Week 5: Recovering a Sense of Possibility

In my own words, I describe the core idea of this chapter as "being selfish enough to take the time for yourself to do the creative works."

The chapter has two major ideas: The first idea is that we need to trust in an unlimited river of creative abundance. We just need to TRUST.

We need to have faith that things will work out. We need to feel trust that a thing outside of ourselves will take care of us - that a positive outcome will come for us.

In addition to that we will have a dependecy on the source of the creativity: god/etc.

The other major idea of this chapter is that we must create time and space for ourselves to be the artist. And a common reason that we don't give that to ourselves is because we think we are doing good for others by giving them time instead of us, she names this "the virtue trap."

I think fleshing out what that means is a good idea, or a good practice - doing the morning pages, the artist date, etc. are good - but what about the actual artist part.

We are given examples as easy and entry level as just taking a dance class, but we can also extend this out to making the time to sit and toil and explore at our art in whatever medium it is.

This latter part of the chapter definitely resonated with me. And in general I feel that this chapter resonates more than the previous 4: probably because she starts talking about the ways that we give away our time to others in our lives, instead of - sacrificing/giving up - time to do and be our creative creating selves.

I wrote a few introspective ideas this triggerd in me:

• PEOPLE PLEASING

• Avoiding (temporary/momentary) failure

• Lack of boundaries

• Fear of losing a relationship

The virtue trap, by definition leads to self-destruction for our artist selves. "Saying no to ourselves."

The Tasks for this week involve identifying how we stay blocked, and don't give ourselves the time and space we need, as well as reviewing our likes, hopes, dreams: the things we really see ourselves as.