From Hustle to Flow: My Artist’s Way Experiment, Part 6

In this episode, I'll cover what I learned from Weeks 6 & 7 of Julia Cameron's wonderful book, The Artist's Way. 

✔️ Recovering a sense of abundance. This one is huge for a lot of us, especially in tough economic times. 

✔️ Julia's assignments involve "archaeology." Where did your ideas about scarcity come from? I argue that, in many cases, they aren't even your own.

✔️ Criticism stings. A jerk who leaves a nasty comment hurts your feelings. You can't allow those things to derail you forever. 

Links:

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8eUaabL1UA&pp=ygULZGF2aWQgYmF5ZXI%3D

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Decoding the Unicorn is live on Amazon! Check it out: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DSCS5PZT

Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

The Artist's Way, abundance, connection, scarcity, luxury, perfectionism, jealousy, morning pages, artist dates, natural abundance, childhood memories, creative force, source energy, sensory experience, collage.

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. Clearly, I am behind on podcasting here, and I do apologize. I was looking at the calendar, and the last time I released an episode was on July the 10th, and I was like, what? How has that happened? But for that matter, when I sat down this morning to do my morning pages and I wrote August 6, I was like, what? Where is the summer gone? How is this even possible? Nevertheless, I have a few minutes here, so I'm going to sit down and record an episode about The Artist's Way in the last episode, I talked about weeks four and five. So today I want to talk about weeks six and seven, and what I learned. Week Six is recovering a sense of abundance. Week Seven is recovering a sense of connection. I think a lot of people, a lot of people, whether you are involved in the arts or not, will definitely resonate with the idea of recovering your sense of abundance. We're living in a time where scarcity is everywhere and the fear of scarcity is everywhere. It's like how the podcaster David Bayer has this mantra, you have enough. You've always had enough. You will always have enough. In fact, he just released a short video that pretty much says that. I think it's less than a minute long. I'll try to find it again and drop a link to it in the write up for this episode, because it's useful. It's just useful to remember you're still here. You've had enough. It's not that there was ever a time when you were flung out into outer space and died in a vacuum, obviously you didn't, because you're still here. So let's saddle up and talk about weeks six and seven.

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Julia Cameron starts off week six, recovering a sense of abundance with a great anecdote that I think so many of us can relate to. This woman says, Yeah, I'm a believer, but I just don't think that God gets involved with money. And I think so many of us can relate to that idea, this kind of puritanical notion, that God will help you. If you help yourself, God will look out for you. He's not, as the deists believed, a kind of absentee landlord or the great watchmaker that wound up creation and then stands back and lets it go. There are people that believe in miracles. They believe that God intervenes in day to day life when he sees fit, but not anything that involves money. Now maybe if you pray for a job, you'll get the job so that you yourself can earn the money. There's no possible way that God would help you out financially. And she also gets into this idea of God as a creating force. Now we're not necessarily talking about God as a Patriarch in the sky, an old man with a long white beard that sits on a throne and watches everybody. It could just be the general force of creation or source energy. And she, in Julia's mind, she sees God as this creative force. So why would a creative force or source, energy, however you want to look at it, why would that energy punish people who are creating? And when you look at it through that lens, it really doesn't make sense that God would say, I've given you these gifts, I've given you these impulses. I've made you a conduit for creation, but I'm not going to help you at all. You're going to have to sling hash. You're going to have to be really miserable in order to get your ideas out into the world. And good luck. You might have to live under a bridge. You might have to be really miserable for a long time, and then maybe people will see your art. Maybe not. She also talks about luxury, and this is definitely something where I could feel my own resistance whenever I was going through this chapter, because I think for those of us that were kind of raised with Midwestern values, and I'll give an example, I saw a real on Instagram, or wherever it was the other day, and it was how people in the middle. Midwest talk about their things. And I laughed and laughed because of the accuracy. This guy was like, oh this coat, yeah, it's really nice. But I got it for almost nothing on sale. Oh, these tires, yeah, I got them half off. Oh, this car, yeah, I got a great deal on it. Would never pay full price. Oh, this watch, yeah, it's nice, but I got it secondhand. Like, there's always this impulse of, if you have nice things, you have to make sure that the person knows you're not frivolous with money. You're not nouveau riche, you're not some parvenu that's trying to show off. And so for me, luxury, I was just like, I just even just that word. I kind of bristle at it, but I'm trying to get better about that, and I'll pull the curtain back a little bit more. There's a project I want to do in the future, like when the stars align, when the time is right, there's a project I want to do that's going to involve some traveling, and I want to be able to do the writing, and then I also want to be able to take my own photographs, so that they're copyrighted to me. I own them, and I'm not in this tug of war with somebody else, or one of those god awful clearing houses about trying to use somebody else's work and trying to get just the appropriate licensing for publishing that is a nightmare, and I don't want to go through it. So I just want to make my own stuff. The whole thing head to toe. And I was thinking about like, well, here's some ways that you could make it happen, even just look at the language there, make it happen. Here's some ways that you could make it happen. You could fly coach, you could stay at some place about, like, the Motel Six. And I just was like, How about no, okay, no, you're wanting this to be an experience. You're wanting to turn the experiences that you have into a book. Why would you go as miserable as possible, like, like, why would you do that to yourself? So I am trying to redefine what luxury means to me, and comfort as well being in a space where you can actually do what you've set out to do, because your nervous system is not fried. And I think that's some real food for thought. She also gives some exercises where you just fill in the blanks. And what I would say is, do it free association. Don't come with any preconceived ideas. Don't edit yourself, really. Just see what comes out on the page. And some examples are like, if I could afford it, I would do this. I think that money causes this. I think if I had more money, I would do what? If I'm broke? I think this. Here's how my dad thought about money. Here's how my mom thought about money. Those exercises are incredibly helpful. And if you don't censor yourself, if you just get into a place where you're like, whatever comes out is coming out, you will be surprised at the things that pour out of you. One of the things that I did during this week six exercise was I started and I used my AI assistant to help me to kind of keep, keep the track going of and then what, and then what, and then what. Because it was really helpful to do it that way for me. I kept going back with money memories like, what was my first memory of scarcity? What was my first memory of this idea that money doesn't grow on trees. Money is easy to spend or to lose, but it's difficult to save, it's difficult to invest, it's difficult to get ahead. When did those ideas get planted into my mind? Because I don't think that babies come into the world thinking these things. It's like how JFK said that economies are not a fact of nature. They're man made. I don't think that babies pop out of the womb and say, you know, I feel like probably I'm going to have to be in some sort of late stage crony capitalist hell, and I'm going to need to figure out how to hustle and grind in order to survive, the baby just cries. When the baby's hungry and wants milk, the baby just cries. Babies want to, you know, as they get older, they will start wanting to walk and to toddle around like they just do the things that are instinctual to them. They're not going, you know, I want to really think about what I need to do to make money. I don't believe that the universe is abundant. I don't think that that God or higher energy or source energy could put amazing opportunities in my path that feel really good to me. I feel like I probably need to spend 50 to 60 years of my life working in a hellscape. So I wanted to use this time to go back and figure out, like, where did these messages come from? Before I can exercise the demons, I want to figure out what the demons are and where they came from. So I found that exercise to be really, really helpful for me, because then I could identify whenever I would hear. Are these voices of scarcity in my mind? Like, oh, the first of the month is coming up. The 15th of the month is coming up. What are you going to do? Where's the next check coming from? How are you going to make this? How can you get more book sales? How can you do this? How can you do that? I would, I could pinpoint, like, where's this voice actually coming from? Is this me, or is this a leftover voice that's coming from, like a parent or grandparent figure? Because I would also offer up that a lot of times, when we're in these spirals, the crap that's going on in our head doesn't even belong to us. It's coming from somebody else that put that thought into your head, and it was probably an adult that did it when you were a kid. They probably said something in front of you, or said something to you when you were at an impressionable age, and you thought, Oh my God. Like, this is scary. This is This is bad. I did something bad, or I did something naughty, or the world is a scary place, and I didn't know it, and it triggers fear, I'll also be vulnerable and pull the curtain back and tell you a memory that I had from childhood as I was doing this exercise to kind of excavate what was going on in my own head. I remember a time when I was like kindergarten age, and I had been out just rough and tumbling around, climbing trees and climbing over the fence, and I tore a pair of shorts that I was wearing, and I didn't think anything of it. You know, kids typically don't at that age, you're what, four or five, you're not thinking about it. You just know, dang it, I've torn my shorts. And I remember my dad flipping out and just being like, these are good school clothes, and we need to go someplace cheap and buy you play clothes. You are now forbidden to play in your school clothes because it's too expensive to tear up your school clothes, and then we have to go buy more. You need to just get some junky play clothes and only wear those as soon as you get home from school. You need to change out of those school clothes. And I remember having this thought at that young age of like, are we poor? Are we not able to afford school clothes? Nobody told me. I didn't know that. It was scary, and it triggered fear for me. So something just of that flavor might be in your head too, and it might help you to figure out, like, even if the adult meant well, even if the adult was trying to do their best in the situation, they might not have handled it in the best way, and it might have left an impression on your psyche. Some of the exercises that she has you do. When you get to the end of each section, she'll have a task list for the week, and she talks about natural abundance, and that can be something like picking flowers or looking for rocks or crystals just out in nature, things that you're not having to pay any money for at all, to remind yourself that abundance is everywhere. And she also talks about clearing things away if you have things that you no longer want, knickknacks or BRIC a BRAC or clothes that don't fit, clothes that are worn out, you know, it might be a good week to throw out some underwear that has holes in it and buy some new pants. Week Seven is recovering a sense of connection. She opens right up with this idea of listening, the ability to listen, and then how important that is when you are doing your morning pages and your artist dates. I'll pull the curtain back again. So the other night, I was watching the movie which board. I may have seen it back in the 80s, but if I did, I brain dumped it. I'm not sure that I ever saw it back in the day. And so for my artist date, I was like, I'm just gonna sit down. I'm gonna get something to drink and watch this movie. This is available for free on Tubi. I'm like, I just, I was in an 80s horror movie mood for some reason, I don't know why, and I was watching this movie. And I'm like, the premise is really interesting. The acting is wooden and, in my opinion, not very good. You know, there's like, a young Tawny kitane Is the starlet that's in there. The men I didn't even recognize. It looks like the blood is done with ketchup. It is cheesy 80s horror. I'm like, you know, the premise for this is actually really good, because the man who wrote the movie, who came up with the screenplay, he was at a party, I think, like in college, and somebody said, let's get a Ouija board. Let's just start futzing around with it, trying to contact spirits and demons and shit. And he was like, what? And I'm like, that's an awesome concept. Just that, in and of itself, for any kind of horror movie or horror TV show, is gold to me. I did a lot of work when I was in school about the role of the devil in cinema, and that is a classic trope. Think about the Exorcist, this little girl who's lonely. Her dad is a deadbeat that's moved away and doesn't care about her, won't even call her on her birthday. Her mom's a self absorbed actress. So what does she do? She turns to the Ouija board and starts talking to Captain howdy. So for me, any any trope of that flavor where it's like, hey, let's start conjuring demons. It's like, Oh, how about let's don't but anyway, I was, I was in this movie, and I started to listen to the ideas that were coming up for me around it. And I I actually came up with a hilarious idea, not even something for horror. So I was watching a horror movie that, you know, let's be honest, was laughable at some points, you know, a guy gets smashed by a board, and then when they lift the board up, it's like he's got Heinz ketchup all over his face. But I, I came up with a fairly comedic idea. I had an idea for this character, and I was laughing so hard my ribs hurt. That's another form of listening, being able to tune in to yourself, to forget about censorship and to forget about those initial ideas of, is this stupid, is this corny? The reality is anybody's going to get rejected. I submitted a poem not long ago to a contest, and I think that the poem is gorgeous. I got rejected. They didn't even say, like, Hey, we're not going to award this for the contest, but we still want to publish it in our journal. It was just like, rejected. Do not want, okay, along with the Form Letter of like, but we do hope you enter next year. We do hope you'll pay us money and enter again next year. And it's like, why would I do that? Long pause there? Like, why would I come back? If you don't like my style, that's fine, but I'm not going to come back to get rejected again. It's a waste of my time and money. The person who is meant to engage with this poem and see it for what it is. We'll see it. So I'm not going to come back and try to fish out of a Dry Pond. It makes no sense. And then I read what did get awarded, and it was the most clap trap nonsense I've ever read. It reminded me of something that would be on the recently canceled television show, and just like that, you know how Carrie's book is not exactly Pulitzer Prize winning material. Everybody on the show is supposed to act like it is, but it's like the woman thought to herself, the woman did this. And I'm like, over the course of a novel, an unnamed protagonist is going to get really annoying if you're just saying, the woman, the woman, the woman, over and over again, come on. But that's kind of how the poem was that won. And I was like, Yeah, okay, so if that's what you think is, I won't guard. I'm out. I'm hitting the door. There was a book that I published under a pseudonym. It doesn't have anything to do with dag or my work about DAG. It was a completely different genre that I published under a pseudonym, and somebody like lambasted it, but didn't even tell me what they didn't like. Just, I don't like this. Okay. Well, why? What's missing? What did you not like? I don't know. I just didn't like it. Okay, well, thanks for that. We can get those bits of censorship stuck in our heads. Somebody might not like it, somebody might give it a low review, somebody might not want to publish this poem, and then we want to hide. And I would submit that we don't need to hide. It may just be that that person is not your target audience, and that's fine, but don't censor your ideas. You might have to mold them later, they might take on a different shape than you originally had in mind. But that doesn't mean you should just stop. Oh. And to that point, the next section in week seven is perfectionism. Oh, here we go. Here we go. She quotes Miles Davis as saying, Do not fear mistakes because there are none. And Julia says, The perfectionist fixes one line of a poem over and over until no lines are right. That is the truth. That is the truth. And for me, this is something that I struggle with. I'm a recovering type A personality. And then on top of that, I have the Tony, Stark impulse to tinker and oh, I can tinker and tinker and tinker. And then finally, it's like, I don't even know how this started. It's like the cliche about not being able to see the forest for the trees. I was like, I don't even know where I'm at. It's the middle of the night. I don't know what's happening. I've been futzing with this for hours. What in the hell is even happening? At some point you just have to relinquish it and say it's not going to be perfect, because nothing's perfect. Nothing is perfect. I can release it imperfect and still have it be good, maybe even Excellent. She asks the question to the reader, what would I do if I didn't have to do it perfectly. You know, for those of us recovering type A personalities, or if you're still in the throes of type A personality, that is a huge, huge question. And she offers a number of suggestions. If you feel stuck, maybe it's stand up comedy, maybe it's ballet. Maybe. It's wearing a flashy shade of lipstick, reading a poem in public. It's whatever you want to do, but you feel like you can't, unless you can be perfect, unless you can be an expert from the starting line, you're just not going to do it. She then tackles jealousy, whether that's looking at a fellow artist seeing their success and thinking, well, how come that's not mine or somebody else seems to have an innate talent. I've seen cartoonists that can sit down, and to be fair, they've done it for years, but they can just sit down, they open up a clean window in Photoshop, and they can just draw something amazing in like five minutes. And I am not there, believe me, I'm faster than I was when I very first started. But you know, it still takes me time, and I still have to mess around. And again, here comes the tinkerer. I don't like that line anymore. I don't I don't like that color right there. I want to change it as this is not esthetically pleasing to Me. But the point is, I'm doing it, and I have these nightmares sometimes, and I'm like, Oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna release the first book that I've illustrated myself, and people are just gonna lambast me and be like, your drawings are too simple. They're too plain. We're living in the age of AI generated art. This is too simple. It's too childish. I feel like, what's his face? Talk about another Sex and the City reference for trough ski, you know the dude that did the light installations where he's like, What if everybody looks at me and says, I'm just a silly old man with a bunch of silly little lights? That's kind of how I feel. I'm like, what if somebody looks at my drawings and they're like, this book sucks. You suck. This book sucks, and your drawings suck. I have nightmares about that man. But you know what? I'm plowing ahead. I'm not going to allow fear and insecurity to stop me. Julia recommends that you do a jealousy map if you feel like envy and jealousy are parts of your life that need to be better managed do a jealousy map. And it might be. I'm jealous of my sister because she has a better house. I'm jealous of my friend Sally, because I feel like she's a better writer. I'm jealous of Walt Whitman, because I think he was a better poet. And then you figure out, what's the action? What can I do to take action that will be like an antidote to that? Can I fix my house up? And it doesn't necessarily mean that you spend a bunch of money. It might mean that you clean and tidy and you do a Marie Kondo to get rid of junk. If you feel like somebody is a better writer than you, what can you do to improve your own craft? If you're jealous of a famous poet, what can you do to improve your poetry? Maybe it's already good. Maybe if you entered into some contests, or maybe if you went to a public reading or got some feedback, it might help. She also has another exercise in week seven that's similar to week six, where you just start filling in the blanks. As a child, I dreamed of in my household, there was never enough. I beat myself up when and those can be likewise helpful in excavating maybe even a long forgotten memory that's still in there. Your conscious mind doesn't remember it. Oh, but the unconscious mind does in the tasks for week seven, she encourages you to go someplace sacred, and it doesn't matter that can be a church, a synagogue, wherever it can be outside in nature. It can be a library. It can be a cathedral or a museum. Go someplace sacred where you really feel a child like sense of wonder, and you feel safe and you feel happy. She recommends things like creating a wonderful sensory experience, something that's pretty to look at, something that's pleasant to smell. Give your time. Give yourself time for something that is just for joy. Painting something, even if you're finger painting like a toddler, paint something for fun. Listen to your favorite music, go to your favorite restaurant, do something that's just purely for pleasure, and something that will connect you back to yourself, and connect you back to whatever it is that you personally find pleasure in. And another exercise that I'll wrap up with here is she talks about like your favorite topics, like make a collage, an old school collage, like we used to do back in the day, pre internet, where you just bought magazines and you cut pictures out and pasted them on a poster board, make an old school collage of your favorite topics. Doesn't matter. Could be your favorite actor or actress. Could be a dream house that you want to manifest. It could be a favorite musician, favorite paintings, whatever, because there aren't any rules, it's your favorite stuff. And then you can look. At it and feel that connection to yourself. These are my favorite things. These are things that are significant to me. Doesn't matter if they're not significant to anybody else. This is my week. This is my time to connect to myself. As I have said throughout these episodes, I really highly recommend Julia's book, whether you consider yourself to be a creative or an aspiring artist or not, absolutely, these exercises will bring some light and some information to your life that you wouldn't have otherwise accessed. Stay safe, stay sane, and I will see you in the next episode.

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