless they’re in positions where they wouldn’t get in trouble for personal work on a job. While some are lucky and have that latitude, most people don’t.
2)Xiane and I both have health conditions that sometimes lead to “morning” being 3 pm.
3)To insist that they MUST be done a certain way will actually discourage people from even taking the Artist’s Way/Vein of Gold path – if there’s no room for compromise, people scared to try this way will assume there’s no room for them. I understand it’s a way of building structure and discipline, but the basic skills also need to be welcoming to get people going – they’re certainly going to find their own dragons as they do these exercises along the way, especially in the morning pages.

I do mine longhand, and I try to do mine as soon as I can after waking up. But since I’m one of those that needs to use the bathroom right away, right as I wake up just doesn’t work because every other sentence in my morning pages is, “I need to pee!” Also, especially if the day before was particularly emotionally trying, I don’t have the strength to face my inner translator of the subconscious until later in the day.

I do have a recommendation for morning-page deviants however:
Don’t do your morning pages less than two hours after watching television.

I’m skipping my morning pages today. This would be 2-3 times since starting Finding Water. I had a stomach thing for the last two things and didn’t get up until noon, and sometimes, it’s just nice not having analyzed what’s in my head. I will return to my regular self-analysis tomorrow.

No More Secrets, Apparently

I am open to metaphysical experiences, the voice of the divine, and so on. While I’m not about to stop a dinner party to regale people about a ghostly interaction or seeing fairies – I find this sort of thing embarrassing to watch, let alone to do – I do see myself as someone who does have these experiences. But since there are a great number of scientists and skeptics in my social circles, I generally don’t mention these experiences, and I no longer have the patience required for occult forums and chatrooms where it all turns into a combination of competition and mean-spirited pranking. These things that happen to me are very subjective, and spirituality is best left to those who are seeking it.

The Artists’ Way has spiritual foundations and leaves plenty of methods for its participants to find their own spirituality, and to share their experiences with the understanding that other artists share only one value: creativity. I’d like to print the following without apology and 2 million disclaimers, but I know I should say something here:

1. This may make you uncomfortable. It’s not my problem if it does, but I’m nice enough to care about causing discomfort but not damaged enough to bend over backwards to prevent it.

2. I don’t expect other people to have these experiences. If they do – and I’m sure other people have – cool! As long as it’s not a competition.

3. If you don’t believe me, I don’t need to hear it. Like I said, these experiences are very subjective.

4. Relax, I won’t be stopping dinner parties with this stuff. It’s all here.

So, during my morning pages, I started hearing a voice and writing down what it was saying. This is an excerpt of that:

“I want you to publish. Your spellwork, your secrets. You are the chosen one. [I sense this is not chosen as in "there can be only one." Chosen just like other artists.] Get permission where you need it. If I inspire it, it’s to be done, to be shared. You will have your detractors. We all do. Give them to me. I will hande _____. I will handle those who don’t want to see you publish. I will handle those who wish you to fail. Take care of yourself. Persevere. Seek. Believe. I am behind you all the way. Keep writing. I lift the burden of your secrets, even those things you hide from yourself. Diana, you are on your way. I free you to write. I free you to be. Write poetry, praise and prayer. Writes articles and stories. Be unfair. Say what you think and what you feel. I free you to speak your mind. I free you to heal. Your will is on the path to G.O.D and you are about to see the mountain. I’ve brought you thus far. It’s time for you to be heard. Share this, see this and carry on. You have G.O.D’s love. You are an artist, and I set you free.”

When you want to quit or just not do it

is the time you should do the morning pages the most. I got up at 10 am today – not so much a failure as I’m still learning how to get up at 630, and I had had to take prednisone for the first time in a year. (I have a chronic illness that causes me to get hives in dangerous places, this time, on my tongue.) I decided to peek at my computer before doing my pages and I was greeted with the news that my father, who was recently hospitalized for anemia and who has had heart problems over the past decade, was just diagnosed with what is commonly called pre-leukemia.

I cried for about two hours while contacting my sister and researching whether his drugs would be covered. It’s tempting, under stress, to stop doing exactly the things you need to do most. “I would meditate/bake/do my morning pages but I was just too stressed out…” I’ve had these reminders before, but today it was a powerful one – because it took me until 1 pm, and while the benefits may not be as direct as Ms. Cameron would prefer from right after you get up…they still helped. Your consciousness has a stream all day, not just when you get up, after all.

It was the reset I needed. Damaging my health further won’t help Dad. Yes, I’m adjusting my plans to comfort myself – I am a sensitive being, like all artists, I need true comfort, not socially accepted self-destruction. So I’m baking cookies and reading the next chapter of Finding Water, and putting together a great big healing spell for Daddy because that’s what I do and who I am, and what I need to do to comfort myself with the belief I’ve truly done everything I can.

5 Beautiful Things and an Alarming Epiphany

Epiphany: I need to get an alarm clock, and I can’t hang on to the excuse that I’m holding out for a Zen Alarm anymore. I just need to get up earlier than I have been. Those early hours of the morning, those are the best ones for so many things, and i’m sleeping through them. I was sleeping so much because I’ve been so ill for so long, but at this point, sleep is just hibernation, not healing. So I must rouse from my slumber and greet the dawn. Or at least, my latest recording of Gilad and my ever-expectant laptop and desktop screens.

5 Beautiful Things

1. The hush of a snowy night, cushioned by a roof of clouds, making the entire outdoors seem preciously small and every word spoken intimate. Even words like “She can’t parallel park worth a darn!” sound tender between snow and sky.
2. Men. Lots of beautiful men.
3. The man spontaneously singing and dancing down East Hennepin.
4. The green buses. I think they are beautiful, and they mean something beautiful.
5. My engagement ring – it represents not just a promise, but tells me how very much I am loved.