Artist Way week 7 report

This week was good but stressful. I had so many new and different things going on this week that my routines and my inner heart space time got rather discombobulated. I watched too much ice skating from the Olympics and even messed up my meditation time that had been working so well for me. I enjoyed all the things I did this week - the clay class, the massage, the playdate with my sister, my kiln firing and much more. But not until today have I really had a chance to go into the flow of writing. To get lost in that process and I sure missed it this week. I also didn't get much of a chance to visit other blogs and leave comments. So I feel a little weird and disconnected - not only from the others in the AW blogosphere, but also from my own internal heart space.

I did manage to write my morning pages every morning. I don't really count them as the kind of writing that I feel I was lacking this week. I was lacking a kind of writing that borders on composing a piece into "something". The morning pages are just something to wake up by and they don't really drop me into a writing trance. They may warm me up for it later, but this week I was missing the space to putter via writing later in my day. I missed composing my blog posts and dropping into a writing trance. I did put up some blog posts, but without taking the time to drop into the trance and come back out of it to post on the blog. In some ways I'd like to rewrite the Studio Friday post because I think if I'd had the time to go into it I might have been able to really let something insightful for myself bubble up to the surface. Ah, well....writing moves on...as does blog entries and there will yet be more bubbling opportunities for insights.

I did do my daily lumps, but they suffered a little too. Waiting until too late in the day to make them left me with little oomph to have fun with them. The important part is I did them. And I fired my kiln up this week and fired the first couple of weeks of the lumps. Sadly I damaged one of them (the only one I photographed for the Studio Friday entry - Fear). I wasn't firing it- but I knocked it over in it's fragile greenware state and broke the hands off of it. It was a little too top heavy. I may still fire it on the next firing - handless as it is - and I was even a bit amused that I get so afraid of making mistakes with clay and bam I broke the hands off of fear. Could it be that fear is having less power over me - maybe isn't holding me back so much?

My artist date was with my sister this week. We took a walk and worked on journal collages. It was good. I don't recommend every artist date to be with another artist, but occassionally it is nice. Especially, when a proper solo artist date wouldn't likely happen otherwise. The trick is to choose the artist date person carefully. It absolutely must be someone who lets you be who you are and wants to nourish and feed their inner artist too.

I did read the week's chapter. There were a lot of connections (funny that is what we are recovering this week as a theme for the chapter) - but truly there were a lot of connections for me to the topics of perfectionism, risk, and jealousy and to things happening this week. My clay class is a bit of a risk for me - it's taking me out of my comfort zone and that is when perfectionism comes in and tries to mess with me. I didn't really do the exercises this week - but I found myself noticing - oh yeah, there is a risk - I'm getting stuck in trying to be perfect - and jealousy well it didn't come up - though sometimes it does - so I will make a jealousy map.

What really got me was how I saw jealousy coming at me and the effect it often has on me which is to try to hide or minimize my love and joy. That dynamic of jealousy coming from another and how they try to make you feel as if you don't deserve it because they themselves are denying it in their own life. Begrudge is the word. I have to be a little vague about this due to privacy - but I want to mention it because I had a rather big insight. It has to do with the fact that I kind of approach the world in a way that takes a protective stance. I don't want to put my passions out there too strongly because I feel as if the disparager will come in and try to snatch them away from me. The disparager begrudges any good in my life because it feels it lacks it in its own life so it wants to take it away from me. I learned early and often to sort of squash my passions and avoid the wrath of the begrudger.

It's a life pattern to try to please someone who can never be pleased. I wish by denying my own life passions that it would help this other person claim theirs - but it doesn't work that way. If I do that I will end up becoming the disparager who is jealous of another's happiness and begrudges them for it. Dr Dyer has been helpful in reminding me that "you can never get sick enough to make another person well". "You can never become miserable enough to make another person happy" I've tried and he's right. You only end up miserable yourself. No more of that for me...... So what I see this week is about becoming aware of not only my own jealousy and taking actions as an antidote for it - but I see the need to recognize the ways I hold back as a stance in order to avoid other people's jealousy. If I'm not paying close attention to the ways that one comes up then I tend to self sabotage myself by holding back on my passionate life.

I sometimes wonder if I fear success because of failure or if I fear success because of that internalized begrudger. And at times my perfectionism tries to outwit the begrudger and that just means more stress and self sabotage. Awareness though is half the battle as they say. And action is the key. Somewhere I read
Action
Creates
Triumph

So I am off to act. To work in my new clay. As they say on one of my favorite TV shows - "Be a great day!"