Artist Way Week 4 Check-in (late as hell)
Hello, artist way friends! How many of you are still with me? I'd forgotten that someone suggested starting a community. Does anyone want to do that, or is it too late? I'm not even sure how many people are still trucking along.
I'm doing my really late check-in today instead of morning pages. I've only done about a paragraph of morning pages all week so far. This is about the same time that I peter out every time. I really don't like them. Worse now since my elbow is severely painful anymore. Even typing is hard at this point, but hand writing is even harder. At least I can keep my arm mostly still when I type, and it's just the finger movements that hurt. Handwriting moves the whole arm around. It's not well and getting worse.
So, week 4 (even though I'm half way through Week 5 now...)
Reading Deprivation.
Yeah, I sucked. I need my words to stay sane, I've realized. I did okay the first day. By the second day, I was binging on Celebitchy, my guilty pleasure gossip site. I was behind on posts and caught up like 10 pages worth of stuff after the kids went to bed. Not even good reading, just something to read and have some mindless chill time in the evening. The next day, I think, is when I broke down and posted, ranting & complaining, to facebook, although admitting my failure actually helped, and I was able to go be all sorts of productive and stay off the internet afterward. But, for the rest of the week five days, I pretty much binged every evening.
I realize that part of this stems, even still, from my abuse stuff as a kid. "You can't make me do something I hate so much! I'm a grown woman, and I can do what I want to!" (Seriously, I hate being told I can't do something and will always do it just to prove a point.) I had books taken away from me as punishment for the stupidest shit. My heart yearned for reading. It's who I am. I am not happy or fulfilled without it.
But I do realize that, yes, I live in other people's words & worlds too much. Everything in moderation. I do need to focus on my own stuff more.
The tasks were fun. I've done them before, but I definitely had some synchronicity this week. My life pie still isn't very improved, but the Exercise and Spirituality sections grew slightly. I finally held a special ceremony for Achaiah and added her fur cutting to my Medicine Bag. I did a healing ceremony and rededicated myself to spirit, and I had a great visit from her, mom, and even Jerry Garcia! (It was his death day/Achaiah's birthday, and I had been jamming to the Dead, posting Jerry stuff on my Grateful Stead facebook page all day. A visit from him again was nice.) I did some healing, offered myself to Spirit, received a blessing...and then the next day had my spirit tested. I raged about that. Still feeling out my heart-space with regards to that whole incident, but I did visit a Unity church on Sunday and got my spiritual battery recharged. Had a decent time.
I had listed several classes that I hoped to take one day, but I also bemoaned the fact that we're too far from any colleges, no cool classes ever seem to happen around here, and I have no way to exercise my withering sponge. And then, lo and behold, two days after writing a list of classes and stuff that I'd like, I found out about Coursera.org, which offers free college courses from awesome colleges all over the world! And I signed myself up for 13 freaking classes! Hopefully I won't get overwhelmed. Only one is going on now, a Science Fiction and Fantasy course, and I'm 3 weeks late into it, but I didn't want to miss the opportunity. I have Modern American Poetry and a Sustainability course coming up, and then classes scheduled all through next year. I am SO, SO excited about it! Way for Universe to listen and respond!
Still didn't get any of my own writing done. Nor did I get an artist date, unless you count church. Which I'm not, really, because that was something else entirely. I really need to start making TIME for those things a priority. I don't know when. I may just have to start getting up at 4 or something, but every time I try to get up early with Josh anymore like I used to, Maya goes nurse-crazy and I stay in bed with her til long after Josh has gone to work. I need to get her back on a better schedule where I can get out of bed earlier, because I lose up to 4 hrs by falling back asleep. Getting up at 8 or 9 instead of 5. Rushing in the mornings, yet getting little done.
I did jump back on the Flylady wagon, though that was more this week than last week. Slow going with The Elbow From Hell, but that's a huge step for me. It will probably help these depression issues I've been having. Being able to get off my sad, wallowing ass and do good things for my home and family is a big change from these last couple of months, and getting the house back in order and my routines back in place will surely help keep me in a better place.
So, that's about it. Good things. Healing, synchronicity, goals made and worked on. Crappy with reading deprivation, but I don't particularly care.
How's yours going?
I'm doing my really late check-in today instead of morning pages. I've only done about a paragraph of morning pages all week so far. This is about the same time that I peter out every time. I really don't like them. Worse now since my elbow is severely painful anymore. Even typing is hard at this point, but hand writing is even harder. At least I can keep my arm mostly still when I type, and it's just the finger movements that hurt. Handwriting moves the whole arm around. It's not well and getting worse.
So, week 4 (even though I'm half way through Week 5 now...)
Reading Deprivation.
Yeah, I sucked. I need my words to stay sane, I've realized. I did okay the first day. By the second day, I was binging on Celebitchy, my guilty pleasure gossip site. I was behind on posts and caught up like 10 pages worth of stuff after the kids went to bed. Not even good reading, just something to read and have some mindless chill time in the evening. The next day, I think, is when I broke down and posted, ranting & complaining, to facebook, although admitting my failure actually helped, and I was able to go be all sorts of productive and stay off the internet afterward. But, for the rest of the week five days, I pretty much binged every evening.
I realize that part of this stems, even still, from my abuse stuff as a kid. "You can't make me do something I hate so much! I'm a grown woman, and I can do what I want to!" (Seriously, I hate being told I can't do something and will always do it just to prove a point.) I had books taken away from me as punishment for the stupidest shit. My heart yearned for reading. It's who I am. I am not happy or fulfilled without it.
But I do realize that, yes, I live in other people's words & worlds too much. Everything in moderation. I do need to focus on my own stuff more.
The tasks were fun. I've done them before, but I definitely had some synchronicity this week. My life pie still isn't very improved, but the Exercise and Spirituality sections grew slightly. I finally held a special ceremony for Achaiah and added her fur cutting to my Medicine Bag. I did a healing ceremony and rededicated myself to spirit, and I had a great visit from her, mom, and even Jerry Garcia! (It was his death day/Achaiah's birthday, and I had been jamming to the Dead, posting Jerry stuff on my Grateful Stead facebook page all day. A visit from him again was nice.) I did some healing, offered myself to Spirit, received a blessing...and then the next day had my spirit tested. I raged about that. Still feeling out my heart-space with regards to that whole incident, but I did visit a Unity church on Sunday and got my spiritual battery recharged. Had a decent time.
I had listed several classes that I hoped to take one day, but I also bemoaned the fact that we're too far from any colleges, no cool classes ever seem to happen around here, and I have no way to exercise my withering sponge. And then, lo and behold, two days after writing a list of classes and stuff that I'd like, I found out about Coursera.org, which offers free college courses from awesome colleges all over the world! And I signed myself up for 13 freaking classes! Hopefully I won't get overwhelmed. Only one is going on now, a Science Fiction and Fantasy course, and I'm 3 weeks late into it, but I didn't want to miss the opportunity. I have Modern American Poetry and a Sustainability course coming up, and then classes scheduled all through next year. I am SO, SO excited about it! Way for Universe to listen and respond!
Still didn't get any of my own writing done. Nor did I get an artist date, unless you count church. Which I'm not, really, because that was something else entirely. I really need to start making TIME for those things a priority. I don't know when. I may just have to start getting up at 4 or something, but every time I try to get up early with Josh anymore like I used to, Maya goes nurse-crazy and I stay in bed with her til long after Josh has gone to work. I need to get her back on a better schedule where I can get out of bed earlier, because I lose up to 4 hrs by falling back asleep. Getting up at 8 or 9 instead of 5. Rushing in the mornings, yet getting little done.
I did jump back on the Flylady wagon, though that was more this week than last week. Slow going with The Elbow From Hell, but that's a huge step for me. It will probably help these depression issues I've been having. Being able to get off my sad, wallowing ass and do good things for my home and family is a big change from these last couple of months, and getting the house back in order and my routines back in place will surely help keep me in a better place.
So, that's about it. Good things. Healing, synchronicity, goals made and worked on. Crappy with reading deprivation, but I don't particularly care.
How's yours going?