Back To "The Artist's Way"

The winter I retired from teaching, I was exhausted! The courses I had been teaching had entailed hours of marking daily. (The part of teaching I hated most!) In addition, I was busy taking my mother to medical appointments. She had had breast cancer surgery a few months before and now had numerous follow-up appointments.

Newly retired, I longed to live quietly and creatively. Instead, I was spending my free time in the basement sorting through boxes of stuff I had brought home from my filing cabinets at school.

But somewhere during those uninspiring winter months, I had come across the title of a book, The Artist's Way, a motivational classic by Julia Cameron. I began to write "morning pages" - three pages in longhand every morning exploring my artistic dreams. I had also begun going out on weekly "artist dates" - times away from my humdrum life when I could sit and dream about life the way I would like to be living it.

I don't know what inner transformations occurred as I quietly expressed my artistic self those few hours a week, but I don't think it was a co-incidence that in February, the following winter, I began to blog. (And I've been blogging ever since!)

Eventually I stopped writing my "morning pages" and going out on "artist's dates." (I'm not sure why.)

But now, several years into retirement, I've been going through a "dry" spell creatively. So I've again turned to The Artist's Way.

I hope my summer will allow me time for "artist's dates" again. And I hope that this refresher in The Artist's Way will encourage me to live even more creatively!