This is part of my work in the Julia Cameron Artist’s Way series. The work this time is from the book the Sound of Paper. The responses are self-examinations and assessments based on work through a daily series of exercises. While I do keep some material offline as it can be very personal and jarring, I often opt to be fairly open about my experiences, both positive and negative.

1. Block out time on my calendar to make sure I do my weekly skin and hair care booster routine.
2. Go for a walk every day. EVERY day.
3. Prepare meals ahead – it ensures eating properly and alleviates the stress of figuring it out when my mind is elsewhere.
4. Give myself the proper tools to do my job. Sure, makeshift stuff is creative and cute, but having the right tool relieves stress.
5. Bookend the day with journaling. Morning pages in the morning and mind-mapping at night.
6. Time-outs matter: meditation, walks, research, and schedule deviations help a project, they don’t hurt it.
7. Reserve emotionally distressing things for situations where the distress is necessary. So movies that are triggering rather than cathartic, interacting with an upsetting person when you don’t have to, etc. – just set it aside.
8. One small thing: that coffee maker on a timer is awesome.
9. Keep taking your daily dose of yerba matte. It helps a lot with the lateral anxiety issues.
10. Stop to appreciate the movement of the seasons. You skip that a lot, and you really do need it. Introduce One Small Thing to your creative process in magic and ritual work, too.

This is part of my work in the Julia Cameron Artist’s Way series. The work this time is from the book the Sound of Paper. The responses are self-examinations and assessments based on work through a daily series of exercises. While I do keep some material offline as it can be very personal and jarring, I often opt to be fairly open about my experiences, both positive and negative.

I value myself for…

1. reorganizing my home last year.
2. expressing gratitude to people who really need to hear it. Not people who tell themselves I owe them (I don’t) but people who work hard and never expect to be thanked.
3. for daring to do that penguin shoot.
4. for adopting that penguin for Mike every year.
5. for giving the pom squad the last $15 they needed for their fundraiser my sophomore year of college.
6. for helping A figure out what to wear to a job fair.
7. for helping M relax about her body image after having a baby.
8. for helping a few thousand plus-size women every month find clothing they can at least tolerate.
9. for getting 100 + volunteers at my local Pagan Pride back in the early ‘aughts. It’s changed since then.
10. for helping S face her fear and fill out her loan deferments.
11. for helping 5 different women fill out harassment and protection orders.
12. for staying up with H after she took a morning after pill when the chemicals were still unpredictable.
13. for cooking Dad his favorite saur kraut dish while he was dying.
14. for making sure I got Mike’s grandfather to tell me about his life – he died the next month, so I made sure Mike got to know his grandfather before he died. Which is good, because I was too broke to buy him a decent Christmas present that year.
15. for keeping Doctor Who meetup running for five years.
16. for standing up to my family. They can not like it all they want, they were demanding things they had no right to and treating me like dirt for excuses, not reasons.
17. for baking that birthday cake for B, since his kids weren’t about to do it.
18. for throwing that 29th birthday party for T.
19. for running Shadowzine all those years ago. I’m still sad it died. I was increasing its circulation before that happened.
20. for getting Pagans to consent to and cooperate with actual deadlines.
21. for helping Shez get a semester of schooling – he would have likely have had to drop out or resorted to corruption if I hadn’t stepped in.
22. for creating that manual of operations at the International Student Office. It may be long gone by now, but at least one person after me found it helpful and organizing.
23. for teaching several classes at UPS.
24. for running the food shelf drive with the Who meetup.
25. for helping L with her wedding dress.
26. for helping M find stores so she could find HER wedding dress.
27. for giving A encouragement before his grand adventure.
28. for showing BH that there was someone who valued him in his life when we were kids.
29. for showing AB that he could like someone that challenged him.
30. for telling off the entire Mean Girls table in public my senior year of high school. Honestly, how much more crap were they expecting me to tolerate?
31. for helping out the TARDIS Tea society without stepping into their territory.
32. for bringing J a birthday card when I hardly know him.
33. for bringing C lunch when she was sick.
34. for bringing B juice and Kleenex when she was sick.
35. for all the times I used to bring my sister stuff when she was laid up – I did it every time.
36. for stuffing money into my mother’s purse and into the red penguin, especially after hearing my parents constantly complain how tight money was.
37. for years of church breakfasts, communion cleanups, church service ushering and nursery duty.
38. for bringing P to the closest Hindu temple after her car accident.
39. for bringing my neighbor chocolate truffles.
40. for sitting for M’s cat…while he was off with his best friend’s wife. (Didn’t really know the second part ’til later. The cat was sweet enough to make up for the allergies, but not for my participation in that degree of ethical shittery.)
41. for trying to teach better organizational management to L. It’s not my fault she refused to turn off her inner noise and actually listen.
42. for biting my tongue every time some kid just out of college with a marketing degree does a bad job rewriting my copy.
43. for making the EGCG trunk show actually work.
44. for telling that teenage girl who came to me for a reading, “Just because he says he loves you doesn’t mean he does.” From the look on her face, I’m pretty sure I set her free from a bad relationship. I just hope she also learned when to BELIEVE it when someone says they love you.
45. for the MSU-Pagan events where I raised most of the funds for the organization. No idea what the hell ever happened with that money.
46. for making the first Pagan Pride at Mankato State happen.
47. for finding the first truly workable location for the Doctor Who meetup (where we still are at the moment.)
48. for writing J that dirty Dexter fanfic.
49. for doing those free herbal consults.
50. for my painstaking honesty in matters where there is any risk involved.

This is part of my work in the Julia Cameron Artist’s Way series. The work this time is from the book the Sound of Paper. The responses are self-examinations and assessments based on work through a daily series of exercises. While I do keep some material offline as it can be very personal and jarring, I often opt to be fairly open about my experiences, both positive and negative.

I’ve done this exercise more than once already, but it’s still good to review.

1. Clearing the dishwasher.
2. Doing a station declutter – just picking one area, a corner of a room, and decluttering JUST that.
3. Making paper.
4. Baking.
5. Meditating (about half the time. The other half it’s the opposite of grounding.)
6. Eating a communal meal, usually with Mike. Actually, how grounding it is depends on my dinner companion. I always prefer the grounding sessions to the aggressively intellectual ones. Those are the people that spend time with me for me, not for what they think I can do for them.
7. Walking.
8. Doing push-ups, sit-ups or a short stretch. I often just push up against walls as I move from room to room during my workday.
9. Ticking check boxes on to-do lists. It’s affirming, and gives me a sense of purpose.
10. Doing my beauty routine – the one I’ve been skipping a lot, to the detriment of my often chlorine-dipped skin.

This is part of my work in the Julia Cameron Artist’s Way series. The work this time is from the book the Sound of Paper. The responses are self-examinations and assessments based on work through a daily series of exercises. While I do keep some material offline as it can be very personal and jarring, I often opt to be fairly open about my experiences, both positive and negative.

I took a significant risk when I did this.

1. I’ve stayed on the artist’s way path for four years – I’ve even started teaching workshops for magical people based on Julia Cameron’s concepts.
2. I’ve started putting more pictures of myself up on Fat Chic. That’s risky – female social violence is nasty when you write for fashion, and the more marginalized your populous, the more nasty the feedback can get.
3. I’m braving interacting with the BBC RIGHT NOW to make something happen for the fan organization that I lead.
4. I’ve had the brass boobage (=cajones) to call myself a leader, in public, while female. More than once.
5. The book I’m writing? 8 years of research, a big, miserable part of my 20s, and I’m GOING TO PUBLISH IT.

Lagniappe: Publishing the Spellcasting Picture Book took some nerve, too. Especially since it was either really well received or viewed with outright horror. It’s even gotten a one star review from someone who concluded I have “merely dabbled with magic.” *snort*

This is part of my work in the Julia Cameron Artist’s Way series. The work this time is from the book the Sound of Paper. The responses are self-examinations and assessments based on work through a daily series of exercises. While I do keep some material offline as it can be very personal and jarring, I often opt to be fairly open about my experiences, both positive and negative.

Remember, just because it works for me does not mean I expect these things to apply to you. Even those with the same experiences experience those occasions differently.

1. Wicca. Something about converting  to Wicca brought me into my creative groove in a way nothing else has.  It got me writing, when the relentless pressure of my writing and journalism major was killing me creatively. Magic is definitely an element in nearly all the fiction I write, even in the straight realistic fiction novel I finished from Nanowrimo last November. There always has to be one Wiccan or other Pagan character who is so far from granola-crunching that she at least owns a pair of Fluevogs.
2. My mother. She’s my go-to villain; it takes art and pure evil to be totally selfish and still make yourself out to be martyr. My sister makes the conflicted villain, as she does egregiously awful things while convincing herself she’s “helping.” Not sure if I’ll ever touch her wildly inappropriate and frankly disturbing interest in the sex lives of people directly related to her; it was creepy enough when she told me someone she dated was lusting after me, and she seemed to be encouraging it. That’s prelude to one woman nominating another for sexual assault. Ick.
3. Minneapolis. It’s inspired a lot of non-fiction. I’ve realized I’m just not in love with the place, but it works. There’s a lot worth sharing here. But I have to admit, I’m quite infatuated with Portland now. The native Portlanders would probably not love that. And I can’t really go anywhere, although I’m looking closely at possibly applying for a writer’s retreat now that I’ve got a shoppable portfolio built up.
4. Pete C., my friend from college. We both said “I love you,” to each other in multiple ways that avoided discussion. We never dated. The most action we gave each other was a fraternal peck during one of those weird collegiate party games, because despite fantasies about doing more than that with him, the idea of actually kissing him made me want to hide under the card table we were sitting at. (The boys back then were generally not too interested in me. I get hit on more now than I did when I was “hit on-able” age.)  It was a rich, rewarding friendship. While I don’t think Pete cared as much about me as I did about him – if he did, he would have initiated some sort of contact after I left Lakeland, and I had my doubts while we were still in the same geographical space – it’s still a cornerstone for my most positive relationships with men. I’ve never had a friendship like that since, and I’m constantly trying to recreate it in my fiction. It’s been 12 years, and I miss him terribly. I have to admit though, I’m probably avoiding him just like I avoid my favorite uncle because of all the weight I’ve gained.
5. Dance. It doesn’t work its way into my writing much, but it’s part of my essential nutrients. I have to find some way to do it, some place to do it regularly. It’s like I’m half dancer, half writer, even if I’ve never really pursued dance performance.

This is part of my work in the Julia Cameron Artist’s Way series. The work this time is from the book the Sound of Paper. The responses are self-examinations and assessments based on work through a daily series of exercises. While I do keep some material offline as it can be very personal and jarring, I often opt to be fairly open about my experiences, both positive and negative.

If I wanted to, I could celebrate…

1. my new work process, that bookends revision work and fresh writing into an hour at the beginning and the end of the day. It’s working well right now.
2. at long last making a dent in the years of notes piled I have for Fat Chic. I have a long way to go, but I’m in the process of rediscovering my groove.
3. that I have the self-confidence to make MY projects my first priority and my volunteer projects my second and third priority.
4. that I am finally at a place in my life where I can actually get a weekend getaway.
5. my tomato starts are proud little green men, spiraling upward towards the plant light.

This is part of my work in the Julia Cameron Artist’s Way series. The work this time is from the book the Sound of Paper. The responses are self-examinations and assessments based on work through a daily series of exercises. While I do keep some material offline as it can be very personal and jarring, I often opt to be fairly open about my experiences, both positive and negative.

While the mending entry isn’t really a blog or journal prompt, it does prompt me. It comes at a synchronous time. It’s advice I’ve been given many times over, last and most aggressively in a job where expectations for me were too high and support was too low. The advice was good, even if I was given absolutely no room to apply it: slow down.

I don’t slow down. This year I’ve caught myself jumping the gun, going off half-cocked, not stopping to get more information, not checking information, forgetting to go back and read the whole conversation…and we all know my typos quite well, don’t we?

I get impatient. I skip steps. I forget things. I rush.

This never does me any good, and it’s really about the bridge of trust between myself and whatever may be. I am a religious person, so I call that divinity. Trusting things will work out. Trusting that whatever lays at the end of my actions, it’s still good.

When I slow down, things turn out fine. The problem is that I still equate better with faster. I think most Americans do. It used to show up in my music lessons – I would rush through each measure, flipping my fingers, blowing my horn, stepping on the refined details that make music music. I believed that the ability to play a piece as fast as possible was what demonstrated mastery.

It did not. Quite the opposite. It showed that while I could certainly play each note, I did not have the true artistry of a musician. I did not perform the music. I just played it. (That I never enjoyed playing an instrument was likely also a factor.)

I have been gifted two years to complete my manuscript.

Yesterday, I tried making paper again. It wasn’t quite the disaster of my first tries. This time I slowed down. I watched some videos (I admit I skipped through to the parts that covered where I was having trouble.) Paper making is an exercise in patience, messiness, and the perseverance to clean up. You have to squeeze the water out.

Today I have one mishappen piece of paper, one that has fused to a paper backing, and one still on the deckle frame. I said something to Mike about giving up, but I’m rethinking this morning. I just need to take my time, and I need to get a bigger sponge. If I slow down and stick with it in the moment, I can turn out some perfectly good paper, maybe a few more sheets per session. If I slow down at the beginning and lay down paper and plastic in the kitchen, I won’t have such an onerous mess to clean up later.

Also, I am trying my hand again at T-shirt surgery. Once again, it’s about the art of slowing down. There’s never a reason to sew faster when you do it for yourself – and in that slowness I can carefully, deliberately learn to measure, learn to decorate, learn to create. Maybe I’ll even teach myself how to sew button holes this year.