This week has been sort of productive and sort of tiring.
I never manage to get through the Artist’s Way from beginning to end. Always get burnt out at some point, too much pain and short-lived enthusiasm – and the kind of spirituality that only jars with me, or that’s a bit too challenging on my traumatised Christian-childhood, trying to make it on my own, soul.
But one remark made by Julia Cameron, that book’s author, and an artist herself, keeps coming back to me this week.
She writes about the word ‘Kriya’, meaning a cry of the soul that gets expressed in the body. I’ve been pretty unwell this week, nothing serious, but frustrating and stopping me from really working in the way that I need to. On Monday I cried and cried, felt so devastated and miserable, worried that I’d never get my priorities straight, that I’d always be working on projects that I think I ought to (academia, writing?) rather than doing the work that I constantly plan and don’t push into (drawing, painting, sewing, singing).
So I wonder if the awful insomnia, headaches and nausea – due to some medication I’m on – might be interpreted as a sort of ‘Kriya.’ Telling me that it’s the last straw, that I need to refocus, to narrow down my goals and pick the ones that really mean something to me.
I understand that’s only the first step in all of this. Making the decision I mean. But making the decision to work as an artist is the first step, right? And it’s a good step, I think. I also took step two – developing a drawing habit – and step three – splashing my hot teary face with water and walking into the city to buy art supplies. What’s step four?
I have so much else to get done right now – MA dissertation, freelance projects on the go, job hunting in the UK and the USA, moving house (neighbourhood, then city and continent) again at least 3 times in the next two months, sorting out the problems with my medication, figuring out how to get on the right continent to be with my partner…
I might finally have given up any hope of rescue. I give in. I’m not usually this dramatic when I write. I’ll let you know how this artist-thing goes. I feel like I’ll be somehow living a little more on my own terms. I’m probably romanticising it all but there you go. A lot of this stuff stems from romance, right?
