The Artist's Way 002

 This is exciting, I'm starting my new job tomorrow!!! Yesterday was my last day at the old place, and I left without much fanfare, just set my key down on the manager's desk and told them I was going home early. A few people said goodbye as I left but that's pretty much it. I'm not sure how quickly I should feel relieved- seeing as I'm going directly into a position similar to my previous one. But I have to trust that better pay, fewer hours, and no flooding in the dry storage is going to help out my mental health...as well as my creative health! I drew on and off this week. As such with my old job I would come home completely exhausted and barely have any juice left to work on commissions. Hopefully, I see a change in my workflow in the weeks to come and start really getting things done!!

Week 2: Recovering a sense of identity

This was a chapter that focused on how well you understand yourself and what areas of your life may find that are being neglected. It was useful for me. I've been doing a lot of self-study (? I guess.) after graduating college. Coming from a blue-collar family I had a very set relationship in how I view my body and attitude about difficulties. It's a hard barrier to cross!

I didn't do an artist's date this week and only did one or two of my daily pages. These particular last few days at work really kicked my ass. 

Week 2 Tasks:

Affirmative reading- There's a list of affirmations on page 3 of the book. You're supposed to read these twice a day for the next seven days. And at one point pick 3 and write them out. I wrote them out but didn't dedicate myself to reading them. They're short so it's not too much of a time crunch, and pretty well-meaning but...I think I got the message the first time. 

List 20 Things you enjoy doing - Write these all down, pick 2, and do them! This was easy. I have a pretty simple, accessible life, so I did some things from my list like cooking, finding analysis essays, and sleeping in. 

Add 5 more lives - An exercise from last week had me writing 5 lives/jobs I would like to have irrespective of my upbringing. My week 1 set was: 
Jazz Musician, Radio Host, Piano maker, Archeologist, Food Model maker
For week 2 I added:
Marine Biologist, Butler/Concierge for a famous establishment, Seismologist, Anatomist/Medical Illustrator, College Teacher
Lots more sciencey jobs this time around. When I wrote the Butler one I was specifically thinking of The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Life Pie - Draw out a circle and divide it into 5 lines. Label each end as Spirituality, exercise, play, work, friends, romance/adventure. Then place a dot on each line to whatever point you feel best describes you (closer to the center being very little of that present in your life, and out further being abundant in your life) and connect the dots. This graph can show you where your life feels lopsided. My graph was pretty balanced...ish. My romance and adventure are very low because I'm largely a homebody who's satisfied by my creative passions. The only thing that stood out to me for this exercise was that I don't seem to play much...

Ten Tiny Changes - List ten things you'd like to change about the space around you or yourself. Pick one and complete it. There were a bunch of little things I've been meaning to do around the house so I just wrote down a small to-do list and finished one. The AC in our house is a roll-around unit that had to be jerry-rigged into a window very high up. There wasn't proper insulation for the opening so the Seattle chill has been moving into our living room and making it terrible to hang out in there. This morning I finally went and found the rest of the window and sealed it up, putting the AC away for the winter. The living room has slowly been warming back up and we even played Pokemon in there while the sun was still out. 

 

This week had very little energy put into it as I blasted through my past few workdays on fumes. I'm glad I did some of the more involved lists and graph-making. It might be my youth on Deviantart journals but I love writing stuff down that I like to do. Also: I'm not sure how much of it I should thank for The Artist's Way so far but I do find myself easing up while drawing more...It may just be the simple act of forcing myself to use my wrist and write long-form in the dailies but there's a little bit less of a mental hurdle to jump when I open Photoshop and start working on something...