When researchers look at what effects astronauts could face on long-term missions, exploring Mars or beyond, one thing they tend to focus on something called the "third-quarter" effect. It's a sports-y sounding name for something we all might be familiar with, that feeling when morale tends to hit a low point in the third quarter of long missions. It makes sense that the middle is always the roughest time. The beginning and end benefit from excitement, either from just beginning or from being almost done. Right in the middle of a process is usually where morale sags the most, so if you can get through that period, things will almost certainly start to feel better.
We are smack dab in the middle of the third quarter of The Artist's Way, and morale is sagging, predictably. Luckily we are not astronauts and can blog from right here on Earth. If you're following along with us, maybe you're feeling the drag too. The good news is that the fourth quarter is in sight.
How many days this week did you do your morning pages? How was the experience for you?
Alex Sujong Laughlin: I did my morning pages 5/7 days. It has felt like a slog this week. I'm not sure whether it's because we're once again living through "unprecedented times" or because of things happening in my personal life, but it feels like every week lasts a month. It's bizarre to flip back through my pages and realize that last week was actually last week and not two months ago.
Ray Ratto: Six of seven, as always. Sorry, Jules, but I have stuff to do. I can't say I'm getting much out of the pages, but I made the commitment, and I will hate myself afterward, as is my wont. I actually found her chapter last week less tiresome/more thought-provoking than before, so maybe she's turning the corner too.
Chris Thompson: I did five days. It was a weird, hectic week for me, with an unusual set of obligations. I also reverted to bitching about pages, and describing different elements of the toddler mess around me, and writing out the tasks before me. The week just flew by, man.
Sabrina Imbler: I managed five days this week. I also had a weirdly hectic week and had to turn a lot of things in so had to prioritize those things. As a result, I think a lot of my morning pages were devoted to listing all the tasks I had to accomplish so that I wouldn't forget them. So not a lot of revelation, but a nice amount of logistical support, because I don't think I forgot anything … I hope!
Kathryn Xu: Five days, again, which is becoming standard. I spent the majority of the past week afflicted with various bodily ailments, including the common cold, and pent up in the apartment, due to the aforementioned common cold and the actual outside freezing cold. The last time I was sick was in November, but that passed in, like, 36 hours, which gave me an unfortunately exaggerated expectation of how quickly I'd recover this time. Alas … the futility of the body.
Did you do your artist date this week? What did you do? How did it feel?
Alex: I know I am technically cheating by outsourcing my artist dates to this theater company I've joined, but the time commitment is like a part-time job and every rehearsal truly feels like an artist date both in practice and in spirit. This week, I spent an hour in a dim room listening to ocean sounds while playing with sand on the floor. We were told to explore the sand, investigate it, see what it could do. The hour felt like 15 minutes, at most. I had an absolute blast.
Ray: Technically cheating, my ass. You are going where you must go, which is kind of the exercise, and if that's cheating, I am about to go on double secret probation. My artist date was a total cheat, as I filled out the 40-man rosters for every MLB team as part of my season prep and I mostly reveled in the spectacular names of some of the players. I want a world in which it is OK to enjoy Jhostynxon Garcia, Angel Chivilli, Chase Silseth and Orion Kerkering, and though it was a serious time suck, it was well worth it.
Chris: Alex, that sounds lovely. I am inspired to dump several cubic yards of sand on my kitchen floor and walk around making fists with my toes.
I did not have an artist date this week. I did spend three hours in a very cool artist space in a nearby town Thursday morning, but this was solidly a work thing. I intended to zip over to a gallery at the nearby community college, but I could never clear out enough time for it. Nevertheless I felt very engaged and productive last week, even if I never cut out any specific art time, and also never published any blogs or otherwise left behind any trace of productivity. I tore through a couple books and got in a very little bit of gardening, which is all very good for my brain, even if it does not meet the criteria of artist dating.
Sabrina: I visited Providence this week and was going to go to the RISD Museum for a solo date, but life got in the way. But I did read some of the collected short stories of Lydia Davis in the bathtub of my hotel, and that was perfectly lovely. I got some chamomile-scented epsom salt from a CVS, and I could feel the tightness in my muscles unwind a little.
Alex, that's so funny because I went to school in Providence, and one of the most infamous stories I heard about the student theater group is the time they filled the blackbox theater with sand for an interactive show about a beach, and it was such a horrifying experience to clean up that the theater had to add a "no sand" rule for all future shows. That city sure loves sand!
Kathryn: I had a hard time finding artist date space this week, between ailments and going back to New Jersey, but I can still list things that might've qualified if I were more intentional about them. In very in-character news, I've really gotten into this video game called Mini Metro, which is basically what it sounds like: constructing a minimalist metro for various cities that have their own challenges and geographies. It's a game that I grasp way more than its sequel, Mini Motorways, which I bring zero strategy to and has the less appealing system of cars and roads.
I'm hesitantly planning to get into board games, too, or at least ones that I can do with my roommate, so I spent a good chunk of time just scrolling through BoardGameGeek dot com and researching, making lists, etc. for good two-player board games. The actions of little organizational tasks like researching and compiling information have always been fun for me, while the actual act of getting off my ass and actually spending money on stuff has always been very stressful.
Did you experience any synchronicity this week? What was it?
Alex: You know those people who you don't know but who always show up in the background at stores, coffee shops, or walking down the street? Kelsey calls them "familiar strangers." This week I went to an event and my familiar stranger was there, and we started talking and it turned out I was his familiar stranger, too! I had stood in line behind him at the coffee shop earlier that day, and he said he spent the whole time trying to decide if he should say hi. We now know each other's names and are no longer strangers.
Ray: Familiar strangers is an interesting concept, but I prefer mine to be more stranger and less familiar. A significant percentage of people are, after all, just future debtors waiting for the perfect opportunity to transition. On the other hand, I had an interesting conversation with the bartender at one of our local restaurants, whose name I don't know and wouldn't presume to ask for, and was reminded that some folks are just inherently more interesting—at least when the topic is them. She won me over with her commitment to a Newfie pour, which is what I have learned is what you call a pour that nearly reaches the top of the glass. I used to call it an honest pour, but after being in Newfoundland for a story awhile back, I have taken their version of it instead. So maybe we're not talking synchronicity as much as we are cultural appropriation.
Chris: I don't know if this counts. I thawed a huge slab of pork belly last week and used a portion of it to make a bitchin' stew. Then, for really painful and unfortunate reasons, I had occasion to do a little more helping than usual to prepare a meal for some pals, and I had all these ingredients handy and a front-of-mind recipe for making this bitchin' stew. So I was able to make a good stew for some people who badly needed a night off, with minimal shopping. I would of course have preferred for there never to have been the need.
Alex: YUM.
Sabrina: That stew sounds amazing, Chris, and I'm so glad you could share it with some pals in need of care.
If you have talked to me within the past few weeks, I've probably mentioned reading this chapbook by Lydia Davis called The Cows that I am obsessed with and bring up at any occasion. But no one I knew had read this weird little chapbook, until I was catching up with my college thesis advisor in Providence and, unsurprisingly, she had also read and greatly enjoyed The Cows. It reminded me how beautiful it is to have similar cultural appetites with friends and writers, so that you can revel in the specific little weird things that you love in the same obscure text.
Kathryn: I wasn't especially on the lookout for synchronicity this week. I think, though I am not 100-percent certain of this, that a guy who was in the same El car as me on my way to 30th Street Station also wound up in the same Amtrak car as me on my way back to New Jersey, in a non-creepy manner. Considering how timing works, it wouldn't be a huge coincidence—unlike that one time I got in the same C car that Kelsey, Jasper, and Jasper's wife were already in on my way to the Defector holiday party—but it was funny nonetheless to have a double-take moment. Of course, the Amtrak guy could've been a different guy from the one in the subway, in which case I apologize.
Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant for your recovery? Describe them.
Alex: The event where I met my familiar stranger was this regular thing in my town where an artist is invited to talk about their work and then gives everyone a writing prompt based on it. Everyone goes into corners and writes something, and then we come back together and share what we've written. I always have a hard time with these prompts, because I feel like they're asking me to metabolize ideas and then create with them faster than feels comfortable for me. This time around, I passed on reading my stuff out loud, but I was blown away by some of the things other people shared. Their pieces were funny and delicate and intimate. Granted, these were some of the most impressive professional writers I've had the fortune of meeting in real life, but still! The thing I took away from listening to them read was that they were patient enough to sit really close to the object they were writing about, and not try to rush to make meaning out of it. It was an exercise in description more than interpretation, and I struggled because I'd been trying to do the latter.
Ray: I may write about the bartender at some vague future point, but in honesty I doubt it. But the listening was worth the size of the tip, which counts for something. In this case, 22 percent.
Chris: My four-year-old daughter ate so much junk food Saturday night that she barfed all over the place overnight. But! She was staying at her grandmother's house for a sleepover when this happened, and it was in fact her grandmother who gave her most of the junk food. While this is not a synchronicity, I truly felt the intervention of a benevolent cosmos. Today I am grateful.
Sabrina: I have a packed couple of weeks with personal work and travel ahead, and I've been trying to set everything up so I can relax a little when I'm off. But it's been eating into the time I have to do the restorative things I love, like reading or crafting or going to the gym. But I also had a similar intervention to yours, Chris: My beautiful son Sesame, who is a cat, barfed last night. But he is a lawful barfer, always hopping off the bed to barf on the hardwood floor. I thanked the skies above that it was not my beautiful daughter Melon who barfed, because she is an indiscriminate, chaotic barfer.
Kathryn: I do this thing when I go back to New Jersey where I try to kick my caffeine addiction for literally no reason. What this means is that my first day post-train is usually lost to an extremely painful headache. The last time I returned to Philly, I decided I was only going to have three or four coffees a week to try to prevent future caffeine withdrawal headaches, and lasted about two weeks before I gave up on the mission. I suffered the consequences last Saturday, and have reached a new resolution: I will no longer try to give up coffee.
