Five weeks is a long time to spend doing something. After five weeks, your excitement has probably worn off and you've probably had a share of good and bad days to muddle through. Your Defector pals have just finished their fifth week of The Artist's Way, a 12-week course on creativity created by Julia Cameron, and the novelty has certainly worn off for a lot of us. But that doesn't mean there weren't little breakthroughs along the way. It's tempting to think of something like The Artist's Way as a quick(ish) fix for any and all creative and existential woes, but the kinds of changes many of us are hoping for happen incrementally. The Artist's Way, and these weekly check-ins, are useful ways to stop and notice those incremental changes.
How many days this week did you do your morning pages? How was the experience for you?
Alex Sujong Laughlin: All seven days! Though I'll admit, a couple of the days I only did two pages. I've been feeling really anxious and scattered, so that made it hard for me to feel connected to the process. About halfway through the week, I decided to recommit by rereading the chapter and writing down some of the lines that resonated with me. One of them was: "One reason we are miserly with ourselves is scarcity thinking. We don't want our luck to run out. We don't want to overspend our spiritual abundance." I haven't been feeling extremely spiritually abundant the last couple weeks, but reading that line did get me onto a track of thinking about the ways I cut myself off from things—interesting experiences, fulfilling relationships, inner peace—because I've decided that I've hit the limit of how much "good" I’m allowed to have. So reflecting on that was a big theme for me this week.
Kathryn Xu: I went 5/7 days, and unfortunately one of them was shortchanged, too. I'm driving myself up the wall a bit with my inability to actually Lock In and do a complete week, though this time I'll elide rehashing everything I've said before about routines and consequences. The lines about scarcity thinking also did resonate with me, in some ways. An old superstition I have is believing that if I want something too much it won't happen, which may have more of an aspirational impact than a material one, but is an impulse I'm trying to check. For example: I had hope the Eagles were going to win the Super Bowl! Go Birds!
Ray Ratto: Six days for me, but I knew Sunday would be problematic so I didn't force it. Forcing it seems to me to be contrary to the entire idea, but then I'm still trying to get my hands around the entire idea so I could simply be misguided yet again. Or maybe Alex and Sabs are simply better people, which given that I am the comparison point here makes this pretty self-evident. I am starting to wonder when the epiphany is coming though, and am beginning to resign myself to moderated failure here. Also, Julia made me mad with her constant references to the deity, because the last thing I get with this is a sense of community with the ethereal. I am prepared to be informed that I'm missing the point but I'm not getting that link.
Sabrina Imbler: I have been keeping up my two(?)-week streak of 7/7 days of morning pages. Alex, I have also kept the two-page alternative in my back pocket for days when I feel like I am barely up to the task, and it has been helpful. I've been trying to name all the good things that happen every day as a reminder of the abundance that does surround me, even if it is surrounded by a maelstrom of dread and grief and anger. And that resonates a lot, Ray: I found myself skimming this week's chapter because of all Julia's invocations of a higher power to justify something like getting a new agent. Which is important! But that does not ring holy to me.
Chris Thompson: I did another five days. This week felt like a real step back for me. Even when I was doing my pages, I felt weirdly disconnected from the task. The sensation of struggling, which made some of the earlier weeks so miserable, is gone, but now that it's gone it turns out that feeling was validating, in some way. It gave me the satisfaction of having persevered! This past week I just felt flat and disengaged. Some half-formed thing would come out of my brain and through my fingers and onto the page and I would just smirk at it, as if it had come from someone else, someone who annoys me a lot, and then I would move on. Bad vibes!
Did you do your artist date this week? What did you do? How did it feel?
Alex: I did! This play I'm doing has turned out to take up a ton more time than I expected, and it's also demanding a lot of my energy, especially in a social sense. I was still in the throes of anxiety going into the weekend, but after I spent 12 hours cumulatively working on this play, I felt a lot less bad. Whenever I come out of an anxiety spiral, I think about that Jemima Kirke Instagram post—"I think you guys might be thinking about yourselves too much"—and remember that getting out of your own head is one of the fastest paths to feeling better.
Kathryn: Alex, you actually had an impact on my artist date this week, which was going to a yarn store and buying starting materials for crocheting. I keep seeing you knitting in the Zoom window in meetings, and it reminds me of my brief knitting phases when I was a kid; that coupled with me seeing these banana and kaputar slug tapestries really spurred me to get off my ass and just go to a local knit shop to buy materials, so I could one day get good enough at making the slug tapestries. I will say that I had pretty immediate buyer's regret after I picked up my yarn—I wound up buying yarn that was, in my opinion, way too nice and expensive and serious to start mucking around and making, like, coasters with, so I'm planning on finding some cheaper stuff to start with. But I was extremely happy to commit to the philosophy of being able to start something when you want to start something, and not waiting for some inexplicable reason.
Alex: Oh my gosh, yay! Very happy to hear that. Coincidentally, I am without a current knitting project because I finished the sweater I was working on. Maybe that's a good idea for an artist date this week.
Sabrina: Wow Kathryn, I love those slug tapestries! I would love to see what you make, and I love that philosophy. I often find myself putting off things I want to try until I have all the right materials, or am in the mindset I envisioned for the task, and I end up forgetting that the most important thing is actually starting it.
I went on a proper artist date this week. I took Friday off and went to the Museum of Natural History with my partner to visit an entomologist and see a bunch of bugs, which didn't feel like it counted. After we walked around all afternoon, my partner needed to rest for an hour or so, so I wandered on my own to the hall of vertebrate origins and looked at some amazing fossils of fish, turtles, big salamanders, and other tetrapods. I did not read any of the exhibit text, in part because I felt tired, but that ended up being a fun way to experience the exhibit—purely feeling the vibes of each fish. It was a bitterly cold weekday, and this exhibit was on the very top floor of the museum, so I was often alone in the hall, and I really felt so #blessed, to invoke Julia's framework, that I can live so close to so many natural treasures and visit them whenever I want (my budget permitting lol). Standing next to fossils is such a liminal experience for me: I feel so desperately close to, and faraway from, the creatures whose remains are in the room. It's the closest I feel I can come to geological time travel.
Ray: My artist date was digging up weeds in the backyard because (a) it doesn’t require much concentration and (b) it allowed me to think about the idea of the artist date. I also spent maybe five hours combing through sports reference sites to research the mudslide that was the football game and found it more interesting than most normal people would, because I found myself getting lost in the imaginary contexts behind them. It saved the gas and ticket cost of a museum, and it took me to a place away from the common belief that anything I didn't remember seeing was invalid. We are way too into ourselves as reference points in general, when there are truths and suppositions outside that narrow band that are much more enjoyable. I have no idea if that will link up to more creative uses, but it killed an afternoon, which is its own triumph.
Chris: Wow, Ray, a fellow gardener "artist"! Nice.
Kathryn: Ray, speaking as another sports reference site enjoyer, that sounds very fun.
Chris: For my artist date, I took a trip to a photography shop in a nearby town and spent a half-hour talking with a really intimidatingly passionate photographer who works there, who made me dizzy with her knowledge of cameras and lenses and film. I left with a new (used) 35mm camera and some film, plus a shoulder strap. I then went to the cafe at a local bookstore and sat at the counter and read through the delightfully 1980s-ish owner's manual, and took notes in a notebook. It was such a great time, from start to finish. It's been most of a week and I haven't had the time or courage to actually use the camera, but I'm really excited to take it with me for some free time I have coming up in [checks calendar] two months.
Sabrina: Ooh Chris, maybe the roses will consider blooming when you've gotten some practice with the camera!
Chris: Yeah! Although I think I will be out of town for basically their entire spring blooming cycle this year. It's OK! I've learned from past experience how to keep them looking healthy enough through the summer. I'm going to choose to be optimistic and excited to see what they're up to in mid-July.
Did you experience any synchronicity this week? What was it?
Alex: Only a couple. I think it was a synchronicity that the themes for this week centered on control, and I was miserable most of the week because I was in a situation where I lacked control. Each time I went back and reread the chapter (I did it a few times last week), the theme of surrender came through louder and louder. I also had a conversation with a woman where it seemed like she was saying everything exactly as I was feeling it. That's always a nice experience.
Kathryn: Something I was good about doing this week was making sure that I was actively going on a walk each day, and this usually also aligned with getting a little treat. The synchronicity comes in with me deciding to get bubble tea on Wednesday as part of this treat-acquiring/walk-ensuring endeavor with the assumption that when my roommate came back from work, she'd be too tired to come with me. We were on the same page here, and so the early bubble tea trip—even with the literal blood shed during it (long story)—became a success on the basis of premonition.
Chris: A funny thing happened this week. I was driving somewhere with my wife and the sun was out and I was feeling very happy, and I said aloud something cheesy about sometimes feeling very individually blessed, like for a period of consecutive days or even just hours things have swung my way. And I said how I am trying to be more mindful and grateful and so forth whenever things do go my way, even for just a few minutes at a time. And my wife asked me to be more specific, and I listed a couple of things that I felt good about. She knows I'm doing this project and is familiar with The Artist's Way, and she smiled and said, "Synchronicity!" And I laughed and felt silly and sheepish but also very happy.
But now, days later, I have no memory of what it was I was feeling happy about, and I also have no memory of what couple of examples I used of feeling blessed. But there were synchronicities! Or possibly I dreamed the entire episode.
Alex: Wow, that is really nice.
Sabrina: I went to karaoke with a friend who recently had a stroke and is re-learning how to sing, which felt deeply resonant with my experience trying to re-learn some karaoke songs after my voice has changed. And it felt really special to talk over how different and yet similar our experiences have been, and to be vulnerable together.
Ray: Sabs, you are noteworthy for your nobility and kindness. I mention this because we karaoke'd "Red Red Wine" back at the first intern week I attended and, well, I remember it even now even though I sweated small roofing nails through the entire song.
Sabrina: Ray, I too think of our duet often! We've gotta reprise it soon. Do a reprise? I’ve never used this word in a sentence before, I am realizing.
Ray: "Commit a reprisal"? No, that’s not it.
Sabrina: We threaten reprisal to anyone who speaks out against our beautiful duet.
Ray: Why only threaten? Lessons must be imparted, by coercive measures if need be.
Chris: Oh wait, I do have one: Defector distributed quarterly target-salary payouts recently, and so I took my car in for an overdue oil change and some badly needed new tires. As I was waiting in the office of the car place, I overheard one of the technicians bitching about the late start of the Super Bowl. I had bedtime duty Sunday night, and was feeling a little bit of anxiety about missing the start of the game, but this man was saying that kickoff was at 10 p.m. I heard this and thought, "Wow, that's late, but at least I won’t miss it." And then for some reason I never double-checked this information. Then I looked at my phone during the whole protracted bedtime procedure and the game was half over and the Eagles were winning by one zillion points. I laughed aloud and enjoyed this huge wave of relief, because I no longer felt any pressure at all to watch any of the game, and also knew that I had not missed anything particularly worth catching. God did that.
Ray: Are you sure you weren't in the Azores getting your tires done?
Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant for your recovery?
Kathryn: Not to go behind the scenes too much about how these get put together, but I answered this question first, and that's because the Philadelphia Eagles' triumphant Super Bowl shellacking of the Kansas City Chiefs has played a huge role in my mental and physical well-being this week, and will continue to play a huge role in the coming week. I'm exhausted and very happy and yawning as I type and make my second coffee of the day. Did this have a positive or negative effect on my recovery? Yes.
Sabrina: Congratulations to you, Kathryn, specifically, the only Eagles fan on staff!
Kathryn: Defector is famous for its lack of Philadelphia bias.
Chris: Eat shit, Philadelphians!
Ray: Never underestimate the freeing nature of having no rooting interest. My goal for Sunday was watching none of the commercials, my personal middle finger to the notion that ads can be art. At that, I won convincingly. In the immortal words of Katherine Ryan, I am so proud of me.
Alex: The only other thing I have to offer is that I've been making these videos on Instagram as part of this process, and as the weeks have gone on I've been pleasantly surprised at how the process of making the videos has evolved for me. At first I was going to just make quick, straight-to-camera videos filmed on my phone, but each week I'm trying a new technique and trying to make the video a little bit better. It's kind of been a mini, additional artist date.
