Acceptance
Accepting two ideas:
Artists may be broke or doing okay with money - and that has nothing to do with the true value of the art or the artist.
Artists must live a life that nurtures the artist-child-spirit, in all the ways that might seem unconventional, quirky, even irresponsible. And when we do that, the responsibilities will be easier to achieve and get done.
Art is life: life is art. We must live our art every day. Give to ourselves the gift of making art and being creative.
Success
Creativity is a practice, not a destination. And we need to balance this practice with our 'responsibilities', mostly described here as the process of generating income.
We are also told that creativity is an ever advancing finish line, we cannot rest in our laurels, our artist selves will not be healthy if we figure out a formula and repeat that over and over.
It is normal, good and necessary that we remake, restart, journey to new places and begin again with creativity or unknown ideas and skill sets.
If we do not do this, our artist will wither and die.
The Zen of Sports
This section is about the importance of getting out of our heads, and out of our perspective of only seeing ourselves, and instead connecting with the outer world - connecting with our physical bodies; the physical world of beauty, joy, intrigue, excitement.
We are told there is tremendous importance in spending some of our time being in our bodies. And the result of that is essentially that it helps us solve problems/overcome obstacles.
The reason given that this will happen (the answers will come) is that this is a method or practice of connecting with the great creative energy of life, the universal well all things come from.
Building your artist's altar
We are told to nurture our spirituality by creating a small space which holds items which feel spiritually significant and uplifting, beautiful.
We are told to devise small rituals which will help ground us and celebrate and magnify this spiritually.
And again we are told that our artist is a child - and we need to fulfill and honor that child's playful, excited, childlike wonder.
Just checking in... sorry to everyone that I was AWOL. I was out of town. I don't even know where to jump in, but this last week or so I have been very bad about my artist's pages, and forgot to take my book with me to read. I will have to catch up!
I did the artist pages every day. I did not do my artist date - I was on family vacation all week, and I did experience synchronicity. The ideas from this book continue to populate my mind. As we approach the end, I feel like the newest idea that is for my consideration is of faith - to put it outside of myself and my responsibilities to an external great thing that has my best interests in mind.
The tasks for this week were wonderful, I only did four of them, but I enjoyed the review - there is so much in this book I do feel like I could immediately start again and do this all again - I'm not going to but wow it's a lot.
Here's my weekly check in. I did my morning pages every day and completed the tasks I chose. My husband & I watched an interesting hour long show called the Accordion Kings. It was about a small Columbian Village that hosts a celebration and competition at the Vallenato Kings Festival. It was inspiring and interesting. I can't use it as my Artist's date because I watched it with my husband! As for my own accordion playing it was not a good week. Life goes on! I'm ready to start our final week. Time really flies.
I like her thoughts about walking or other activities to clear your mind. I try to hike everyday, although today it’s snowing (again!). I did the tasks and writing and will take the artist date to the lake or library if the weather cooperates.
My weekly plan is to complete the tasks I've chosen, continue my daily writings and as usual, an artist's date probably won't happen.