Actually this post is probably more trying to work things out by writing them out, rather than actual whingeing.
So, here's the story. For my birthday I asked for and received The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. In a nutshell, it's a course on freeing up your creativity and pushing through fears and blockages, for creative people of all kinds. It was first released about 20 years ago, and it's been very popular. Many creative people of all kinds swear by it. I guess at the time I asked for it, I felt like I wanted/deserved to go deeper and find more inspiration to be creative. Since then, I've been wavering back and forth. The book arrived in the mail last Friday and I started reading it pretty much straight away. Over the weekend I was feeling really motivated and positive. I wanted to get started straight away! One of the two essential activities that the book tells you to start doing straight away is Morning Pages. (The other is the Artist Date, but I'll talk about that later). Briefly, Morning Pages involves getting up first thing in the morning, and writing out 3 (A4) pages about anything. Just anything. No censoring, no worrying if it's any good. It's like a brain dump. Kinda like these blog posts! ahahahaha I'm kidding! (Or am I??.....)
Anyway, I started straight away on Saturday morning with the Morning Pages. Got up, got a nice cup of coffee, sat curled up on the couch and went for it. On Sunday I did them a little later, and wrote them in the bedroom as Husband was on the computer playing a noisy game. On the weekends it's easy. I was even really looking forward to them, thinking about what I might write (though you're not supposed to plan them, just write spontaneously, but I was excited and I couldn't help it!). I suddenly had an interest in my fountain pens again. It was going well. I was happy. But I knew it would get much harder on weekdays. My schedule is such a fine balance between fulfilling obligations and being waylaid by exhaustion ... some days I barely even have the time and/or energy to make myself a cup of tea!
My weekly to-do list includes the things I want to do every day - that would be good for me to do every day - brushing my teeth, drinking 1.5L water, having a cup of green tea, doing my (5-minute) tai chi session. And do you think I do all of these every day? How hard is it to have a cup of tea? When not only do I know that it's good for me, but I enjoy it as well? When with such a simple act, I could have the satisfaction of seeing it ticked off every day? I mean, geez! What kind of failure am I??
Anyway, this wasn't supposed to be a rant about how much I suck. It was supposed to be a brainstorming session on how I can fit Morning Pages into my life. I was already worried on Sunday that I might have trouble fitting it into my routine, and I was really determined not to fail at this. I figured with the literally millions of people who've bought the book, some must have blogged about their experiences, so I did quite a bit of googling and found some interesting observations. Many people deviated from the conditions set by the book - quite a few do their 'Morning' pages at night just before going to bed. Many type them instead of writing them. One person quite encouragingly pointed out that it doesn't matter how you do them, as long as you do them. I was excited by those who have a shelf-full of written journals, and want to have that one day too. I was very interested to read all the comments on how doing the Morning Pages helped people. I want to be helped, too! I really want to do this and not fail!
I nutted out various times of day and various ways I could do the Pages. As for materials, that was easy - pen and paper! For a long time I've been longing for an excuse to use my special pens for more than just the occasional postcard. And I have a stack of empty journals waiting to be filled. Also, I think it would be good to distinguish between the Pages and my normal blogging. The when is more difficult to answer.
WHEN. The book insists that the Pages should be done as soon as you get up in the morning. Get up early, it says. Set your alarm for 20 minutes earlier than normal, it says. Hmm! I'm already sleep-deprived as it is! My job forces me to be a morning person when I'm not naturally. Some of the blogs I read had photos of a beautiful journal and a fountain pen, next to a steaming refreshing cup of tea, with sunlight slanting in through a window (presumably with forest and birds singing outside).
Sadly, my reality is slightly different -
Ask my husband to set the alarm 20 minutes early. Every morning. Have an argument because he is even more sleep-deprived than I am. Feel terribly guilty because it's unfair for me to ask him to miss out on even more sleep just for my silly whim. Assuming he agrees to it - he needs to wake me up because I wear earplugs and I can't hear the alarm going off. I lie in bed for 5-10 minutes trying to find the energy to become upright. It's probably only my guilt that spurs me into action. I lurch into the wall and bump my elbow because I have very little balance when I first get out of bed. I go into the kitchen and make myself a really strong coffee because my brain just cannot function without it. I find the diarrhoea that the cat has done on the carpet during the night and spend 10 minutes scrubbing the floor. Then I scrub my hands. Now, where was I? Oh, my 20 minutes is up and it's time to start getting ready for work. Even if I did have the time/energy/mental alertness to write 3 pages, most of it would probably be whingeing about how tired I am and how I hate cleaning up cat poop.
I'm not trying to pooh-pooh the process, or talk myself out of it, I'm just trying to highlight how difficult it can be for non-morning people, full-time workers and cat-owners. I'm really willing to try and find something that works. But in a schedule where making a cup of tea often doesn't fit in, where can I find 20 minutes of solitude every day?
Remembering the advice from the person who said that it doesn't matter how you do it, as long as you do it, I tried to nut out other times of day that might work. At lunch time? Just before I go to sleep? Just after I get home from work? On the tram on the way to work?
Husband suggested that last one when I asked him what he thought. It's early enough in the morning that a brain dump might still be effective. None of the times are really optimal, and I don't want to commit myself to a long-term change that's going to be too difficult to fit into my life, and then fail again. So I decided to do the Pages for a month, and try a different time each week. I felt much more comfortable with that.
So the time I chose first was the one Husband suggested - on the tram on the way to work. On Monday it worked. But it only just worked, and only because of extenuating circumstances. Normally Husband and I take the tram to work together, but he wasn't with me yesterday. It was also unusually quiet, so there was no-one sitting near me. I didn't feel too self-conscious and without anyone sitting next to me I had room to shift the journal around as I wrote. I was very lucky. Soon after I finished and put my journal away, a creepy man got on and sat too close to me, pressing up against my leg, and made me feel very uncomfortable. Oh how I wished Husband was there! But at least I had gotten my Pages done.
This morning, things were back to normal. And I realised immediately - this just wasn't going to happen. With Husband sitting next to me, I didn't have the space to write. People would have been bumping my elbow as they went past. The person sitting across the aisle would have had easy viewing of my journal and I felt too self-conscious. Husband wanted to chat about his illnesses and other things. Plus I was too tired and just wanted to look out the window. So unfortunately Option 1 doesn't work, except under very extenuating circumstances that are out of my control.
And that means that I haven't done my Morning Pages yet today. And I really want to! I don't know why, but yesterday, after 3 days in a row of doing them, I felt ... different. Perhaps it was just a coincidence? I'd just come off a 4-day weekend, after all. But I felt like I had more energy, I felt positive. The anxious-making thoughts hardly ever popped into my head. I felt more relaxed. I had ideas. I had a really busy and stressful day, and I felt stressed at first, but then I made a conscious decision to be okay about it, and I was. I had to work an extra hour and when I got home, I was really tired, but I forgave myself. I wanted to buy myself some nice pens as a treat, because I felt good about myself and felt like I deserved them.
Wow, if this is what the Pages do, I gotta make it work somehow!!
