Emotions that might feel counterintuitive such as anger are actually a map. “It tells us we can’t get away with our old life any longer. It tells us that old life is dying,” writes Julia. I learned what can only be learned through going inward, even if that means looking like you’re doing nothing from the outside. The day after things ended between myself and my ‘crazymaker’ for the second time, I get a cold – what Julia describes as a Kriya, or “the bad case of the flu right after you’ve broken up with your love. It’s the rotten head cold and bronchial cough that announces you’ve abused your health to meet an unreachable work deadline.” Instead of thinking about the big end goal or outcome, I needed to focus on the next small step and swap ‘what’s the use’ for ‘what is next’.

The Artist’s Way | Julia Cameron Live The Artist’s Way | Julia Cameron Live

Just like the bends of a river, things don’t pay off in a linear fashion – there is no neat sequence of events once you’ve made a step, but the important thing is to become internally clear on dreams, desires and delights. The Artist's Way Workbook is an indispensable book for anyone following the path to creativity laid out in The Artist's Way.Even without alcohol, there is still room for improvement in respect to how I’m using my time – which is often being the busy worker bee and feeling overwhelmed or worries about money rather than attending to important creative work. We can also fall into asking what’s the point and berating ourselves for only just starting, worrying that everyone is so much further ahead, we will never quite catch up. It didn’t feel like enough to simply write for my own sake, as if there has to be some other external recipient of the words rather than my own contentedness in writing them. When we get ‘there’, there disappears” writes Julia, so we may as well focus on the running, not the end. Week 12: Letting go

The Artist’s Way - Онлайн-клуб любителей The Artist’s Way - Онлайн-клуб любителей

According to me, I am no artist. But according to Julia Cameron — author, teacher, and creativity guru who first published The Artist’s Way almost 30 years ago — I, Emma Turetsky, am a brilliant and prolific artist, and through my creativity, I serve God! The creator! My inner child artist! And I must both shout it from the rooftops and write it in my notebook ten times for good measure! I logged my anxious thoughts for one day and it was helpful for staying focused on the task at hand – redoing my chapter outline for the book. The antidote is to take a risk and focus on the doing. “A risk is worth taking simply for the sake of taking it.”

Instead of ‘why me’ I needed to ask what next. I needed to see the potential of these endings and what could be opened up in their place – a fresh start, a shake-up of my routine, and push from complacency. I now have autonomy with my time and a capacity for paying attention to something else, something delightful, something that I feel truly connected to. Maybe even that book proposal. Week 3: Anger and jealousy are a map