This is part of my work in the Julia Cameron Artist’s Way series. The work this time is from the book the Artist’s Way at Work: Riding the Dragon. 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.

Stone Arch Bridge and Mississippi River trail - photo by Diana Rajchel

1. Business environment: kind of a paved wood with a beaten trail. People don’t recognize they’re on defined trails until they go nuts when somebody gets off one. I’d love it to be a Pacific Northwest rainforest (but sunny) but mostly it’s a northern wood with locals that don’t share directions well and use self-referential (unhelpful) points if you get lost.

2. Dangerous situations: baboons. There’s a couple of baboon behaviors going on, domination, craziness, an expectation that I participate in tribal politics to my own detriment.

3. Predators: I don’t know if anyone I’m dealing with right now is outright predatory. What kind of natural predator pretends it’s a victim to ensnare others? There’s a high danger of that, and it is apparently my natural enemy.

4. Beautiful elements: Being in a time outside of time. There’s always a river somewhere. There are lots of bridges, some natural, some built with a great deal of care. The bee population pretty much keeps to itself. Hikers feel safe to explore here.

5. Friendly plants and animals in the forest: violets and moss are everywhere, as is German chamomile. At the edge of the forest where the street runs by a guerilla farmer has started a rose garden. I allow it, because the bravado to do such a thing is hilarious and perfect. Wolves keep the population of deer under control, and while sometimes a goat gets loose and destroys a few plants, it’s never the goat’s fault it got loose – so no blaming the goat. There are also foxes, keeping rodent populations in check; there is no raccoon banditry or river rat insurrection here. While the animals are not nearly as dignified as they might think, they are simply what they are, and they handle the troves of rabid baboons that have no business in this environment with aplomb. Between them, I think they may even be forming a plan about that roving tribe that will end with the baboons behind bars, or at the very least with the bully members of the tribe taken out and replaced with creatures that operate on cooperation instead of aggression.

This is part of my work in the Julia Cameron Artist’s Way series. The work this time is from the book the Artist’s Way at Work: Riding the Dragon. 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. Book marketing - I definitely need some kind of help with that.
2. Editing/proofing my own work. While I think I’m fine for the project I’m stepping up to, I’m still a bit damaged from my experience with the last corporation I worked for, and I may be dealing with editors that also mythologize writing and thus treat me project with less respect than it merits.
3. Time management and productivity. This is something we can ALL use help with, all the time. I’ve leveled up, but there’s more to do.
4. Subject line writing, for emails and blog posts. I need to get better at creating clickable titles.
5. Integration. I’ve shut down the perfumery for now, but I don’t want to drop it – I just think it needs to be different from what I was doing.

Minnehaha Falls - photo by Diana Rajchel

If I had to pick ONE thing to work on right now, it would be the time management. I have a lot of balls going for specific reasons, and I don’t want to drop ANY.

This is part of my work in the Julia Cameron Artist’s Way series. The work this time is from the book the Artist’s Way at Work: Riding the Dragon. 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. Book marketing - I definitely need some kind of help with that.
2. Editing/proofing my own work. While I think I’m fine for the project I’m stepping up to, I’m still a bit damaged from my experience with the last corporation I worked for, and I may be dealing with editors that also mythologize writing and thus treat me project with less respect than it merits.
3. Time management and productivity. This is something we can ALL use help with, all the time. I’ve leveled up, but there’s more to do.
4. Subject line writing, for emails and blog posts. I need to get better at creating clickable titles.
5. Integration. I’ve shut down the perfumery for now, but I don’t want to drop it – I just think it needs to be different from what I was doing.

Minnehaha Falls - photo by Diana Rajchel

If I had to pick ONE thing to work on right now, it would be the time management. I have a lot of balls going for specific reasons, and I don’t want to drop ANY.

This is part of my work in the Julia Cameron Artist’s Way series. The work this time is from the book the Artist’s Way at Work: Riding the Dragon. 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.

For this exercise, I’m to list 10 things I’d like to try “but I’m too old.” I’m not terribly anchored in the elderly – thanks to Botox, Retinol, and cultural denial, I apparently get to live through my twenties twice at the ripe age of 36, and judging from the reaction of my mother’s cronies at my father’s funeral, I’m even a candidate for a second adolescence! Opting for the “teen runaway” section, as a 36 year old with a growing career, no addiction problems and a good relationship will, I’m doing quite well in this adolescent rebellion.

That said, there are several “I really want to do this BUT” and the but usually = $$$$$. Sometimes it also involves my partner objecting to my absence.
1. Aikido – I really want to take Aikido classes. I’m actually stashing back money for a course to start when I turn 40.
2. Writer’s retreat in New Orleans.
3. Teach English abroad, preferably in western Europe.
4. Drive to Canada, just because.
5. Go to that hoodoo/conjure conference in New Orleans.
6. Go to the Full Figured fashion shows in Vegas and elsewhere.
7. Submit a play to the Fringe Festival.
8. Get official tarot certification.
9. Get herbalist certification.
10. Finish off my MFA, or get an MA in sociology. I really want to do that latter one more.

This is part of my work in the Julia Cameron Artist’s Way series. The work this time is from the book the Artist’s Way at Work: Riding the Dragon. 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.

Didn’t even come close to managing the media fast. Here’s why:

1. I actually have a really strict schedule I’m trying to adhere to, and not doing well. Adding the stress of a media fast to another fundamental life change, getting up very early, did NOT work. It was too much pressure, and I have decided that after the constant pressure that described my childhood through my twenties, I am taking an approach of being as easy on myself as possible in all things. This morally offends people who it does nothing to harm, which tells me this is exactly the approach I need to be taking. When I am easy on myself, I am easy on other people. This doesn’t mean I’m going all doormat – as will be evidenced within this post.

2. The deprivation created a massive sense of poverty for me. It did not motivate me to “produce.”

3. This is also because I am already producing, and producing quite well.

I do seem to be having a phase of outer rebel. My parents were so ready to pounce on any sign of rebellion in me that even showing signs of anger got punished and stifled severely; at one point they actively admitted that they were laying in wait for the day I “acted out.” That they never questioned that they had created an environment where acting out was the sane and reasonable option is a good sign in the “they probably should not have had children, but here I fucking am,” column. When they admitted that they came down harder on me than they did my sister – and my sister in fact did things that put the entire family at risk – I realized I did not have a home with them, I had a prison. A really creepy prison where the jailers actually knew pretty well what they were doing was wrong.

Somewhere in my ancestral memory dwells Holocaust survivors, and some that did not survive. I suspect on a tribal level they helped me out, because honestly, I don’t know where my strength comes from, either.

As an adult, I often defaulted to the position of saying nothing when people did nasty things. I can name names, potentially; there was a pattern of friendships where I allowed myself to be exploited because it was better to have a friend that treated you like dirt than it was to have no friends.

I’ve changed my mind about that. Just as no sex is better than bad sex, no friends is better than bad friends. The position has allowed good friends, good people, to find me.

So I’ve been finding myself getting feisty lately – moreso than I normally expect of myself. A buyer tried pushing me around on Ebay; I checked his feedback and found he has a habit of bullying sellers, so I reported him on every single thing he pulled and I responded with “check feedback – pattern behavior.” Pinterest, while a lot of fun when used correctly, has become a depository of female social violence. Someone decided to pick on me. I called it out, and when she tried to dismiss me, I kept calling it out. When she enlisted friends to assist her – in a classic female social violence pattern – I kept calling them out, too. The entire time I wondered why in the hell I was doing it.

I probably am making up for some crap I was subjected to in high school and college. I also accept that I have a lifelong issue with female social violence. I fuck up at times, and hurt people’s feelings, but I swear I am NEVER doing it from a place of proving I have more power – and someone who is picking people out to belittle and snark without any provocation at all is getting off on making other people feel bad. I am a critic as part of my living, I know the difference between valid criticism and just being a jerk.

This is part of my work in the Julia Cameron Artist’s Way series. The work this time is from the book the Artist’s Way at Work: Riding the Dragon. 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.

by Al_HikesAZ - not directly related, but ideas that work within the artist's way paths, too.

Every so often, even I rebel against the wisdom of Julia. It’s allowed – critical thinking is not the same as rampant criticism, especially since I can honestly say I have done it her way in the past. My experience differs a bit from her, and my day-to-day differs drastically in some respects. Your experience might match Cameron’s better than mine.

People who have read this blog for years know that I’m of the school of thought that it’s more important to DO morning pages than it is to do them in the morning, and as much as I like and respect Ms. Cameron’s life outlook, there are passages from Write Yourself Right that have left me convinced that she needs a sit-down with Dr. Linda Bacon. We all need practice releasing ourselves from self-judgement, and our bodies is the hardest place to do that.

So when she recommends the media fast, and she means EVERYTHING – computer, emails, TV, radio, music, books, every go-to of luxury culture you can imagine – I can say the following:

1. It does work. I have done it – AND IT WORKS. Your life actually improves.

2. Thanks to the current economic climate, there are way too many people that could get fired for that degree of abstinence. As much as Cameron really, really emphasizes, insists, demands that people abstain, it really just plain won’t be possible for everyone that has something significant to lose, especially now that there’s no such thing as a secure job in the United States if you’re not part of a certain 1% we all keep hearing about.

If you’re in a job where Internet access isn’t required, you’re in luck. You actually CAN do this, 100%. But for those who have to take the 80% cut back, I’d like to suggest the following tactics:

A)Plan for a media fast like you would plan for a vacation. Schedule it. Set up your vacation response on your email (almost all programs have something like that in setting somewhere.) Screen phone calls. Those of us with Smartphones can get filter programs that can temporarily filter out phone calls from certain numbers, so that coworker that tends to ignore boundaries can be duly ignored after hours.

B)Practice seeing phone calls, knocks on the door, etc. as options – and not as commands. I do not always answer my doorbell, and I have strict rules about when I answer my phone. If people who know I am not a phone person insist on dragging out their time with me (if you live locally and have two hours to talk to me on the phone, you have time to get a cup of coffee with me where we can talk face to face) then I will screen their calls but not necessarily filter them.

C)If you would get fired for not checking your email, consider filters. Not only do they keep you from responding to emails that do not need your attention, they can help you focus on your tasks more efficiently as you work through your different filters.

D)You CAN cut back. I think that my #1 bad habit was coming home from my workday, flipping on the television and then zoning out. This is the perfect time to do a second (or first) set of morning pages, to vent frustrations or to make a plan for dealing with what you have before you in the evening.

E)Plan a little. If you have some ideas for what you’re going to do instead, it makes it easier to forgo media. Maybe you plan to meditate, or to handwrite/storyboard your next piece. Give yourself 3-4 activities to try on each day, and see what engages you the most.

I’ve only succeeded at the media fast once, and made it three days on the next round. I don’t advise trying it in winter if you live where there’s “weather” and limited mass transit.

This is part of my work in the Julia Cameron Artist’s Way series. The work this time is from the book the Artist’s Way at Work: Riding the Dragon. 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.

Dear Diana,
I just wanted to drop you a note to let you know that I’m actually very impressed with you. Considering that you got involved with the Artist’s Way just to add a level of connection to some people you knew online, you’ve taken it and made massive inroads into your life. The greatest accomplishment of course, is the book contract. From producing virtually nothing in 2008 to a book you can pitch is phenomenal. I know you’re nervous about what might happen because of the difficulty of the research and the vagaries of the publishing business, but even so – what you’ve done, and with the subject you’re writing about, is amazing. The time you spend at the gym also took a lot of inner work to get there, and every step was necessary. Re-evaluating and “restocking” your social life took a lot of both courage and restraint: courage, because you would get verbally abused as a child for letting negative friendships fall away (having friends being perceived as more important than having positive relationships) and overcoming that conditioning takes work. Restraint, for refusing to engage in drama whenever refusal was a genuine option as certain former friends realized that you were not going to fulfill their agendas. You’ve also started to accept that you can’t do everything – and you don’t have to do it all at once. Your decluttering schedule has done you a lot of good, and really does seem to help with that. The perfumery will still be there when the writing phase of your life turns a bend; in the meantime do the “back building” work with the packaging on your weekends so that you have it ready to go as a part time project in 1-2 years. Work on what’s before you – you know there’s plenty to do. I’m especially proud of how willing you are to change, how willing you are to try new things, and how you know what you have to do to be happy – and that it’s OK to want to be happy.

Love,

Diana