This chapter in The Artist's Way had a scary little exercise in it. It was found on page 159, and I looked at it with fear. It was found under the destructive title of "Blasting Though Blocks". The exercise involved listing resentments and anger about projects, fears, and what to gain by NOT doing the project you are currently working on.
I was scared because I am so sensitive to negative energy- once my mind gets into the negative, it is difficult to pull it back into a healthy attitude. A definite flaw within myself, once things get tainted I want to just discard it. I was fearful that if I allowed the negative feelings to have a voice I would see only that and just stop. This would then only serve to CREATE a block, instead of DESTROYING a creative block. I was right to be scared given my past habits.
After some thought, I did the exercise. I'm not blocked in my current project, but I thought that perhaps I could gain something through this exercise. It did not create a block, but I'm not sure that if I had one that it would help...well, maybe it would. It helped to get it all out on paper- but seriously, as one who has kept a journal since age eight, I know of those benefits of bitching through a pen. I was still scared that my angers would gain in strength and destroy my flow for the project. It hasn't. It gave me a bit of a jolt to establish mini-goals for the project and see the strength of the benefits of doing the project. I was able to look at the awfulness and opportunities lost as a result of NOT doing the project. THAT was scary!
One of the tasks this week was to look back through all of my morning pages to check for patterns and issues. While I did not get to this, I will over the next week as I go on to Chapter Ten. I will probably write a post dedicated to the Morning Pages sometime within the next week or two since they play such a central role in this twelve-week program.
Bring it on, Chapter Ten!
I was scared because I am so sensitive to negative energy- once my mind gets into the negative, it is difficult to pull it back into a healthy attitude. A definite flaw within myself, once things get tainted I want to just discard it. I was fearful that if I allowed the negative feelings to have a voice I would see only that and just stop. This would then only serve to CREATE a block, instead of DESTROYING a creative block. I was right to be scared given my past habits.
After some thought, I did the exercise. I'm not blocked in my current project, but I thought that perhaps I could gain something through this exercise. It did not create a block, but I'm not sure that if I had one that it would help...well, maybe it would. It helped to get it all out on paper- but seriously, as one who has kept a journal since age eight, I know of those benefits of bitching through a pen. I was still scared that my angers would gain in strength and destroy my flow for the project. It hasn't. It gave me a bit of a jolt to establish mini-goals for the project and see the strength of the benefits of doing the project. I was able to look at the awfulness and opportunities lost as a result of NOT doing the project. THAT was scary!
One of the tasks this week was to look back through all of my morning pages to check for patterns and issues. While I did not get to this, I will over the next week as I go on to Chapter Ten. I will probably write a post dedicated to the Morning Pages sometime within the next week or two since they play such a central role in this twelve-week program.
Bring it on, Chapter Ten!
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