A sense of adventure

Morning pages


2/7 Still struggling here.

To be honest I have been considering to give up since I don't seem to get all the things done. This chapter didn't really speak to me and the motivation was slipping away. When I saw Pamela do her check in of week 4 today I decided to give it another shot.



Artist date


I have a book called Utopia a picture story that shows work of an artist aboriginal collective that makes silk batiks. The book contains portraits of aboriginal women with a piece of silk batik they designed for this project, using fauna and flora and symbols of their culture. The sentence "Allow yourself to be" remembered me of cultures through the ages that weren't allowed to be, the aboriginal beeing one of them. I did watch the movie "Rabit fence" that tells the story how children of aboriginals were taken away from their parent to be re-educated in camps. Not allowed to speak their language and been seen as inferior. A young girl decides to walk back over 1000 miles (with two other small children) to be reunited with her mother. A beautiful and impressive film. It's only a few weeks ago the Australian government apologized for the first time for the injustice they have done to the aboriginals.

Tasks

I liked the dialogue task, I do this quite frequently but never as innovator-conserver. This could be a good angle because to be honest I'm probably more of a conserver (to the annoyance of my family who both are innovators). The dialogue I did strike up with myself was about if I should continue this project or not.


Weekly walks

We have had two amazing weekends, a bit cold but very sunny weather. I always walk on saturday and sunday with my DH. He often uses me as a sound board for his ideas so I am not always able to let my thoughts float. I'm thinking of taking up running again (started last summer) now the days are growing longer.

Week 3 Sense of Perspective

Morning Pages (1/7)
Not good. Not sure why but I don't like to do them. I understand the meaning and worth of them but somehow I resist doing them. I will try again harder (maybe I have to think of a nice reward for myself ;-)

Weekly Walk
I combined my walk with the count your blessings task on saturday. It was a very stormy weather but sunny and not cold so that was my first blessing. I enjoyed it very much, had sometimes trouble to stay focussed on the blessing-thing and not to let my thoughts drift to the daily life issues. Sonday I walked together with my son, that doesn't happen often. He'll leave home next week, he's found a room at a student home in the town he attends college. Allthough there is no real need, he's 18 and can commute, I know it's time for him to make the next step. As an only child I think it will be fun for him to live with 3 other students. Needless to say I'll miss him, we're very close. He's the biggest blessing in my life.

Tasks
The main topic seems to be anger. It reminded me of an acupuncturist, who, during the treatment told me that I had a lot of anger inside me (as source of a sympton I had unrelated to the problem I was receiving the needles for). At the time it striked me as a bit odd, I'm generally spoken quite friendly and radiates restfullness according to the people around me. But lately I felt that he wasn't far off since I was feeling angry about things and it felt if dams had broken and I was inundated with anger. I explored my relationship for the collage for some of the conflicts that were related with my anger.


How odd it may seem we should tap in our anger to be creative but I've seen up close how anger can be fuel to create art and be very powerful and constructive instead of the negative spiral that we get caught up in so easily.


Artist date


On sunday I visted a small exhibit in a combined studio space of several artists. I talked for a while with a woman who made nudes and portraits. They come together with a group of ('hobby') painters and will have real models sit for them. I like the subtle colors of the body she used. One of the portraits she made of a fellow painter, a woman close to 90 who started to paint at 70! So it's never too late to explore our forgotten dreams....

Week 2 Sense of Proportion

The book
The first chapter Identity hit home when she wrote that the worried advice artists get is: to have something to fall back on. This is the advice I'm giving my son (18) who is making his steps towards becoming an artist. It is wonderful and fascinating to follow his development and progress and how he's listening to his inner voice and becoming more assured where he wants to go. Me on the other hand, teacher and working with drop-outs, keeps hammering on the need to finish he education so he'll have a trade to fall back on (graphic designer) or it will be the step up for Art School. I think as long as I'm supportive of his art I'll hang on to the "finish school first" motto. I liked the story about the Elefant in " Becoming Larger", how people try to define who you are, no matter how well intended.

Morning Pages:
I haven't been writing them down because I had a problem with my right arm/neck/shoulder and writing made it worse. I have been taking each morning a half hour time to let my thoughts drift in the way I would have done writing them down.

Artist Date
I went with my son to an exhibition of Picasso in the Hague Museum. In the first chapter Julia speaks about taking action and small steps. At the same time I read an article on a research done about creativity and the myths involved. One of them beeing that creativity is this sudden moment of insight or inspiration versus the amount of work prior to the making of the art piece (the well known: 1% inspiration, 99% transpiration). As an example they referred to one of the famous works of Picasso " Les Demoisselles d'Avignon" that was conceived after a large number of studies. It was fun to see those studies in the exhibition (some were rather basic drawings in a lined notebook). My son discovered that one of his favourite modern artists work is influenced by certain work of Picasso and thus not so original as he thought. And that it's okay to copy to learn and be influenced by why you see in other work. What did I take away? To let go, to break with the rules, not be afraid that it won't work will help to create something new.

Tasks
I had a difficult time answering the questions of the first two tasks and in general concerning art. I think I'm not the 'targeted' person for this book, to be honest. I like to enlarge my creativity, but mainly in quilting, and I don't have a (secret) wish to venture into art. I get enough from this book and the exercises so it's not a problem, but sometimes I just don't have an answer (unless it is buried so deep inside me that I even haven't seen a glimpse of it LOL).

Weekly Walk
You know what? I completely forgot!

Week 1 A sense of Origin

Check in

Morning Pages:
I knew this would be the hardest task for me and I have skipped several mornings. After two weeks of holiday I had a hard time getting up and leave my warm bed in order to go to work. Even though we love our work and are committed most collegues seemed to have the same reluctance. The times I did write, I didn't find it easy to just go with the flow but it did give me some important insights what surprised me. I'll try to do better next week.
Last week I had a writing class at work and allthough it wasn't about creative writing it was very inspiring to do. We looked at content and tone of voice and if you get your message accross (I work for the concil so we interact with the public a lot). Learned a lot with great excercises and guess what, she let us write 10 minutes non stop (after she read the first line) without re-reading or adjusting, just like the braindrain Julia Cameron calls it. It was fun for most and they were surprised how liberating it was to do that. I told some collegues about " Walking in this World" and fortunately I didn't get the response that some others have received.

Artist Date
My artist date for the past week was watching the first chapter of the third Project Runway (please don't reveal anything to me!). Even though I don't have nothing with fashion (or more accurate fashion doesn't have nothing with me lol) I like this program a lot. I love to follow the challenges, the creative proces, the mechanical proces etc. It was fun to see how people present themselves, how creativity often is confused with beeing weird, the trends, the pressure, the status etc. Through quilting I have developed a love for different fabrics, textures and adornments and that gradually has come through in my clothes as well.

My walks
I love to walk and I live close to a small park and a lake, so that was the most easy part of the challenge. Even though the lake is small and not spectacular, the sight of water is very soothing for me. I'm a bit in a turmoil in my personal life so it was hard for me to switch off and my thoughts were going in a loop most of the time, but it helped a bit to sort part of the stuff for myself.

Tasks
I liked to do the tasks (as I did like her approach to do, to act and not to overthink the proces too much). I couldn't name 20 creative little actions, I got 8 and most of them had to do with organising and cleaning, shame on me! It occured to me later that she talks about things you could do and not thing you should or need to do. A bit more imagination is definitely required, will do this task again later in the challenge. When I was writing my personal add I came very close to Mother Theresa LOL. Anyway that got me thinking as well. I liked the excersise with the music, it made me feel more positive and able to achieve.