I’d only heard of the book in passing until an artist I’ve grown fond of, Applecheeks, did a few videos of it on their Youtube channel and expressed very good results. This is a 12 week process, and I’m typically very avoidant of commitments that lengthy, but this doesn’t (from what I’ve read) involve anything too extreme or time consuming? Just lots of introspection and analysis. So I’ll be doing weekly posts . My goal for 2024 is to return to drawing in comfort and confidence, something I think I lost a lot of through my experiences in art college and the year following after returning to help my parents in my hometown. I started listening to it on my drive to WA hauling all of my stuff for the move…but I had to turn it off pretty quickly because of how saccharine it felt. But I’ll give it a college try.
Week 1: Regaining a sense of safety
Along with special weekly tasks there are some exercises that are present throughout the entire 12 weeks. A daily 3-page longform journal. Meaning that you hand-write 3 pages of whatever comes to mind, drudge things up and dump them on the page. I’ll try to do this one consistently but I have severe pain in my dominant wrist as well as a currently worsening ganglion cyst so I’ll be doing this task based on a daily pain basis. (This will be medically addressed as soon as the insurance from my new job kicks in, whee!)
And the artist’s date. Once a week you head out to do something on your own for a bit, maybe an hour or two. This one is fine for me because I need an excuse to explore Seattle lol. This week I opted to consider a big friend watch of Dungeon Meshi my date! I wasn’t alone but it was really fun.
List of Personal Blurts - A list of things that you’ve repeated to yourself, negative affirmations and the like. Part of this task is to list where you think they came from, and convert them to affirmations. I did this with some teachers I’ve had- kind of interesting list to see what I actually consider a negative affirmation to myself.
5 Year increments - Break your life into 5 year increments and list some of your “champions”, people who’ve supported you throughout your creativity, or inspirations. And some of your “monsters” people who have changed the way you view yourself for the worst. I’m 25 this year so I only had to name some artists up until 15 or so…I can’t remember any further than my deviantart days. This one was really fun actually. I had to look through all of my old art to try and remember who I was most influenced by at any given time.
Write A horror story about one of your ‘Monsters’ - This one felt silly but it did help me a little bit. I gave myself 20 minutes so I would ramble on and on while I did it. I always feel like I “could have done a better job” with assignments like this but I’m allowing it to be ugly and incomplete and out of my head.
Write a letter of encouragment to yourself, as well as to your ‘Monster’ - Another one that felt pretty silly. It was fun to go buy some new letter paper with my roomate though. Both of the letters went to my own address so I didn’t actually this to the person that hurt me. I think I’d pass out on the spot if I did that.
5 Other lives - fun little short one! 5 different people you think you would be irrespective of your upbringing or social placement. Mine are: Jazz Musician, Radio Host, Piano maker, Archeologist, Food Model maker
20 Min walk- What it says on the tin!!! I took a walk with a friend around the park near my new job. I had gone in to ask where the best place to park was without getting a ticket.
Kind of a silly first week. I will say that directly listing out people who have actively changed the way I think of myself in a negative way was an interesting way to understand myself a little. It was also more difficult than I thought it was going to be- I don’t try to keep tabs on people like that but it may be worth it to understand fully what they’ve done and not just brush them aside and hope I forget about the embarrassment or discomfort of our relationship.
No comments:
Post a Comment