I fully intended to write a thoughtful dive into the current media landscape’s status quo.

Instead, I picked up a new book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.

While I get to exercise my writing, editing, strategy, and creative problem solving muscles for clients I love on the daily, on a more personal level, I’ve felt anywhere from blocked creatively to creatively dead for, well, years.

I heard about the book because I fell into the social media rabbit hole of the life of a sketch comic who writes funny episodes of snarky coffee shop scenes. She shared that, as a former corporate fashion worker, she felt creatively dead and chronically depleted. To get out of her funk, she read this book.

Apparently, a lot of people, at any given time, are in a creative block. There is a 22-week wait for the e-version in my library app. I splurged on it and purchased the audio version.

The book is a 12-week course that relies on weekly tasks like solo walks, artist dates of one, and something called morning notes – three pages of daily, handwritten stream-of-consciousness notes that are meant for the eyes of no one, ever again, after these words are purged from the mind. The first rule of morning notes is that you don’t talk about morning notes.

While I will lock down the contents of my stream of consciousness notes, I’ll share the surprising extent to which – a few days in – so much emotion is bubbling up with this daily unloading of my mind.

Where were those big old feelings hiding?

Admittedly, the writing and tasks range from hokey to cringey – though this is part of the book’s charm.

One exercise was to dredge up past “monsters” who had hurt you creatively by dissecting your life in five-year increments.

This is a direct affront to my No. 1 life philosophy – No future, no past, only now.

But, OK Julia. Forging ahead to find meanies, I found exactly none.

In fact, I’ve only ever been encouraged when it came to any artistic pursuits. I could only think of a handful of toxic work bullies who had zero to do with my creative life. Plus, I forgave and moved on from these haterade slingers quickly.

Something interesting that occurred was an insight that floated into my consciousness after I completed the so-called “find the monster” exercise.

I didn’t write about it, so it’s game to share.

My No. 1 hater creatively? The critical voice living in my own mind. She’s rude AF!

It puts down at any given time my parenting, my trouble maintaining a rigorous exercise schedule, that I’m one of those people who needs A LOT of sleep, not a little; and that I’m not “further along” now in life – which could mean any aspect of my life, on any given day.

This rude voice is getting in my damn way.

The book argues and I agree, that you can control the message – the nasty one from within, by spinning negative diatribes into positive affirmations as a practice.

But first, you have to pay attention to thoughts. Shots fired? Push back and rewrite the inner critic’s overly harsh words. The book goes into further detail here.

I agree this is a worthwhile exercise.

Take it from a media expert. Control the message – the one in your own mind.

Who else wants to read The Artist’s Way and get out of their own way? Send me a message – let’s make a club.

See you in a few weeks! -Juliana