From Hustle to Flow: My Artist’s Way Experiment, Part 2

In this continuation of my journey through Julia Cameron's book The Artist's Way, I'll cover my own experiences with Morning Pages and Artist Dates. 

✔️ Sometimes art can be highbrow and cerebral. Other times we just wanna cheer the protagonist and boo the baddie.

✔️ We're skeletons in flesh suits on a rock in space. You can afford one night a week to do what YOU want to do.

✔️ Taking the time in the morning to sort out your own thoughts is more important than we give it credit for. 

Links:

https://www.amazon.com/Artists-Way-25th-Anniversary/dp/0143129252 

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Please note: I am not looking for guests for this podcast. If you message me from ihustleandgrindalldayeverydayandobsessovermoney.org, it's an automatic no. You clearly haven't listened to this series or absorbed the point!

Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Artist Way, morning pages, artist date, creative living, Julia Cameron, corporate America, journaling, positive affirmations, personal growth, storytelling, cinematography, imagery, self-care, podcast, entrepreneurship.

Welcome to the Causey Consulting Podcast. You can find us online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com, and now here's your host, Sara Causey. 

Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. In today's episode, I will be continuing my journey through Julia Cameron's book the artist. Way, it's kind of funny because I kicked off this little mini series a couple of weeks ago with an episode titled From hustle to flow, my artist way experiment part one, I was trying to think of the right way to describe this mini series, and that seemed to be as close as I could come. There really isn't a magical phrase, but that was as close to the mark as I felt like I could get. And then I got inundated with weirdos. So many DMS from people, I guess they just saw the word hustle. And I started getting these guest appearance requests from people that are like, oh, I want to tell you all about my program for entrepreneurs. At I hustle all day long. 24, 736, five.org, and it's like, Dude number one, you clearly didn't listen to the episode. You clearly don't get what it's about. You just saw the word hustle and thought that this is all about entrepreneurship and how to encourage people to start their own business. And that's literally the antithesis of what I'm talking about in this mini series. This is actually about my journey out of corporate America period data and into creative living. So I'm just going to try to head you off at the past. If you're listening to this and you're a podcast promoter or some PR rep, and you think that this series is about entrepreneurship and hustle and grind, you are really in the wrong place for all the rest of you, stay tuned, and we will get into morning pages and artist date nights.

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At the very beginning of the book, before you start any of the weekly reading and weekly assignments, Julia describes these two practices that she calls morning pages and artist dates. I'm going to start with morning pages first. Funny enough, as a writer, I was the most hesitant about morning pages, I just thought, Oh, God, have so many things already to do in the morning. My mornings are like the most front loaded part of the day, and in some respects, that is a carryover from when I was working outside the home for other people, but it's also just the reality of life. When you have a working farm and ranch, you have animals, they need to be tended to. You have to take care of them. And it doesn't matter if it's sunny and 75 or if it's snowing and 25 your behind has to be out there taking care of business. I like to as much as I can. Have a leisurely morning where I'm not rushing around. There's enough time for everything that needs to be done, and I can get into a state of flow. So when Julia Cameron talks about morning pages, what she wants the students to do is to get a notebook, and it can be as simple or as ornate as you want it to be. It can be something that you pick up at $1 store for a buck, or it can be the most ornate journal that you find on Amazon. It's totally up to you how you want to do this, but you're supposed to write three pages worth of stuff every morning before you do anything else you can do this before you get out of bed, or if you're like me and you have a bladder that's the size of a thimble, you can do it in the bathroom. Whatever needs to happen. You do this first. You don't check your phone, you don't Doom scroll on social media, you don't call anybody. You do your morning pages first. So when I read this, I was like, God, that just feels daunting to me. Yes, even as a writer, the idea of filling up three pages in a notebook first thing in the morning, oh, I'm not really sure that that's something I want to do, and I don't know if I'm going to get very much out of it. What I had been doing was immediately. Turning on some type of guided meditation or positive affirmation loop. So I might turn on something like a morning rampage by Esther Hicks, or I might listen to some of the very simple Louise Hey affirmations. I am safe. Everything is working out for my highest good, and I like that routine at the same time, I could see where perhaps it was getting stale. There's only so many times I think that you can listen to the same affirmations before they start to become blunt around the edges. You know, it's a bit like trying to write with a pencil that isn't sharpened very well. It'll work, but it's almost like, so that's a really good way, I guess, of phrasing all of this is just, uh, I my listening to of affirmations was starting to get blah, and then I read this proclamation in the artist way about, well, you really need to be doing these morning pages, and I was like, blah, yet again, I don't I don't know about this man, it just feels like homework. This feels like being a school kid and being forced to do something that you don't want to do and that you perhaps don't see the value in. But I did it anyway. I thought I have paid good money for this book. I want to take this course. I want to see where this journey leads me. So I'm not going to cheat or halfway do anything. I want to really follow these assignments. So I got just a little no frills journal, a smaller one. I did not buy one that was the size of a standard notebook that you would use in class. I got a smaller journal, and I'm like, I'm going to do it. I will commit to doing this, and even if I'm just sitting there writing this sucks and I don't want to do it, and I'd rather be getting a jump start on my farm tours, or I'd rather be having my breakfast and drinking a glass of tea, that's what I'll write. And it has and like so many things in life, it's very common that the thing that we're the most resistant to the thing that we're like, I don't want to do this. I think this is stupid. That's often the thing that we need the most, and that's how it has turned out to be for me. With the morning pages, I now feel no resentment about doing them. I'm actually in week three to pull the curtain back. My episodes here that I'm recording are behind a little bit because I'm already in week three of her program, and doing these morning pages has been wonderful. I was resistant, but I see now that there's a purpose. And I don't sit down and feel resentment. I don't sit down and feel like this is just a pointless endeavor and it seems stupid. I really feel that it's like what David Bayer on his podcast calls a morning dump. He kind of facetiously refers to this time in the morning, when he first gets up, where he just tries to dump all of his thoughts, like if he's worried about something, if there's an argument going on in his marriage, or he's concerned about his business, he tries to get all of that stuff purged out before he gets up and goes on with the day. And I have seen a tremendous value in doing that with morning pages. I might journal about a weird dream that I had the night before, or I might think about, oh, I've got a headache. I kind of feel like my sinuses are getting wonky today. I've got so much to do. I don't know how it's all going to get done. I can't wait to sleep in. Or there were thunderstorms for half the night. And every couple of hours I got woke up by loud noises, and I'm aggravated. I just I get all that stuff out, and there really is a value, even though it seems so mundane. Yeah, I'm not sitting there writing Pulitzer Prize winning material. I'm not making the next great Faulconer or Hemingway novel. I'm just writing junk. For the most part, junk. Every so often I will have an idea or a thought that strikes me as being profound, but for the most part, it's just very mundane. But there is a value to that, getting all of that stuff out of one system at the beginning of the day, so that you're not carrying it around. It reminds me of another thing that David Baer talks about on his podcast. He tells this story, this parable, about two monks who have taken a vow that they will never touch a woman. Celibacy is part of their vow, as well as just I will never touch a woman period in any fashion, and they're navigating this river, and they see a woman who's about to drown. One of them has compassion for her and carries her across so that she won't drown in this body of water. And she thanks the man and goes on about her way. And that's it. So these two monks continue their journey, and two days later, one turns to the other and says, I cannot believe you touched that woman. We're not. Supposed to do that. The one like major vow that we take is that we're never going to touch a woman. And you did that. You carried her across this body of water. And I'm so surprised that you did that. And so the other one responds, I carried her across the body of water. You've carried her with us for the past two days. So when we do our morning pages, we don't have to carry this junk. Whether it's I'm pissed off because it's stormed all night or I'm aggravated because I feel like my to do list is too long. I didn't get a good night's sleep. I had a hot flash. Or I don't really want to be sitting here doing this, but it's part of something Julia Cameron advises, so I guess I'll do it, getting all that stuff out, all of that junk, has been really beneficial, because then I feel so much more focused. I feel a lot more calibrated than when I was listening to affirmations, even listening to the positive stuff, you know, listening to Esther and Abraham on their morning rampage. Today, everything is working out for me. I feel better than I ever have. I'm super charged even listening to that kind of stuff. I still have wound up feeling better and more calibrated by doing the morning pages. So I have integrated that into my practice. And even after I'm finished with this 12 week artist way program, I intend to continue doing that. I just see the real value in it. Now I'm a believer, the other thing, before you ever even start on any of the weekly assignments, excuse me, is to do an artist date this. I was less resistant to I was like, Oh God, this sounds fabulous. So with your artist date, it's important to have it as a standalone. It's not about folding it in with something else, whether that's a date night with your partner or your spouse. Girls Night Out, guys night out, taking the kids to the playground. No, no, no. Julia is very clear that your artist date is something that you do for yourself, with yourself, period, you're not doing it with other people, and you're not doing it for other people. It's what you want to do, and it can be same thing, right? Like with the morning pages, as ornate or as mundane and silly as you want it to be, because it's your choice. It can be going for a long walk or a hike. Could be coloring in an adult coloring book, finger painting like you did when you were a toddler, organizing your bookshelf, cleaning out a space that maybe is related to your creative endeavors. And you're like, Oh, I've got paint everywhere, and the studio just looks like a mess. If you want to do that, if you're cleaning, just to clean, and you don't want to do that on your date night, don't do it. You can watch a cheesy movie. You can take yourself to the movies. You can go out for dinner or out for lunch. You can go buy some new clothes. It's really about whatever speaks to you, and for this window of time every single week, that's your time that you guard jealously. And I have been loving that. As an introvert and an HSP, it has been a godsend to have that time to just be like, Oh, it's just for me. It's not about taking care of the people in my life or the animals in my life, I can just freaking decompress. So some of the things that I have done the very first artist date night that I had, I've decided to watch the 1979 version of Nosferatu. I've seen the old one that Murnau made several times, but I had only ever seen like bits and pieces of the one with Klaus Kinski as Nosferatu. It is a weird, freaking movie. I watched it from start to finish, and it was just weird and disturbing. The cinematography and the landscape beautiful, absolutely delicious. There's the scene where Harker is walking through this area, and there's like a waterfall and big rocks and trees and moss. And I'm like, God, that's gorgeous. I wish I knew where that was. I think it was filmed exclusively in Germany. But the beautiful landscape, supposedly it was the Carpathian Mountains. But really it was filmed in Germany. I think a lot of imagery there, because one of the things that she talks about with your artist date is that you are refilling the well, when we are making a creation, we're producing, we're putting our images, our vision, out into the world. And that doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be literal. It's not about necessarily a painting or a sculpture or a film. It can be the writing that you're doing, poetry, that you're creating, a play, that you're that you're writing, or a symphony that you're composing you you're putting your vision out into the world. When you have these art. This date nights, you are consuming somebody else's imagery, and it helps to refill the Well, I mean, Julia compares it to a pond. There's only so many fish that you can pull out of a pond before you run out of fish. You have to be restocking the pond with other fish if you want to keep fishing. And I have absolutely found that to be true. So when I say, oh my god, the imagery, that's part of what I mean, I was like, I am just spoiled for choice when it comes to the amazing images and the cinematography in this movie. The plot is slow and weird. Nosferatu is definitely not your sexy, swashbuckling vampire in this film, he has rat teeth and is deranged, but yeah, a lot a lot of images. There a lot of images after that. I watched on my next artist date night, I watched dead poet society, that was a similar movie in that, not in plot, but in that I had seen bits and pieces of it here and there. I was culturally aware of it, but I had not ever sat down, start to finish and watched dead poet society that I could remember. I know that's heresy for someone with an English degree like you are an author and a poet, and you've never watched Dead Poets Society, no, not all the way through. If I did years ago, I brain dumped it, so I watched that same, same kind of thing. It totally different plot, different imagery, but it helped to refill the Well, I remember having a lot of mixed emotions, particularly about what happens to the character, Neil. I'm not going to spoil it for anybody, but thinking about what happens to Neil, thinking about what happens to Mr. Keating, it just gave me a lot of food for thought, and it actually inspired me with some of my own storytelling. And then I also watched The Hunger, which is an old movie, I mean, child of the 80s, I couldn't believe that I hadn't ever seen it. But then once I saw it, I was like, Oh, I can't believe I never saw it, especially when I was a kid. Oh my god. So he's got David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon in the lead roles. And it is a weird, freaking movie. Weird, very art house, strange. It seems to be super heavy on imagery, super light on plot and explanations. Is it is a disturbing movie. Again, I don't I don't want to get into spoilers for any of these, because that's not what I'm here to do. But wow, I after I finished it, I'm like, God, that was disturbing, because I expected, based on the write up, I went into it as blind as I could. I didn't want to have, like, any spoilers, but I wanted to get just a general sense of what the movie was about. And I thought that it was about a vampire love triangle. But it's not. It's I'm at a loss for words, for how to describe it without getting into spoilers, so I just won't. But suffice it to say, I had a plethora of images in my stock pond after watching that film. And then most recently, I watched hiding out totally, totally different genre, but I could vaguely remember that movie from the 80s, and I remembered that it was John Cryer. Something had happened to his character. He witnessed a murder, or he got involved with the mob somehow by accident, and they were trying to find him. So he has to go undercover, faking being a high school kid. He's like, 29 or 30, and he has to fake being a high school senior again, like, shaves off his beard, gives himself a weird haircut where part of it's bleached, and just starts dressing like, you know, some kind of vague 80s punk hipster type, and it was just silly and goofy. And what it reminded me of is that sometimes the audience wants that not everything is about weird, erotic, vampire, Art House stuff. Sometimes the audience just wants to be like British pantomime, cheer for the protagonist, Boo the baddie and get a happy ending. Have a nice little denoue Moi at the end of the story where the loose ends are tied up well enough, the protagonist is on his way in the world and life feels like it makes sense again. There's so many different forms of storytelling that we can get into, but fundamentally, that idea of good triumphs over evil. Love wins the day. People enjoy those stories, and there's a reason why they've been around for so long. They do satisfy something deep and primal within us. So even just watching on getting on Tubi and watching hiding out free of charge, I'm like, hey. Me that was a nice little experience. It was a nice palate cleanser, after feeling like my brain got scrambled by Nosferatu and the hunger and then Dead Poets. Society is a bit depressing. It was nice, like, I'm just gonna watch a cheesy movie from my childhood and veg. It was nice to do that. And there's also the sense of doing something purely for pleasure and purely for you, not about pleasing somebody else, not about having to factor somebody else's decisions or preferences into your evening. It's about what you want to do. So I would say, even if you're not a creative even if you're not planning to buy Julia Cameron's book and work through the 12 week program incorporating some journaling and a date night every week with yourself, where you do what you want to do unaccompanied if you want to sit on the couch in an old pair of sweats and watch some goofy movie that makes you cry. Do it. Do it. We are on a rock, hurtling through space. We're skeletons trapped inside a meat suit where consciousness put into a weird body that's going to decay. Why the hell should you not have a night every week to do what you want to do? So that's my summary for this installment. I will be back in the next installment to talk more about week one and the lessons I learned there. In the meantime, stay safe, stay sane, and I will see you in the next episode.

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