Advice

I started reading my Artist's Workbook last night. It's a project I started last Summer, but I put it on the back-burner. I bought the book after having a conversation with an artist friend of my mother's. I took a painting to her house looking for some advice on how to finish it, and she gave me advice about life simultaneously. She talked to me about fear of success as much as failure, fear of finishing something- the finality of it. She talked to me about how you can never make a painting worse by adding something- you can only ever make it better by trying something new. She recommended I pick up the Artist's Workbook as a way to open up my creativity. The next weekend, I made a mad dash to Border's.

In the opening chapter, it outlines two techniques. The first is a practice called "Morning Pages". It's an assignment asking each reader to write three pages, free-hand, first thing in the morning. The purpose is to clear out any fears, anxieties, trivial thoughts that consume you during the day, or anything that causes mental clutter. It's meant to be a virtual "trash bin" for your mind. The second assignment is called "Artist's Dates". These are solo activities that you go on once a week. They should be something that you'd otherwise convince yourself out of doing, and they have to be done alone. The book says you should look at them as you taking yourself out on a date. Treat yourself to something fun, nice, interesting, exciting, peaceful, quiet, whatever you need, once a week. Give yourself a break and go on a you-date.

Whenever I've heard someone say that they feel lost or too wrapped up in the wake of a breakup, the advice they're often given goes something like:

"You should really spend some time doing things you want to do. Be by yourself for a while."

That's all well and good, but it doesn't really say anything. It gives a vague direction that the individual should be alone, doing things. That leaves the already lonely/upset person with a feeling that they're still alone, and not even doing it right. One thing I've learned through leadership training is that experience by itself is fun, exciting, boring or neutral. Without intentional processing, that's about a deep as it gets. Any learning that comes from that experience is purely accidental, and oftentimes not the best lesson.

The advice to go out and do things is a good one. New experiences, especially ones that we've always wanted to do, or never knew we wanted to do, give us plenty of chances to learn new things about the world and ourselves. The learning part is what's next. That's why I like the Artist's Workbook's advice. Go out and do stuff, then write. Write even when you haven't done anything. Write every single morning and process what happened, what you want to happen, what didn't happen, everything. It'll get rid of the junk and leave space for the creative.