what is an artist date?

an artist date is a solo-date with our playful inner creative self and no one else is invited (just yourself)!

these artist date ideas are all pulled from my real patterns, I went back through my past diary/journal entries in Week 9 and decided to mark/gather together my past artist dates i’ve gone on inspired by the weekly task in The Artist’s Way book by Julia Cameron. i threw in some of those quotes from my morning pages diary where i felt it relevant or topical. enjoy the read!

🪫 low-energy dates

✿ drive around in the quiet for a while with nowhere specific to be

Julia Cameron herself remarks in the book how driving is an “artist brain activity.” ever since i read that, i realized I love spending intentional solo time in my car.

from my morning pages: “i woke up at 5am today. i went and got a coffee with my dog Nike and we drove around the semi-dark with the car windows rolled down: drinking in the quiet, the calm, the still of the early morning. it was an amazing way to wake up. i love the early darkness, i love the early morning, i love the peaks of color of the sunrise starting to form in the sky.”

✿ put on one chapter of an audiobook and listen while you drive around

driving is an ‘artist brain activity’ and so is (per Julia) listening to music and reading. what if you mash-mashed them together ??? it’s so enjoyable, especially when I'm feeling too low energy to go for a nature walk.

from my morning pages: “it’s July 5, 7:22 AM and I’m driving to Starbucks listening to my The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron audiobook. I’m tired but I don’t feel so tired that I am fighting sleep. I just feel like I need a little coffee pick-me-up so I can focus on these lessons! :)”

✿ park somewhere with a view of sunrise and sit there while the world wakes up

i have this spot in my apartment complex with a clear view of the sunrise over the lake. the view as the sky lightens for the day is magical. i just sit in my car and soak it in.

from my morning pages: “i love the early darkness, i love the early morning, i love the peaks of color of the sunrise starting to form in the sky. it’s 7am rn and the perfect sunrise time to sit and look at birds flying across the pastel-colored sky.”

✿ stay in the car while it rains and people-watch

peoplewatch, birdwatch, or just get lost in a random distraction: let your whimsy and intuition guide you, here, as you enjoy the rain sounds (from the cozy safety of your heated seat).

from my morning pages: “the second park that I went was crazy because it was raining. it was just sprinkling, but I stayed in my car, and then it just increasingly got more rainy. but, oh, my gosh, it was so relaxing and I saw there were so many birds and ducks walking around the park. i didn’t even have to get out of my car. i saw a bunch of ducks having a council meeting. they’re under a little palm tree sheltering from the water??? it was so cute.”

✿ bring a little treat somewhere scenic, write one page, and let yourself go home afterwards if you want

oftentimes i feel like when i go out for an artist date, it has to be a two hour production at least. Julia mentions in the book how you’re to set aside a two hour block of time for the artist dates. but that doesn’t mean every date has to be a production. sometimes it can be 25 minutes of musing, journaling, and getting lost in thought somewhere sacred-feeling. and then going back home and getting on with your day.

from my morning pages: “i’m gonna go get a coffee. because i want a pep in my step and to go absorb the sunshine. gonna get a sweet little treat and write the beginnings of a substack essay at my favorite picnic table at a local park. even if it’s just for a little bit, i think it will restore me.“

🌿 nature/mindfulness dates

✿ walk your usual nature trail without headphones/music

contrary to my earlier ideas of adding inputs… this time I suggest you remove the inputs! focus on what you see around you on your walk, what looks new. something you’ve seen before. maybe a mushroom or color follows you?

from my morning pages: “no headphones… just rawdogging my nature walk. learned i need to spend more time outside. that’s the takeaway. that’s the lesson. that’s the rule. that’s the standard.”

✿ choose a random new park to explore

look up somewhere new based on a recent recommendation or intuitive curiosity and plan a scenic outdoor walk there and notice what happens that’s new.

from my morning pages: “yesterday went birding for the first time, like officially, like i was serious about it, and i went on a little field expedition to 2 different parks that i’d never been to that are on, like, the birding trail loop on this website that i found. it was awesome.”

✿ go birdwatching

seriously. try it. :)

from my morning pages: “i spotted a group of what i think are white egrets. it was a parent and like three little birds running around it. they were catching little fish! it was so cute to watch i probably stood there for 20 minutes taking photos. have you ever seen a duck loaf? It’s the cutest thing. just the cutest thing.”

✿ go outside and write field notes about a thing that catches your interest

it doesn’t have to be birds. maybe you’re into mushrooms. maybe you don’t know yet that you’re into mushrooms, but when you really look, you think they’re super cool ??? go find out something new that sparks that kind of curiosity.

from my morning pages: “i had a great time reading a book about beginners birdwatching outside today! i took tiny notebook notes on a beginners birders national geographic book. it was fun, i just took notes on what i found interesting.”

✿ pack a book, sketchbook, drink, and snack and have a tiny picnic outside

this was one of my most favorite artist dates, even though it started raining after about ~20 minutes. i still had a great time, and plan to do this again. (and to check the weather in advance, lol.)

from my morning pages: “i went birding earlier and i did not see many birds however i heard them… instead of feeling like the trip was a failure, i brought out my ipad and did some lighthearted doodles in Adobe Illustrator. being out in nature? amazing! joyous. i love drawing outside.”

📚 bookish dates

✿ wander around the book store with no real research goal and grab anything that sparks something of interest

follow the dopamine here is key. you don’t wanna pre-research what book you grab, you just wanna wander around and see what covers, art, illustrations make you gravitate towards it. sit and take notes or a few pictures of the material if you want.

from my morning pages: “i didn’t do what i thought i would do: sketch on my ipad and write substack essays. i took tiny notebook notes on a beginners birders national geographic book instead, actually. it was fun, i just took notes on what i found interesting.”

✿ go to the library & find a space that feels comfortable to relax, read, and melt into

highly recommend bringing a comfort pile/bag to the library and camping out in the best spot you can find. the library near me has this amazing wall-to-ceiling window: i love watching the bugs fly across in the sky when i sit here.

from my morning pages: “i found that my anxiety settled once i found a cozy space for me to sit and call my own and feel comfortable in. if i hadn’t of found a comfy spot i would have left immediately tbh. i decided to be in my own little world and sat down instead of leaving.”

✿ pick up a beginner’s guide to a hobby you’ve secretly been wanting to try.

seriously: read about something new you want to try. there’s something about reading about something new (and fun-sounding, to you) that makes me immediately impatient to get out and go do the new thing immediately. talk about behavioral activation!

from my morning pages: “i stayed for a few hours and had a great time reading a book about beginners birdwatching! i’d say i was there 2pm to 3:40pm and i didn’t have anxiety at all.”

✿ bring your journal to a book store and write about whatever being there makes you want to create.

if you don’t consider yourself an “urban sketching” kind of artist, an alternative option I've been wanting to do myself (but just haven’t yet) is eavesdrop to conversations in a cafe and do a visual journal page full of other people’s quotes and secrets I've overheard, hehehe.

from my morning pages: “i want to stay, draw, read, write substack essays here for a while. just relax, be one with Barnes & Noble cage and the cozy space that feels so warm and inviting. perfect for drawing. maybe even some urban sketching in my sketchbook 👀👀👀 ok that will get me outta the car.”

✿ bring a book to a café and mark it up!

this has been such a fun, chill artist date for me lately: annotating books I'm reading! sometimes it’s physical sticky notes and flags, and other times I'm annotating an e-book pdf on my ipad. both are enjoyable when I'm sitting at a cute little cafe~.

from my morning pages: “i want to annotate my copy of The Artist’s Way and get really into it. like i did with like the Secret History a long time ago, where I just like annotated in the book, wrote in the margins, put the sticky note flags everywhere of my own thoughts and critical thinking about the novel. i just want to annotate a book so freaking bad and feel like I’m really just like in the muck with the text, you know, just like really just sloshing around in there.”

✂️ art-making dates

✿ go to a local craft event and make one thing

my favorite artist date in retrospect is one that I didn’t think that I enjoyed very much in the moment: going to a free local craft event. what I went to was specifically a zine-making class. it was full of kiddos which made me feel awkward at the time but I still made my zine and honestly? it was so fun, i remember it as a good memory.

from my morning pages: “i just left a free ‘zine making class’ at ‘Center for Contemporary Craft’ and it was SO cool! i am really glad i went. i made a zine for my dad.”

✿ turn a memory into art

i love going out somewhere (anywhere) for an artist date to snap a few photos of some core moments/memories that transpired… then I go home and often make a little doodle from the photos. if I don’t snap photos, I often get home and lament “I have nothing to draw” or am convinced “nothing interesting happened” when oftentimes that is never the case i just have a horrible memory, lol.

from my morning pages: “working on my ‘field notes merit badge’ cabinet just for fun? for shits and giggles? to humor myself, and award myself for mundane thing? also amazing. also joy. i’m excited to finish some of the merit badges on my desktop computer when i get home.”

✿ sit in a café and make art for an hour with no obligation to finish it, improve it, or post it.

drawing in a cafe makes me feel so artsy and mysterious as a person. you should definitely try it.

from my morning pages: “i just sat down at a cafe cafe to do some urban sketching. i got a second coffee, lol. oops. can it be okay if it’s in the name of whimsy???”

✿ build a personal website

i use Squarespace as my website and host and it is so fun and easy to use. i also know/research code for mine to look like this but maybe that’s just another fun thing for you to learn ???

from my morning pages: “I’m currently working on a code static app project to build me a dopamine dashboard… just to organize stuff and track stats. I was looking at Google Sheets on Etsy but nothing exists for what I want to use so I’m just gonna make it.”

✿ make art every day for one week

from my morning pages: “i realize along this journey I want to create more art I think that’s the point. i’ve been kind of considering making art every day… but that feels like quite a commitment, but it can even be small or you know it could be a sketch she could be a doodle that would count.”

🏛️ out-in-the-world dates

✿ go to an art museum and follow your intuition

i personally found treating a museum like a completion contest was not fun. i crave going back and going slow, sitting and sketching, people watching, and taking longer amounts of time looking at artworks i liked.

from my morning pages: “we got there and my intital feelings were like excitement and bubbliness and wonder by everything. i was really taking to heart following my intuition and noting what spiked my happy chemicals in my brain. tbh i wanted to find a corner and sit and draw an urban sketch and just vibe out for like an hour or two. instead that didn’t happen I hoofed it 2 miles through all of the buildings every level and just looked at everything, it was overwhelming. it felt like a competition or a completion contest. but I know if I had just sat and sketched in front of my more favorite artworks and slowed down x100, I would have had a wonderful time.”

✿ take notes on colors, textures, strange little details, or art you wish you could steal for yourself while you’re out

in fact, take photos too! decorate your future studio or an imaginary dream vacation home. what’s the harm in dreaming? this practice hones your personal taste, too! sometimes we don’t think about ourselves enough.

from my morning pages: “while we were out at the museum i enjoyed looking at the expressive and colorful paintings. i was constantly drawn to oil paint on different mediums like wood and metal and canvas. also gouche paints came up a lot when i read the materials on the info plaque next to the artworks.”

🏡 at-home artist dates

✿ bounce between writing, drawing, reading, and whatever creative side project currently has your attention.

something about task-switching is so fun when your only options are line items from a self-created dopamine menu. for real, like your neurodivergent self go nuts and work on a billion things at once. sometimes nothing else hits just like this does.

from my morning pages: “i dream of taking an all-day artist date where i work on creative side projects & make art and write with abandon and joy and no shame. just so many projects, i don’t even care if I'm finishing them all.”

✿ make something you never have to post

free yourself from the pressure of something having to be “good enough” for your art feeds or to post publicly in general. make something private, just for yourself. wow, does it feel different.

from my morning pages: “i just want to create. i want to make. i don’t want to be a part of the ‘content’ machine. i want to make sure im creating and not contenting, lately… I just want to create low pressure stupid art for once, i think. just take the pressure off.”

✿ take a bubble bath, lower the lights, and listen to something soft

this is my go-to move when I’m not wanting to make or write but rather healthily disassociate for a minute in the dark. something about submerging in the water is totally relaxing, I genuinely feel my muscles unclench once underwater. water is healing. (highly recommend lights off!)

✿ create a digital garden out of the quotes, books, essays, websites, and weird little internet links you collected that week.

it doesn’t have to be curated in a fancy Notion template or article. slap a substack note up every Sunday with your favorite 5 things. it’s actually so amazing how much I've gone back on my own substack notes feed just to look back on the record of my own ilife it’s accidentally become.

from my morning pages: “i wanna create round ups of any quotes, books, essays, etc i’m reading i’d like to share with my internet friends. i have a lot going on, substack-wise. that’s because i have a lot of ideas!”

✿ record a stream-of-consciousness voice note while walking around your home or along the lake trail.

yap into a voice memo to yourself. it’s actually so healing to externalize what’s on your brain… even if no one ever listens to it! sometimes I go back and listen to these self-yap sessions and find threads of essay ideas and other intuitive findings in my yaps. it’s like an audio morning page session, for real.

from my morning pages: “it is July 11 at 4:11 AM and this is my audio morning pages for today. i have just walked outside to do a little grounding walky-walk along the lake trail…”

_{thank you for reading. :)}

00 :: the field note

oh man, chapter 8 spanned two, almost three weeks? on accident, i swear. the thing is, i was being asked to feel strong in my decisions (as per chapter title: recovering a sense of strength) and so i absolutely couldn’t move forward until… well… i felt strong. thus creates an open loop.

…meanwhile i been going through identity crisis all these weeks. more on my ego death below 👇

⋆。°✩ 1 ✩°。⋆

01 :: the identity death

i had a weird sense of identity annihilation this past week. i guess i been building to it, in a way. i’ve been calling it ego death, because that’s what it felt like… the death of an old, tired self-concept.

one that carried me throughout my entire life… which is why it hurts so bad to feel misalignment within an identity that held me for so long. i have grieved this death.

i spoke about this ego death sensation with a few others and i was met with gentle encouragement, that it was not an identity death but that of “finding oneself.”

i smiled at them, and nodded. my inner world looked like collapse to me, what do they know about that? i know what nurturing self-concept and finding your identity feels like… i’ve done that, been on that journey. this felt… different.

how could my identity as i knew it continue to exist, after all? i’ve woken up to so many things these past few weeks. woke up with a sledgehammer and took to bludgeoning the pillars of my psyche, is what i did. just woke up on a random tuesday questioning my identity so deeply i shattered what was keeping it aloft:

“what if i am borderline personality disorder?” and honestly? almost more frightening to me… what if i’m not? and that was that. the question engraved on the tombstone of my old self.

at that? they cracked: the pillars of support within her psyche keeping her identity withstanding.

i imagine them falling as a great bridge; the cylinders of support concrete breaking and being swallowed by the hungry ocean, the waves hungry for their years of effort.

and as the concrete cracked, fell, became swallowed, and her sense of identity fell in with it? the familiar liminal void ensued. normally filled with identity panic and time urgency, blotting any light, just waves crashing and careening concrete and darkness and lack of breath and water in the lungs until she very quickly picked the next identity very fast right away how about this one — wait.

she can breathe. she is dry, standing on the shoreline to a green slab of land she never knew existed because she was too busy living the same previous identity for her entire young adult life.

⋆。°✩ 2 ✩°。⋆

02 :: the lesson

of course, there is the fear of the unknown. the hesitation, a small, fleeting desire to throw herself back in the water because at least drowning is a familiar way of living versus braving the unknown of an entirely new identity.

sometimes, what once held us begins to drown us. and still, leaving it can feel more frightening than staying.

but perhaps the identity waiting is not entirely new… perhaps it is only a new perspective on the Self that was already there, born from personal sacrifice.

⋆。°✩ 3 ✩°。⋆

03 :: blurts & affirmations

⋆。°✩ 4✩°。⋆

04 :: chapter tasks

the chapter tasks are actually what helped clarify some things for me post-death. i realized i am in a deep deprivation of permission, a famine inflicted upon myself… by myself. more and more i’m realizing that The Artist’s Way chapters are supposed to disrupt your regularly scheduled programming.

my lack of resiliency to identity change baffled me until i realized the chapters are engineered to constantly demand asking of ourselves who we are, what we want to do… ugh, all the exhausting stuff that normal people like me at 32 years old probably don’t freaking have figured out just yet, fam ?! like maybe i thought i did for a decade or so and now I don’t think i do.

⋆。°✩ 5✩°。⋆

05 :: taking it with me

for me my ego death was not the full disappearance of Self, but the collapse of the unstable thought structures through which I used to identify and understand myself. there is a strange space between no longer being who you were and not yet knowing who you are fully becoming. even though i do not know what i will discover on this island of curiosity, for the first time in a long time I feel strong and confident in my steps forward.

⋆。°✩ audio file ✩°。⋆

audio field note

real, honest, raw audio-based morning page audio snippet:

⋆。°✩ outro ✩°。⋆

₊˚⊹♡ just make the weird little thing exist first ♡⊹˚₊

(you can make it better later.)

xoxo, nikki. 💕

the video diary

⋆。°✩ 0 ✩°。⋆

00 :: the field note

originally i didn’t feel like i did this chapter “intentionally” enough after the first week, so i repeated it AGAIN the following week. by the end of the second week, i essentially rushed to do all the chapter tasks and reading in the last couple days of the week, realizing i had gotten stuck in the perfectionism loop of it all (read: a refusal to move forward).

⋆。°✩ 1 ✩°。⋆

01 :: morning pages report

“i just want to create. i want to make. i don’t want to be a part of the ‘content’ machine.”

that sentence kept sitting at the center of week 7.

i had realized that i needed to plan rest, meals, water, medicine, and my productivity, but i also needed to make sure there was space and buffer time for task switching and play. i had tried planning my days before, but i usually scheduled work and forgot to include meals, rest, water, play, or the time it took my brain to move from one thing to another.

somewhere in there, i had fallen backward into working on editing all the time. i was not really looking at birds anymore. i had stopped noticing. i had stopped practicing the mindfulness that had made the previous weeks feel so alive.

the summer heat had made getting outside feel less appealing, but staying indoors and staring at screens had started to affect me too. i was basically having to drag myself outside to go to the dock. i didn’t stay long, and i did not even do the little comfort-pile writing activities i had planned, but it was so calming.

i had not felt that calm and at peace in almost two weeks.

that brief visit reminded me that connection did not always mean adding something new. sometimes it meant returning to the things that had already been helping me feel like myself.

this week, connection looked less like working all day and more like getting outside, slowing down, noticing, and following my dopamine.

⋆。°✩ 2 ✩°。⋆

02 :: chapter tasks

“once we accept that anything worth doing is worth doing badly…” hit me hard. in the face. like a brick, lol.

that line revealed my perfectionism and the immediate panic i felt at the idea of bad art going out into the world. i wanted to make things, but i also wanted everything i made to feel complete, thoughtful, and good. y’know???? ugh.

i have been trying to hold down a practice of “good enough for right now” instead of perfectionism (and refusing to move forward).

it was a difficult line to tightrope across!

very shakily teaching myself i could begin something before i had mastered it was scary and exhilerating. i could make a private, imperfect version. i could let the first attempt be a literal first draft, not perfection. ahhhh, things got so fun again, so fast.

i did not want to go all productivity bro. i just started following my dopamine, and my dopamine had accidentally been drawing, hyperlinking stuff in Adobe InDesign, and thinking about seasonal living. just random stuff that had already been calling out to me. suddenly this, combined with the chapter tasks, made me question why i always felt like i needed to “go out” to create valid footage or gather evidence of my creative life. i wondered why my desk, patio, home, and writing space did not already count.

connection started looking like giving myself permission to work with what was already in front of me.

⋆。°✩ 3 ✩°。⋆

03 :: artist date report

when i arrived at the museum, my initial feelings were excitement, bubbliness, and wonder at everything. i had been following my intuition and noting what spiked the happy chemicals in my brain.

i enjoyed looking at the expressive and colorful paintings.

i was constantly drawn to oil paint on different mediums like wood, metal, and canvas. gouache came up a lot when i read the materials listed on the information plaques beside the artwork.

my taste became clearer as i moved through the museum. i liked visible texture, color, paint, and material. i liked art that felt expressive and alive.

tbh, i had wanted to find a corner, sit, draw an urban sketch, and just vibe out for an hour or two.

instead, i walked two miles through all of the buildings and every level. i became mentally exhausted, hungry, irritated, and overwhelmed. it began to feel like a competition or a completion contest instead of an artist date.

but that did not mean the artist date was bad. i learned a lot for next time. the outing showed me that i did not want to consume the entire museum. i wanted to connect with one part of it. and not walk around for more than maybe an hour, if that, lol.

so next time: travel light. pack headphones. bring the smallest bag i could manage. eat first. sit sooner. see less. the museum showed me that connection was not the same thing as completion.

⋆。°✩ 4 ✩°。⋆

04 :: blurts & affirmations

blurt ::

“i don’t know what i’m working towards, in the greater scheme of life. what am i contributing to?”

translation ::

i had been going strong, working on graphics and having fun, and then i started to feel kind of out of body as i stared at my screen.

i was sad, low energy, mentally foggy, etc. etc. and larger questions arrived after i had already lost contact with my body: the sadness quickly turned into questions about work, purpose, contribution, and whether anything i was doing mattered. but the most immediate truth was much smaller:

i needed to eat.

week 7 kept showing me that hunger, fatigue, heat, and screen saturation could impersonate existential truth. i did not always need to solve my entire life. sometimes i needed food, water, rest, a different room, or a few minutes outside.

affirmation ::

i just wanted to create. i wanted to make.

it did not have to be the start or new beginning of something to be a reason to begin. just start.

summer was a great reason to begin something new, something old, anything, especially if it got me outdoors or connected to nature.

⋆。°✩ 5 ✩°。⋆

05 :: symbols + synchronicity

my attention kept drifting toward seasonal living, slow living, and the ways people have marked the passing of time. somewhere along the way, curiosity became its own creative practice.

i felt myself entering my research girlie academia era, lol.

i’m not trying to become an expert in anything! i just wanted to follow what interested me and let one question lead to another.

suddenly water, flowers, nature, planners, journals, birds, art, and libraries all started connecting.

my daily quests became less about productivity and more about paying attention. week 7 was full of literal and figurative connections.

⋆。°✩ 6 ✩°。⋆

06 :: the lesson

i realized that reconnecting did not require proving anything or knowing everything before i began. it happened through reading, noticing, researching seasonal living, and letting one question lead to another.

i did not have to memorize everything i wasnted to learn about. niche dates and details would come with time. i just wanted to work with what was in front of me.

that became the larger lesson of the chapter too: i could connect to art without completing the whole museum. i could connect to nature through a short dock visit. i could make something without turning it into content.

week 7 taught me that following my intuition, noting what spiked my happy chemicals, and paying attention to what i kept loving might actually be a creative practice.

connection did not mean forcing every part of my life together. it meant staying in relationship with the thing without abandoning myself to it.

⋆。°✩ 7 ✩°。⋆

07 :: taking it with me

i needed to spend more time outside.

that was the takeaway.
that was the lesson.
that was the rule.
that was the standard.

i wanted to protect space for task switching and play. i wanted to keep creating and not contenting. i wanted my planner and journal to support a slower life, seasonal observation, and the research girlie academia era i had quietly entered.

i wanted my home, desk, patio, and writing space to count as creative field sites. i wanted to film there, write there, research there, and stop acting like a creative life only became real when i left the house.

i kept loving and being drawn to expressive/colorful paintings, planning, digital drawing, nature, seasonality, journals, birds, libraries, cycles, and slow living. all of it made me feel reconnected to the version of myself who could research, create, notice, and play without making every experience into a completion contest.

⋆。°✩ journal prompts for you✩°。⋆

reflection questions from nikki

₊˚⊹♡ just make the weird little thing exist first ♡⊹˚₊

(you can make it better later.)

xoxo, nikki. 💕

a tiny desk tour 👋

here is a list of supplies i use all the time! none of these are sponsorships or affiliate recommendations. these are simply the things i’ve reached for again and again while journaling, sketching, illustrating, designing, and generally making stuff.

welcome to my desk!

✏️ analog desk

ah, yes… here we are again, at notebooks. the tried and true… the dependable… moleskine. 🥹

notebooks

Moleskine :: i have been using “Moleskine” brand journals for my entire liiiiifeee, i love them so much the pages are the perfect color not too bright white. They’re like a slightly yellow like a vanilla color. They’re not yellow, but they’re not white and it’s not cold toned paper.

i am so obsessed with these notebooks my instagram username got a while was @moleskinesandmania hahahahaha. my favorite is their A5 size that they call Large size. the softcovers and hardcovers are perfect depending on if you’re putting them inside a cover/traveler’s notebook system. (if it doesn’t have a protective cover i usually opt for their hardbacks, those things are a brick!)

pens

Pigma Micron :: i’ve been using pigma microns for like 20 years lol. but only recently got hooked on the “PN” (plastic nib) versions of them.

i love the bouncy feel to the plastic nib, it’s like a slightly more structured felt tip pen! love it. pigma microns replaced sharpie fineliners when I originally found them... i didn’t know about archival ink back then. :’)

Zebra Mildliners :: i have been using zebra mildliners for two decades as well, through my whole bullet journaling and book annotation journey.

pencils

Blackwing :: i’ve very very recently seen the light on Blackwing pencils. i didn’t understand until i actually used one. then it was the only pencil i wanted to pick up! i used to be a diehard mechanical pencil girlie to sketch and draw with but no longer! Blackwing (or pen lol) girlie for life!

i even have their dumb fancy pencil sharpener. why am i this way, it was like $30 for no reason. but i love it and the weight and metal make me sensory happy.

using a pencil in general/at all and adopting analog art again, not only being digital-only. sketching in pencil first encourages me to start rough, messy, and imperfect!!! it takes the pressure off, such as when i start with pen or go straight to digital art with no sketch.

💻 digital desk

tools that changed me though? my ipad and apple pencil changed my life for my art! it became so fun for me with these tools, and i even used to have the fancy Wacom 21UX graphics tablet hooked up to my old HP microsoft computer. it pales in comparison to an ipad!!! (retina display screen foreverrrr!)

iPad + Apple Pencil

M1 iMac & Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, Lightroom, Photoshop

app honorable mentions: Canva (app and web-based graphic design), Pixaki (pixel art), InShot (video editing).

why these?

a quick section explaining what each tool originally replaced for me, way back when.

mmm… i never really used to be a brand snob and then i found something my neurodivergent brain liked and then never stopped buying it lmao.

that’s the tour ✨

i’m sure these favorites will change over time, but this is the current state of my desk.

if you’re curious about anything i use that i didn’t mention here, let me know and i’ll happily nerd out about stationery stuff + tech accessories with you. 🤓

the artist way week 6 end of week reflection ::

⋆。°✩ 1 ✩°。⋆

01 :: morning pages report

what kept showing up:
✿ hunger and tiredness as emotional amplifiers
✿ abundance showing up in unexpected opportunities
✿ Substack as creative joy
✿ 12-week framework as a possible life structure that just works for me???
✿ mini magazine editor identity energy as a new creative interest

i could feel my nervous system shift state into feeling caught up, light, and free. like damn, hadn’t felt this light in a long time! my brain didn’t have a clear explanation but my body could feel it. i thought, “this is abundance.” but it was actually relief. but now i think maybe they both give off a similar physical feeling?

my constant, invisible feeling of “i’m late” felt quieter this week than usual. i think it’s closing loops, following my joy, accepting change, and staying on my morning pages!

⋆。°✩ 2 ✩°。⋆

02 :: chapter tasks

a lot of what i’ve been focusing on doing this past month has been centered around joy-finding and discovery.

had to go find some rocks this week, lol. so that was exciting as heck!

i’ve actually done this task twice in the past working through the book before, and have been secretly looking forward to it. I don’t know why, but here we are, we have arrived, I went out and looked for rocks. it was a fun practice in slow living and mindfulness. to me it taught me that abundance can be expansive in a slow way, and that’s acceptable to me.

⋆。°✩ 3 ✩°。⋆

03 :: artist date report

this week i spent a lot of time indoors writing, designing, drawing, and photographing.

but i still reminded myself to get outside on a nature walk and touch some grass. in a way, my nature walks have become my daily mini artist dates, because they feel so restorative and fill me with quick inspiration. the walks feel unserious and undemanding. they feel like play, not performance, and my soul appreciates that (as someone who spends a lot of time being perceived online, lol).

getting outside in the mornings for a sunrise walk genuinely sets my body on the right tone for the day, just swimming in the golden light is becoming the only way to start my day.

my new home is so whimsical, with sooo many kinds of birds just… there. naturally. chillin on the fences and stuff. it’s absolutely fuckin’ amazing and i’m so grateful every single day over it. that’s abundance, for real.

my artist date this week was also me following my dopamine after closing a lot of open loops that have been weighing on me.

i felt free to create, make, design, draw, write whatever i wanted without other priorities breathing down my neck. I was able to define some scheduled artists dates in my summer sketchbook for July, that in itself was a fun artist date. it felt like an insane, impossible kind of freedom i hadn’t experienced in… a very long time.

i’ve started collecting feathers i find on my nature walks! i had been “waiting” for trinkets to find me because i been wanting to hoard something and here we were this whole time… already collecting feathers.

⋆。°✩ 4 ✩°。⋆

04 :: blurts & affirmations

this week’s loudest scarcity voice was… drum roll please……….

fear tried to convince me my own imagined rejection was already true, when it hadn’t even happened yet. it was all in my head.

why was i hurting my own feelings so bad, damn??? this was an opportunity not a freaking grand trial on my worth???

luckily my affirmations help regulate and center me when the fear and inner critic were running most rampant. I got my proposal done and sent off without rushing through the whole project out of anxiety. that’s great, restrained progress for me, haha. (now we wait. 😓)

⋆。°✩ 5 ✩°。⋆

05 :: symbols + synchronicity

yellow-crowned night herons continue to follow me, and the color yellow continues to intrude on my life in a wonderful way: little gifties from the universe.

thank goodness for nature and birds interrupting my emotional spiral long enough to remind me i’m allowed to release it from my body and move forward.

i’ve been paying close attention to what steals my energy lately. Substack is a space that feels abundant and safe. lately Facebook has felt extractive to me, but i’ve wanted to change that! so i created a virtual global The Artist’s Way book club community where we can all chat in open discussion about our personal journey with the book more closely and in better detail with eachother!

_{join upp ::}

the free facebook group

⋆。°✩ 6 ✩°。⋆

06 :: the lesson

this was the week my body finally stoped feeling hunted by time. i was inventing less fake deadlines in my brain to miss, and i felt less anxiety as a result.

realizing this, what i carry into week 7 is hopefully… softer pacing, clearer boundaries with myself, less output pressure, more rest and more self-trust. i’ve sorta re-learned this week that a slower pace isn’t gonna murder me, and the time urgency feeling was a cage of my own construction.

⋆。°✩ 7 ✩°。⋆

07 :: digital downloads

enjoy these freebies if you’re also on your own journey :)

⋆。°✩ outro ✩°。⋆

download checklist

01 :: morning pages report

i continue to find that the morning pages unearth things from my brain and psyche i didn’t even know were there: sometimes im just writing words and i write things that surprise tf out of me!

when i first started week 5, i felt a bit disconnected from my ideas. a bit jumbled. chaotic? i was wrestling a bit with identity, life pivots, and wondering what might be next for me.

week 5: recovering a sense of possibility resonated so deeply with my life right now in a way that it hadn’t in past years… when i was still dead-set on people pleasing and being a doormat person. now that im set on pleasing myself instead - AKA having personal boundaries (and knowing that this does not make me selfish!) - i feel like this chapter felt reinvigorating for me.

i do remember writing “now that i’m set on actually allowing myself to be pleased / happy / nurtured; i feel like this chapter feels invigorating not selfish.”

something my journaling has helped me realize this week about people pleasing versus pleasing myself first? i can actually make myself happy, nourished, and energized. i can’t seem to promise “people pleasing” will have any of those effects on my intended audience… so why the fuck was i doing it? now that i’m set on being healthy and not toxic towards myself, i viewed the entire chapter differently. i was able to really connect with the text in a better way (after mentally deleting all the overtly religious copy, lol). i was able to really connect to my own sense of possibility.

the biggest epiphany moment i had in my morning pages this week? it was this exactly: “why am i rushing? why am i getting up early if i don’t have to?” which led to me deconstructing my early morning wake ups and discovering a hidden layer of survival mode time urgency hidden in my actions. insane.

“why am i rushing? why am i getting up so early?”

the realization hit me so hard because i realized how it’s interconnected. the getting up early wasn’t necessarily because i “was a morning person” if my body doesn’t feel like it has a choice one way or the other. like i DO like getting up early but i want it to feel like my choice.

⋆。°✩ 2 ✩°。⋆

02 :: chapter tasks

a core chapter quote from Julia that i wrote down and has stayed with me:

scarcity thinking in my own life looks like wanting rest but not allowing it. wanting possibility but demanding certainty first. wanting creative play but trying to justify it into a whole project before doing any of it.

week 5’s chapter tasks felt like they were all asking the same question from different angles:

the answers kept surprising me. write a book. publish zines. make digital snail mail. spend more time birding, running, wandering libraries, and making weird little art projects. and be even more of an 𝔲𝔫𝔥𝔦𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔡 𝔠𝔥𝔞𝔬𝔰 𝒶𝓇𝓉 𝒽𝑜𝑒! basically: follow curiosity.

sometimes wondering if i will i be doing the same things in 10 years? what if i crave change? a softer life?

i realized this week i need more excuses to get myself outside and in nature. i’ve been ruminating on how i could make that happen.

but the deeper i got into the exercises, the more i realized the problem wasn’t a lack of ideas. it was permission. the biggest theme across all my answers was that i want a life that feels bigger than my computer. more observation, more play, more hobbies, more handmade things, more trust in my own discernment. less optimizing. less figuring everything out before i begin.

like, one prompt asked me to list ways i’m unnecessarily harsh or dismissive toward my creativity and my answers included:

^{“demanding to know what a project is for.”
“i make creativity earn its place by usefulness.”
“i assume i need permission before trusting my own interests.”
“i keep trying to turn creativity into a job.”}
…well. damn. clarifying.

⋆。°✩ 3 ✩°。⋆

03 :: artist date report

omg my artist date this week was going to a zine making class the day before father’s day.

this tiny little artist date was sure as heck an act in self-trust, lol. i wasn’t there long, but i’m glad i went. i discovered while the class itself may have been aimed at children, i think, i realized i think the center i was at hosted many classes all the time. and maybe a different one would be for me!

my solo zine workshop artist date taught me that trying new things is almost always going to be a good idea. it wasn’t perfect but i still went. i took cute photos. i made a zine for my dad. i tried something new.

i also spent all week in a dreamy state of project ideation: brainstorming digital mail, designing PDFs, dreaming up digital goodies, and following random ideas because they sounded fun… all for the future Nikki’s Digital Mail Club! ♥

birding, of course, remained a desire in my life, but i wasn’t able to get outside as much as i wanted to this past week. tbh i just wanted to sit in nature and create art. but it was hot in Texas (heat advisory), so i sufficed with doodling at my window in the air conditioning. i also briefly went out on a whim, in the rain lol, and delivered zines to my local free little libraries.

i noticed myself softening instead of forcing productivity. by going out in nature, birding, drawing outside, journaling by the dock. i just wanted in nature and did art i wanted to do.

but being out in nature and my morning birding walks definitely were the place where all my good ideas found me! it was the waiting that made the ideas come to me this week, though. curiosity found me things i felt called to act on (let’s leave God out of it 😘).

honestly the past few weeks are the most fun i’ve had in like 7+ years… yikes. not sure what to do with that.

⋆。°✩ 4 ✩°。⋆

04 :: blurts & affirmations

i could have cried??? the permission was all i needed, all i craved, all i desperately desired.

looking back, i noticed myself softening instead of forcing productivity when i began writing things in my morning pages like…

“i have hobbies and interests again.”
“i feel well rounded.”
“my mental health is better.”

talk about affirmative! 👍

evidence i’ve collected from my morning pages that my life is changing? the past 3 weeks have been the most fun i’ve had in like 7 years. suddenly my identity isn’t tied to only photography and it feels so fucking good. and i’ve begun questioning identities that have ruled my entire life for over 20 years. scary.

but i did realize that “doing the next honest action” inspires the ideas come to me. it’s easy. just be open to the inspiration all around you.

⋆。°✩ 5 ✩°。⋆

05 :: symbols + synchronicity

possibility and birds continue showing up together for me because my best ideas kept arriving while i was outside… paying attention.

ideas that kept returning no matter how many times i set them aside were mail clubs, digital ephemera, zines, and that desperate craving for that almost analog-like internet nostalgia era.

an old idea unexpectedly returned in a new form this week? i had created a business tools box for Photographers in December 2025 and it didn’t get any interest, i ran it until March 2026 before retiring the idea. i was very upset by this. but now i realize Nikki’s Digital Mail Club is Biz Box’s final form. and i feel good about that.

when i stopped looking for signs and simply paid attention… the waiting made the ideas come to me.

for me, this week, possibility actually looked like in real life this week like…

• walking the lake trail

• planning Discernment Diary column.

• writing in my journal/morning pages.

• planning Hey Chat column.

• writing for Month of Birds (→ turning into Summer of Birds!)

• planning my Digital Mail Club.

• creating/drawing handmade zines + doodles.

⋆。°✩ 6 ✩°。⋆

06 :: the lesson

what i think “recovering a sense of possibility” means now that i lived it with a much more authentic take on the chapter’s thesis? i realized inspiration/possibility didn’t have to find me working, necessarily. it had to find me open, accepting, receiving.

i just want to create low pressure stupid art and not force my ideas. honestly the biggest takeaway is possibility arrives when i stop arguing with my-f*cking-self.

⋆。°✩ 7 ✩°。⋆

07 :: taking it with me

i have so many ideas planted this week! i feel like they are all seeds i want to keep watering, as i explore what life might be like without adopting 1 work identity as my entire identity, lol.

i am not pushing myself to have constant output anymore. i just want to make when i make and that be that.

⋆。°✩ journal prompts for you✩°。⋆

⋆。°✩ youtube video ✩°。⋆

the video diary

i’m making the videos every 2 weeks now! tune in next week for the video!

⋆。°✩ outro ✩°。⋆

₊˚⊹♡ just make the weird little thing exist first ♡⊹˚₊

(you can make it better later.)

xoxo, nikki. 💕

listening to week five of the artist’s way, i’m listening to Julia talk about how when artists don’t take solitude and time for themselves, we get snappy and hostile and aggressive and bitter. she’s just using pretty strong words, but i mean, i agree with it all, honestly. i think she’s a little heavy-handed there, but i think she’s just trying to illustrate the point that when you abandon yourself and abandon your own authenticity, you become a shell of yourself. and that’s gonna cause intrinsic dissonance within yourself, with yourself.

and so, that hits home right now. it really does. i feel like that’s where i am right now. i’ve left that behind. that self-abandonment life. that doormat, people-pleaser life. i’ve left it behind, and i’ve outgrown and transformed into not anything in a final stage, just the next chapter. the next stage. the next era of me, which is boundary me. who likes to look at the ducks. i love that for me, honestly.

authenticity felt like a buzzword to me for a long time. recovering a sense of possibility, and the idea of helping hands and a God figure helping me while i live my life, sending me creative abundance, is crazy to me. i don’t really give a fuck if she wants to call it skepticism. so yeah, i’m struggling with that.

and i feel like i remember in 2024, no, in 2023, when i did this book a couple times ago, i really bought into it. i really, really did. and i sort of sold myself out in a way just to buy into the magic. and i realized the magic isn’t in the language that she uses, for me. it’s too religious-coded and systematic and weirdly institutionalized. i don’t know. it’s not woo-woo magic enough for me. it’s woo-woo.

and so i’ve been trying to dismantle that for me this time, and not just blindly buy into a framework that i don’t really believe in outside of the book. because last time i stopped the book, and i stopped believing in all of that shit, and looking for helping hands and all that kind of stuff, which also made all my synchronicity die. and looking for symbols and all of that, all of it died. all of it stopped with that.

and so i would like to train myself to adapt the language and this habit that i am honing, essentially, of noticing tiny things and symbolism and colors. and the magic in everyday life. i’m essentially training myself to notice these things, and find the symbols, and pause long enough to see these signs, right? but i feel like i’m not willing to see them if i’m inherently feeling like the messages are from some type of religious figure that i don’t necessarily even believe in.

so, this time around, i’m translating the language into something that feels right for me. and i think that still means that yes, i believe in the synchronicity. and yes, i believe in the general idea of helping hands and manifesting abundance and little gifties from the universe. but at the same time, i feel like a lot of this is agency. that’s what we’re talking about.

and a lot of it is identity shifting, in a way, where you visualize and manifest and see how you want to be, and who you want to become, and what art you want to create. and then you essentially step into that vision, and that idea, and that concept, and become it. or create it. and it becomes real. that’s manifesting to me. but that’s also agency. agency in your own life.

that’s thinking of the idea and then acting on it. not planning it to death and never acting. i struggle with that too. i want to plan everything to death. everything becomes a project. oh, i can plan something to death and never start it. oh, i love planning. but i’m realizing it’s a form of procrastination. it’s a form of not doing the fucking art. and i’m here to create some fucking art.

the video diary (week 3 and 4 combo)

WEEK 4 REFLECTION

⋆。°✩ 1 ✩°。⋆

01 :: morning pages report

flipping back through this past week’s morning pages, i keep circling the same stuff: attention. energy. curiosity. and what deserves access to me. i wrote about birds, creative projects, The Artist Way, and how i wanted my days to feel.

I wrote about removing friction from my life instead of forcing myself to adhere to arbitrary deadlines i created on a whim. i wrote about spending time with others without feeling responsible for managing the entire interaction or being forced to process their emotions. i wrote about going birding, barely seeing birds, and still coming home feeling energized from nature. taking a bit of space also helped me see which of my creative projects still felt exciting and revealed which projects suddenly felt out of alignment.

^{“it was less about […] being desperate to be liked, noticed, or talked to. it was more: me just wanting to be out in nature. and i invited someone i thought might enjoy it too. no other agenda.”}

^ this sentence in my morning pages surprised me tbh. i don’t think i realized how much energy i used to spend monitoring other peoples experiences until i wrote that.

allowing a fun lil birding outing to be enjoyable without a need for it to be productive was just the start… i kept realizing over an dover again this past week in my journaling that things don’t always have to be optimized to be meaningful.

⋆。°✩ 2 ✩°。⋆

02 :: chapter tasks

the artist’s prayer.

i have always skipped this task in the past tbh, because the example given in the book is structured as some kind of poem or something. it just never resonated with me at all, so… skip!

but i did it this time, working with my theme of translating the stuff that doesn’t resonate into something that does: i just wrote some answers to the questions: what do i want to trust more? (my attention) what fear am i trying to release? (art needs to be productive) and what truth do i want to remember when i doubt myself? (follow the curiosity/what feels alive!)

Julia Cameron instructs you to hang it up. so i taped it up on my wall next to my computer screen.

media deprivation.

i’ve done “media deprivation” as described in the book 2x the previous two times i’ve completed this 12-week journey of a book. this time around for my v3 journey, i ran fast and loose with the goal. i really just needed a break from producing the weekly video diaries i was making. so i did. that was my deprevation. and i had so many initial feelings of resistance to taking the break! but afterrrr this week is damn near over? i was just sitting around and bam i had the random epiphany to combined week 3 and 4’s video darieis. boom, i was no longer “behind.” no longer late…. wow, i can adapt both the book’s rules and my completely self-made arbitrary deadline system to fit my needs? hecc yesss. (knocked out the video yesterday btw! so easy after a much needed break!)

⋆。°✩ 3 ✩°。⋆

03 :: artist date report

one of my artist dates this past week was just spending time out in nature doodling unserious drawings on my ipad while listening to the birds.

⋆。°✩ 4 ✩°。⋆

04 :: blurts & affirmations

ooo… a blurt that kept coming up for me the past week or so is “I’m late.” maybe it’s a little meta to talk about my The Artist Way reflection essays within one of my The Artist Way reflection essays… but gosh, writing these things is a time commitment. i feel like the self-reflection and time spent in introspection required to write something like these every week is not a small demand, i’m learning. but i’m not quitter. you’ll see i’ve adapted the format of this essay for this week! hopefully i’m standardizing future reflection essays moving forward using this template, so i don’t feel like i’m writing from a blank page every time.

⋆。°✩ 5 ✩°。⋆

05 :: symbols + synchronicity

discernment.

i kept seeing a bird all week… a yellow-crowned night heron, to be exact, lol. this bird right here (see picture). he been following me all week and i just been like “WHAT DOES IT MEAN, UNIVERSE?” the universe has not been answering me. after a while, it had been 4 visits from this bird in just as many days. i wasn’t trying to force meaning at first, but then it dawned on me that was the whole lesson. that was this bird’s little symbol he kept bringing back to me: discernment.

⋆。°✩ 6 ✩°。⋆

06 :: the lesson

for me the discernment lesson and the media deprivation break both translated, for me, to picking and choosing what i allowed to grab my attention. to be choosy about what media inputs i allow into my life… just being more intentional all around with my inputs. i been going headphones free a lot this past week and sorta experiencing the world around me. for example, eavesdropping on peoples conversations in the cafe is so fun lol, people have the wildest conversations in public (i should make a zine, “things i overheard at Starbucks 😳” lmaooo.)

⋆。°✩ 7 ✩°。⋆

07 :: taking it with me

i don’t even care what next week/week 5 is (i think it’s recovering a sense of possibility)… i just know this book is clearing my artistic pipes for me. i really, really want to create art lately. i feel so constantly inspired, but i don’t act on even half of my artistic impulses.

what am i gonna do about that??? ….maybe film a “7 days of making art every day” vlog??? 👀 (vlogging is my go-to accountability buddy lately, lol.)

₊˚⊹ ♡ ⊹˚₊

xoxo, nikki. 💕

the video diary ::

⋆。°✩ 0 ✩°。⋆
⋆。°✩ parked outside the library ✩°。⋆

field note 00 :: power entered the chat, but first i hesitated

i lived my own version of power this week sitting in my car outside the public library trying to convince myself to go inside.

for the second time, lol.

the first time, i got overwhelmed and left.

the next day, i came back more prepared. still nervous. still hesitating. still unsure. but i finally went in anyway. and the kicker? i asked for help this time, and it removed the friction. i found what i wanted to find, discovered a cozy-enough spot to camp out, and stayed longer than i thought i would and i ended up taking tiny notes on a special interest book… instead of doing the exact thing i thought i came there to do. but that’s okay. that feels like the real field note: power was returning, letting the attempt be imperfect.

i feel this creative season calling for lightheartedness, play, unserious doodles, tiny observations, field notes, and maybe fewer dramatic standards about doing everything correctly.

but.. i do want my art to look perfect. oops… i said it.
but i don’t mean to be chasing perfection.
i mean to be chasing good enough for right now.

the perfectionist has a way of working its way through the cracks, especially when motivated by fear, shame, or criticism.

⋆。°✩ 1 ✩°。⋆
⋆༶⋆˙⊹ please do not perceive me, unless lovingly ⊹˙⋆༶⋆

field note 1 :: criticism, shame, and the tiny gatekeeper in my brain

a lil thing about me?

a piece of bad criticism can make me spiral for weeks or trash a finished project before publishing it.

factssss. i’m not proud of it. it’s something i’m learning to move away from. every time i work through The Artist’s Way journey, i get better at accepting criticism, i think. this time around (v3), i found myself writing in my morning pages:

which… ooof. the larger point hits heavy in the truth i kinda don’t wanna hear. i would rather if other people’s words no longer caused me shame. i don’t want to feel shamed… i want to feel in my whimsy. but sometimes she is quiet. some kinds of criticism worm inside my body like a parasite and live there for years. it’s disgusting how long i’ve let some of these tapeworms of negativity grow inside me.

it’s hard to ship your own art. it’s especially hard to publish art that feels new, experimental, or just… “good enough.” sometimes i imagine all the ways someone could misunderstand it, and then it never sees the light of day. maybe it’s imposter syndrome. lack of confidence. idk. but it’s something i’m working on.

Julia Cameron’s “wall of compliments” chapter task is something i still use regularly, even outside of the 12-week stints with the book. it’s very handy for combating negative self talk.

^{my whimsical art ::}

i’ve considered this time around: maybe protecting my whimsy before processing feedback looks like saying thank you without having to dismantle the feedback in front of the critic like i’m auditioning for competency or something.

because sometimes i genuinely cannot tell when i need discernment and when i need a snack and a nap. (i’ll be questioning my whole life when really i just needed more than six hours of sleep.)

⋆。°✩ 2 ✩°。⋆
☾₊⊹ rest on the page ⊹₊☾

field note 2 :: keeping up with the journaling

i have been learning to “rest on the page,” as Julia puts it. my journaling ritual on the dock has become sacred.

when my worry doesn’t have the morning pages to rest on, it has nowhere to go. it stays in my body. it turns into worry loops, rumination, fortune telling, catastrophizing, anxiety, and increased cognitive dissonance when i’m super emotional.

stream of consciousness journaling combats my cognitive assumptions and lets me breathe in my brain afterwards with relief. peace. rest and digest.

for me, i like to brain dump in the mornings. otherwise i’ll be word vomiting some kind of emotional spiral at night. when i do morning pages, my evening pages turn reflective and compassionate and grateful. a nuance not lost on me.

a ritual that has become my quiet mandatory thing is journaling out by the dock on the large lake in my residence complex. writing with the water soft rocking me in whatever gentle direction for a brief moment was almost more comforting than the writing itself.

i didn’t know water could be such a regulation tool. (says the girl who loves a bubble bath in the dark.)

another thing softly emerging for me that feels like a quiet kind of power? …acts of tiny noticing. small observations. tuning in to the now. paying attention to my surroundings. that’s when the synchronicity will show itself. in week 3, it was the color purple. while still also being blessed with yellow throughout my week, purple was sprinkled in as well.

letting my mind empty before the day even starts has been a quiet little launchpad lately. and i’m learning that when i slow down, regulate myself, and choose a slower life, i naturally become less wound up and anxious.

anxiety is such a beast of a thing i have dealt with my entire life. but nature? regulates me in a snap. who knew i just had to go outside this whole time? lmao.

⋆。°✩ 3✩°。⋆
₊˚⊹♡ permission slip to be soft ♡⊹˚₊

field note 3 :: babying myself with Lucky Charms

The Artist’s Way asked me to baby myself. and honestly? i was excited to be asked. i needed the soft invitation. i needed the permission slip to care for myself without shame.

so i bought Lucky Charms cereal. i’m so excited, i feel like a kid again. i remember loving the marshmallows lol. and yes, it sounds silly, but i do think that was the point.

being compassionate and gentle with oneself shouldn’t be optional. and yet i had personally fallen so far away from such a simple doctrine.

i knew it wasn’t just about cereal… it was a larger, soul-deep craving for a slower life. my younger self loved busy cat animal print patterns: leopard, cheetah, tiger stripes, and on. my younger self adored Neopets and broken old community forums, Beanie Babies and fashion aesthetics and culture, tech, play.

my inner child is screaming for that time in my life where i used to slow down enough to play Animal Crossing on the GameCube for hours, sitting on my living room floor.

i babied myself all the time as a child without really understanding the concept of self-care, apparently. because i never slow down enough to play my favorite cozy video games anymore.

so this past week, i have been giving myself permission to play and be unserious a lot more. it has been a true joy to slow down, laugh more, and notice little things i wouldn’t have normally.

my phone’s camera roll literally makes me feel like the main character lately.

⋆。°✩ 4✩°。⋆
✧༺ childhood bedrooms as a chapter task ༻✧

field notes 4 :: the chapter tasks

one of the week 3 chapter tasks had me thinking about my childhood bedrooms. i didn’t have language for it back then, but reminiscing on those rooms was interesting.

i moved around a lot with my family in childhood, so i had several bedrooms in my brain i could think of. namely, a deep purple-painted room with feline animal prints clashing at you in every direction.

leopard.
cheetah.
tiger print.
everywhere.

i was a sensory whore before i even understood i’d grow up to love maximalism in my art.

crazy how that works, right?

there was a purple original GameCube console, dusty, with the original Animal Crossing cartridge in it. Neopets flash games on the family computer.

words that popped up for me this week, like a craving? creative, poetic, wordsmith, unserious, playful, imaginative, fashionable, self-expressive, outdoorsy, wanderlust, brave.

doing the chapter task, i found i still felt tied to certain colors of my past. old “favorite colors” i loved for so long, and then let fade away in favor of something new.

but the relationship to the past colors never really faded all the way. working the chapter tasks for week three, it was fun to recall the exact colors i used to be obsessed with, and the sometimes random-seeming reasons i chose them.

my inner-child-inner-artist are definitely parts of myself that have been buried under stress, survival mode, and anxiety.

nurturing and healing myself through The Artist’s Way journey these past few weeks has been more rewarding than times i’ve done this work before. my inner child desperately needed help seeing the light again. i guess i had her trapped under a bunch of other worries. which is funny because some of those worries are absolutely needless. i’m reading a separate, unrelated book about anxiety right now and it talks about how worry can beget worry… sometimes for no damn reason other than you’re training the muscle.

i feel like i trained myself to push my intrinsic and playful artistic desires aside in favor of chasing an abstract and suffocating idea of appealing to the masses and attempting to be widely liked.

now i want to be as niche and special interest and wildly random and chaotic as i can be.

if i’m being unpredictable?
then i’m exactly in my dopamine lane.

i was anxious at the thought of bringing any childhood bedroom aspects into my adult bedroom, like the chapter task requests. but i ended up getting a Beanie Baby plushie and placing it in my bedroom as a trinket for my inner child-artist.

it brings me a small, secret kind of joy, i will admit. very unexpected, especially after a lot of weird resistance at first.

✩°。⋆ memory fragments ::

⋆。°✩ 5 ✩°。⋆
⋆。°✩ audits from the honesty department ✩°。⋆

field note 5 :: the sexual tension between me and perfectionism

this week also had me looking at the places where my energy keeps quietly being self-siphoned away. people pleasing. perfectionism. quick dopamine. outsourcing my opinion to others. giving away entire frameworks for free. you know. casual.

people pleasing = payoff: wearing a mask / hiding my true self.
perfectionism = procrastination and refusal to move forward.
outsourcing my opinion to others = acting like i don’t trust myself when i actually do.
giving away entire frameworks for free = stop that.

i lose touch with my intrinsic baddie self when i am so desperate to be liked or for my art to be well received or successful, or whatever.

i’m tired of getting further and further away from myself to try and be liked by people whose tables i’d never sit at if given the choice.

i realized this desperation to be liked had me running a rat race with myself, living in some weird perpetual loop of constant time urgency for no goddamn reason at all.

and honestly?
i don’t care what anything thinks...
i’mma make the art anyway.

⋆。°✩ 6 ✩°。⋆
❋ curiosity girl has entered the chat ❋

field note 6 :: curiosity identity at play

another huge part of this week was realizing that my Imaginary Lives reframe was not just a cute essay idea. it been working for me! i had translated the Imaginary Lives task into Curiosity Identities because the original wording did not click for me.

⋆｡°✩ dear diary, ⁂

imaginary lives? no thx. curiosity identities? suddenly i’m listening..

Read more

2 months ago · 1 like · ⋆｡°✩ nikki and notes ⁂

Curiosity Identities = a way of noticing which parts of me come alive through whimsy, curiosity, and fascination.

and this week, one of those curiosity identities got actual playtime: i followed a fascination before i felt ready or expert enough. in fact i sorta liked that i knew nothing. it was nice to feel playful and unserious about something, to learn something new… slowly, at my own pace. no rush or monetization involved. i was just letting curiosity lead the way. and curiosity had me planning and buying all kinds of things for days in preparation until i realized i should really just go, huh?

so i did. and i loved it. it was worth it. i felt alive.

but the bigger point here is not even the specific fascination. it’s that i moved toward the thing before i felt ready. i stopped only talking about it… i gave that curiosity identity airtime, and let her move. that felt like power.

⋆。°✩ 7 ✩°。⋆
⋆༶⋆˙⊹ done is also a portal ⊹˙⋆༶⋆

field note 7 :: apparently finishing the thing helps

one of the quieter lessons was realizing how much anxiety lives in the gap between knowing what needs to be done and actually doing it. i took longer than i would have liked to edit and send photos i took for a friend around the lake.

i wish i had delivered them faster. i was bummed with myself. normally, i think i would have stayed in that emotion, not moving through it. just sitting inside the feeling, letting it become bigger than the actual task.

but this time, i let myself get it done. and honestly? that lifted me out more than rumination and worry ever coulda.

it became clear to me i chose the next honest action in real time. instead of letting loose, free-floating anxiety keep buzzing around my body like an annoying fly.

i’m learning that sometimes power is not a confidence speech. sometimes power is sending the photos, finishing the task. shipping the idea. making the next move before shame turns it into a whole identity crisis backpedal.

i keep thinking i need to feel better before i act, more experienced… but sometimes it’s having to learn along the way that actually helps me feel better in practice.

this also connects to something i’m noticing about self-trust. i lose power when i outsource my own ideas to others as drafts before getting to finish them myself. i hand over full frameworks, ask for too many opinions, or wait for someone else to validate what i already know i want to make.

and like… why do i act like i do not trust myself?

✩°。⋆ memory fragments ::

⋆。°✩ 8 ✩°。⋆
₊˚⊹♡ safe spaces matter ♡⊹˚₊

field note 8 :: the library as a slower life experiment

i started noticing a new craving in my life. like: what would my life feel like without the constant time urgency haunting me? ugh, i regret to inform everyone hustle culture really got to me for a while there.

but lately, journaling by the water in the mornings, lake views out my windows, and following random whims have all been… regulating for me.

i have been craving a slowness. that sensory kind of quiet atmosphere that i feel only nature has. i also have been craving a bit more structure, a release of micromanagement and obsessive self-control. don’t know what to do with that, lol.

but apparently living slower looks like… libraries, lake mornings, field notes, or something. which brings me back to the library.

the first day, when i went in and was so shocked and surprised the public library was as crazy busy as it was at the time, i panicked when i couldn’t find my desired book section right away, got overstimulated, and left pretty quickly without giving anything a real chance… or asking for help.

but when i came back the next day a little more prepared for it to potentially be that same way again, and it pretty much was, i found i wasn’t as shell-shocked.

still nervous to go in. but after 20ish additional minutes of hesitating in my car, i made it into the library.

and then something positive happened. i found a spot i was happy with. i camped out next to a huge ceiling-to-floor window on the 2nd floor a public library, and a huge longhorn beetle flew right into the window at me, lol.

poor guy. he faltered for a second and then turned around and went about his way. (same, honestly.)

i just took notes on what i found interesting.

i found that my anxiety settled once i found a cozy space for me to sit and call my own and feel comfortable in. i decided i’d be in my own little world and it wouldn’t matter and sat down anyway instead of leaving. in return, i stayed longer than i thought i would. imo? it’s a win.

for me, a safe space has got to have good sensory comforts… low ambient noise, most of all. i don’t know why it took me over 10 years to go back to a public library. i loved it once i calmed my anxiety down with preparation and contingency plans.

that felt like the real power.
the real win. hell yeah.

✩°。⋆ memory fragments ::

ft. ::

⋆。°✩ 9 ✩°。⋆

field note 9 :: final field note

week 3 taught me that power does not always feel like confidence. sometimes power is just choosing action.

just go inside for a bit.
ask for help.
finish the task.
sit in public.
sketch the unserious doodle.
let first attempts be imperfect.
let good enough for right now be what counts.

i keep thinking i need to feel better before i act, but sometimes acting is what helps me feel better. rude, but noted.

power felt like motion without waiting to feel ready. it felt like creative abundance instead of creative pressure. it felt like tiny field notes, special interests, purple flowers, a longhorn beetle at the library window, and the strange relief of realizing i do not have to do the perfect version of my life to still be living it. i can slow down. i can pay attention.

₊˚⊹♡ i can trust my own crazy ideas, thx. ♡⊹˚₊

( ^ a love note from me to me )

xoxo, nikki. 💕

word bank ::

^{✧ Imaginary Lives = inner parts, identities, or desires that may already exist inside you, even if you have not fully embodied them yet}

^{✧ Internal Family Systems / IFS = a therapy lens that understands the self as having many inner parts, each with its own feelings, fears, desires, protections, and needs}

^{✧ Inner Parts = the different selves within you that carry desires, memories, fears, creativity, protection, longing, or identity}

^{✧ Inner Artist = the creative part of self that The Artist’s Way asks you to protect, listen to, nurture, and take seriously}

^{✧ Inner Child = the younger part of self that may still hold play, wonder, tenderness, fear, memory, or unmet needs}

^{✧ Identity Shifting = practicing the thoughts, habits, choices, and self-concept of the version of yourself you are becoming until it feels natural, embodied, and real}

^{✧ Table Time = giving an inner part space to speak, be honored, and influence your real life without letting it run your whole life}

01 :: imaginary? immediately no

the exercise of imaginary lives make me think that imaginary lives are invented, like they don’t already exist. the word imaginary makes them feel like pretend before i could even take it seriously. It made something real in me feel like make-believe… like a fantasy outside of my body. instead of something real… which by Julia’s countless encouragement to act out our imaginary lives… what i really think she is trying to get us to do? is Internal Family Systems philosophy lol!

that’s what i think lately. i been reframing imaginary lives through an IFS therapy lens. just like ‘inner artist’ is… that’s a part of self! = IFS therapy!

i alsoooo used to think identity shifting was the same way. I’m dreaming something up, something that feels imaginary, fake, not real, ungrounded, abstract. whereas “identity”? feels safe, grounded, actionable, real, concrete, solid, tangible.

02 :: the language was the block

when I hear the word “imaginary” something weird happens in my body. I immediately start gaslighting myself. It feels fake, abstract, ungrounded. but when I hear identity, I feel confident, strong, safe, grounded, and held. Identity feels tangible to me, actionable, real.

I think just saying identity or inner parts feels safety than the concept of imaginary lives to me because my brain immediately grounds it in my IFS therapy knowledge.

I immediately feel safe and held, in a way, knowing that I’m not just manifesting… nothing. I’m bringing up parts of myself that already exist… I just likely haven’t given them any table time.

03 :: julia cameron loves an inner artist, lol

Julia Cameron looooves to say inner artist/child, lol.

When Julia says inner artist/inner child, my brain automatically grounds the language in inner parts language from internal family systems therapy. I absolutely read it as an IFS part. And if our inner artist and inner child are parts of self… why wouldn’t our imaginary lives also be parts (Identities)? I’m realizing we’re alllllll sitting at the table.

so, to recap:

imaginary feels fake, abstract, ungrounded.
identity feels safe, strong, grounded, held, tangible.

03 :: actually, that’s parts work

Imaginary makes me feel like I’m a little kid again talking about the fake friend sitting next to me that no one else can see. But when I talk about wanting to write a book, that shit is such a real curiosity for me, a real part of my innermost self, a secret I’ve been holding on to since childhood. I don’t want to reduce that desire to an imaginary life. i want to know thats a part of my identity, an inner self part that already exists: i am a writer. let’s write that damn book! thats the difference.

honestly? i know its JUST it’s a mindset shift at the end of the day. but that’s all the book is, too. maybe that’s all I needed for it to be to feel real and inspirational and embodied.

IFS made the whole thing feel safer for me, more real. i’m not manifesting something imaginary. im calling home to an innermost part of myself. i see that identity of myself physically sitting at the table with me, in my minds eye. the part that’s been waiting for table time.

04 :: table time is necessary, not make-believe

when you stop treating their imaginary lives as fake, you can easier step into and embody them (aka: let them sit at your table) instead of dismissing your desires as silly.

it also helps as acting as the first step. a bridge between the mental world and the actionable one: it allows you to stop waiting for external proof before being able to honor your different inner parts.

you can see the identity as a part of yourself, not a random fantasy.

so maybe imaginary lives are not supposed to be fake selves we invent but rather our secreted inner parts desperately asking for table time?

p.s. if you’re reading the artist’s way too (or have been meaning to), come join my free The Artist Way 🎨📒 Book Club on Facebook!

it’s basically a real book club, except everyone is on their own timeline. there are no weekly deadlines, no pressure to keep up, and no guilt if you disappear for a while. just jump in wherever you are.

we talk about morning pages, artist dates, resistance, creative recovery, share our art, ask questions, and work through all the weird and wonderful parts of the book together.

join the free facebook group

the group itself is the creative cluster, so whenever you’re ready, we’d love to have you. 💛

the video diary

what if i knew who i was the whole time? what if it was just the people, places, panic, and performance around me that made me forget?

^{✩°｡⋆ 01. identity grows underground ⋆｡°✩}

field note 01 finding evidence of who was already there ::

i knew week 2’s chapter on identity was coming once i started the book last week, lol. what i didn’t expect was the constant presence of mushrooms around me. and how i was romanticizing wet grass for the first time in my life, and journaling to rain sounds, noticing flowers. making tiny observations that made a big difference.

Julia began the chapter warning me to notice poisonous playmates in my life but giiiiirl, i already got rid of them all. 🧿 nextttt, i thought. but i was wrong about that, about thinking i was done with the chapter because i had a recently downsized friendship circle.

what slowly came to me in this chapter was the realization sis wasn’t asking me to block toxic people. she was asking me to get real honest about the things i share, in any public-facing manner. to me this meant recategorizing existing friendships into who was and wasn’t “safe.” i scoffed at the safety map chapter task at first, but it actually did help me visualize and see what i feel comfortable talking about and what i’d rather stay in the subtext… out here defining boundaries for myself, lets gooooo.

what parts of myself came back quietly this week? it stormed between my last field notes the artist way reflection and week 2 beginning, a heavy rain that blew shit around and came down across the open lake in sheets. i have to say, the sunrise i saw on that first Monday of week two?

incredible.

something magic, that’s for sure. i can’t explain why. i look at the same view every day. but i can’t get rid of this insane amount of gratitude i carry around while i see it. i hope i never forget how strong my gratefulness feels to be out of wherever i was and into wherever i am now.

i suppose it makes sense, right? with a sense of safety locked in, you’re able to start unearthing your sense of identity. i’m grateful, but i was skeptical at first. like, tf i just did all this identity work and alter ego shifting lastttt yearrr and here i am wrestling with myself again? oh, the dread! the horror. i didn’t want to do it, thought about putting down the book. i felt overwhelmed, in a way, with tackling my identity. this was a big chapter. a big puzzle piece to enrichment, happiness, esteem, and self-actualization.

was i ready?

i’ve been deep in thought on some ideology given to me by my talk therapist regarding IFS, Internal Family Systems. the way she described it to me is that i have many parts of myself, and they’re all sitting at the dinner table with me. something chapter 2, recovering a sense of identity, did for me? i was given permission to explore inner parts of myself that i had stopped listening to long ago, like my inner artist and inner child… the lil’ artist internet girl who just wanted to code broken Neopets pet page layouts all day.

that girl was awesome, why have i been ignoring her?!?!

i could feel my body reacting to the passing of the storm. the clearer skies, the more saturated colors. my nervous system was finally able to gasp an exhale of relief, for real for real, in this chapter. i didn’t know i was still feeling guarded and self-protective until i actually let my inner child/artist come out and play by doing weird nonsense and following my dopamine.

_{from my morning pages: “found a tiny pinecone”}

^{✩°｡⋆ 02. mushroom logic ⋆｡°✩}

field note 02 identity wasn’t missing. it was underground, waiting for better weather ::

the very first thing I remember noticing in week 2? monday daytime walk: bam. mushroom ring. and then suddenly? mushrooms everywhere, all week. and then i was noticing it constantly. I was fully enamored by the romance of stumbling on none of these shrooms just days ago, walking the same spots… as they were hiding underground!

and that is exactly what identity felt like to me this week: no forced “new me who dis” announcement needed. just a return to mindfulness, a return to my innermost parts. my attention chose mushrooms as the symbol because something in me feels like it’s emerging too… this is field note explorer secret clubhouse inner child girl inner self is surfacing.

field note girl notices the mushrooms.
my inner child takes their photo.

…and adult self me keeps the bug spray in my bag, lol.

identity can emerge as multiple different inner parts, when the body stops using all its capacity just to survive the day. or some realization like that.

☾₊⊹ 03. yellow kept showing up suspiciously ⊹₊☾

field note 3 just my nervous system learning the color of alignment ::

golden yellows, creams, off-whites, and the color of butter have all been following me around this week. pastel signals of the universe waving their hands at me, encouraging me to keep going. even in my media journal, out of an hour and a half long documentary displaying many different birds, i end up doodling a yellow warbler. how funny.

i can only accept it for what it feels like now, in retrospect: welcome to my highlighter theory. this is a synchronicity moment, where the universe is reaching out its invisible helping hands and literally highlighting the important things for me, like an annotation marker taken right to my life. it made me pay attention.

butter yellow and natural creams feel like stability and safety to me. brighter yellows feel whimsical, like the sun on a summer day… orrrrr a huge ass caution sign from life sharing with me little micro miracle moments of “👍”. either way i’m addicted.

any signs of growth and change have me immediately feeling a type of way. i’m paying so much attention to small, unserious things in life lately. the move away from constant hyper-vigilance is the real cue from the universe i’m on the right path. i’m just gonna keep doing what feels like it’s working… which low-key feels like just throwing out Julia’s masked religious mess of a text and filtering it through my own personal therapy-coded agenda.

⋆。°✩ 04 the love is in the details ✩°。⋆

field note 4 apparently my life philosophy was hiding inside my photography tagline. ::

art mantra “the love is in the details” has always been part of my photography and client-care mantra.

something i’ve always said is “the love is in the details” aka details matter… they aren’t just pretty decoration, they are proof of aliveness. which matters a great deal to me in my photography portraiture art. i’m realizing in this moment though… it’s a life mantra for me, too. what makes life worth living is making those tiny observations… noticing the details. because presence is the whole point, for real.

week two of the artist way showed me this is not just a business motto, but also a real life philosophy for me. noticing the details is how i communicate love, interest, and care to others in my relationships. i can’t believe survival mode had me forgetting to apply mindfulness to the rest of my freaking life, too. allowing myself to play and be curious… without desperately needing to control the process or outcome of it. /hides.

⋆。°✩ 05. being liked is not the same as being seen ✩°。⋆

field notes 05 a very rude identity lesson, unfortunately ::

my brain kept telling me i had to hold the weight of looking sane, and put together, and intelligent, and professional, and happy, and smiling, and bubbly, and calm and reflective, and gentle… constantly over-functioning to be liked and accepted and welcomed and heard and seen.

but it took looking at the mushrooms for me to realize i’m not. i’m not seen. people only see themselves. i essentially proved to myself i am not a friend to many, when i thought i was. instead, i was just a mirror.

and it clicked for me why certain people constantly projected themselves onto my words and why that triggered me. it’s because my body knew i was done being a perpetual damn mirror in favor of self-abandonment. my body was just waiting for my brain to wake up about it: being liked because i’m resourceful isn’t the same thing as being really, truly seen and witnessed.

say it again for all your inner parts sitting at the table!

the lesson was actually a question: who am i when i stop trying to just be easy to love? i am meant to be more than a doormat, a pathological people pleaser, my entire life.

sometimes “being understanding” to a fault is just self-erasure in disguise.

⋆。°✩ 06 my body is not a productivity app ✩°。⋆

field note 06 identity work got a lot clearer after sleep, food, quiet, and less noise. rude but fair ::

i can feel my brain and body exhale in the quiet, in the still darkness. calm. peace. serenity. that good good kinda under-stimulation my soul deeply craves.

it took real, genuine peace of mind to wash over me in order to realize… i genuinely think sometimes i am just tired, thirsty, hungry, or overstimulated and that’s why i feel annoyed at everything.

which is crazy, because i wrote Nikki’s Hierarchy in the first week, to remind myself of this very notion. and here i am forgetting that the foundational level 1 begs for food, sleep, water, body care, while the next step up, level 2, is all about sensory and safety needs… aka being able to exist in a quiet, calm environment.

i’ve learned sometimes an “identity crisis” is actually my body screaming for basic care and nutrition. #ADHD

only then does identity work become clearer.

and did.

⋆。°✩ 07. creative play, not content ✩°。⋆

field note 07 the part where i remembered making things can just be fun ::

a large part of my identity i explored this past week was based around my inner child / inner artist self. substack was my inspiration: zines! essays! poetry! photography photo essays! i was reminded that people do want to consume art on their feeds, and such a realization has felt so positive and uplifting: i just had to find my people!

chapter two may be about recovering a sense of identity… but my artist date micro moments were convincing me on a daily basis that identity for me right now is largely just about play, and finding creative abundance.

it was on a monday morning. i was up by 6am. i had sat in my car in the quiet watching the sunrise and edited my artist way pt 1 video… all in the spirit of creative play, not content. and it felt good, so freaking good, to make. was it perfect? heccccc nooooo! but it was FUN.

which is a direct example of witnessing my own inner parts: secret clubhouse inner child and field note girl inner parts collaborating with each other. insane.

one wants play.
one wants documentation.
together, we make artifacts.

this was the moment i became obsessed with play for this week, and hopefully forever.

_{a digital rough sketch of my past self and current self parts...}

⋆。°✩ 08. poisonous playmates, protected whimsy, and other rude little truths ✩°。⋆

field note 08 a chapter task made me realize guilt is not always guidance ::

i am metabolizing chapter 2 slowly… felt like it wasn’t clicking for me. i felt like i couldn’t relate it back to my life. and then it just clicked for me:

protect your whimsy.

i don’t know, this was a big revelation for me.

because through that lens, i can see past relationships differently. even now, i feel guilt and grief over relationships that i don’t want in my life.

i think that is my doormat people pleaser persona coming out again.

the old people-pleaser in me cries and blames myself, shames myself, and the guilt manifests thereafter. guilt has always felt like proof of doing something wrong. guilt has always felt like a strong parental guiding hand steering me towards obedience, towards second-guessing, towards abandonment.

but now i know it’s not always proof of anything, except maybe emotional dysregulation, lol.

i’ve been afraid to admit that the guilt i feel is unfounded. i’ve been afraid to let myself off the hook, afraid to absolve my grief. but the truth? i feel like i’m doing better than ever.

over-stimulation, over-functioning emotional processing, and feeling constantly unseen make me feel like i’m gonna die though.

and i am desperate to protect my wonder at all costs.

the protector part of me still feels wounded, guarded, questioning:

are we safe?
can we relax?
can we play?

i’m doing what i need to do for the answer to be yes.

⋆。°✩ 09. the old place closed, and something in me opened ✩°。⋆

field note 9 sometimes identity recovery is also turning in the keys ::

week 2 marked a milestone for my nervous system. the end of May was the last i’ll ever have to see or think about my old apartment ever again.

it’s a big, huge, important affair. i’ve outgrown masking my true self just to be misunderstood.

my new place by the lake is the opposite in every way. necessary hyper-vigilance made me forget myself.

everything changed once i realized the muscle tightness in my back could unlock. now i chase that release, every single day: i call it play, rest, and digest. the lake and the ducks help me remember myself. a full body exhale.

my current self moved to a new space at just the right, divine time: metaphorically and literally/psychically leaving a past self behind.

✿

_{Closing thoughts: identity is the inner self resurfacing… once you stop abandoning her.}

✧･ﾟ note filed ･ﾟ✧

xoxo, nikki 🍄‍🟫

chapter 2 of the artist’s way is about identity, which feels funny because i been on an identity-shifting alter ego creating manic side quest for the last 3-5 years.

alter egos. reframing. reparenting. rewiring. unmasking. trying to become more myself without accidentally abandoning myself along the way.

i think what’s clicking for me now is that identity work is not about becoming someone fake. it’s about unearthing the version of myself that got buried under survival, approval-seeking, masking, and caring way too much what people thought.

i want to know myself so deeply that other people’s words wash over me like water.

not because i don’t have empathy.

because i finally care more about staying connected to myself, first. you can’t pour from an empty body, or whatever.

that’s the goal, y’all.

literal mushroom energy 🍄‍🟫

i made a little (under 10 minute long) video diary for this first check-in. apparently i have reached the “take the book to the lake and film birds like i am the drama” portion of my creative recovery journey.

“i imagine this third run through the 12 week journey of this book will feel totally different than past passes of mine.” i didn’t know know that when i wrote that in my first morning pages this week... but my intuition had suspicions.

⋆。°✩ field notes from a chaotic spirituality siren (aka me) ✩°。⋆

this is not my first time with this book

i have lived with the morning pages for a decade, completed the 12-week journey twice before in the past, and read the book itself maybe a hundred times. but this time is different. this week, i return with an entirely different perspective.

i saw the amazing article being shared around by the substack girlies about beginning the artist way journey. and honestly i ignored it at first because i just did this crap last year, lol.

but here i am. and this time around the artist way feels less pretentious, I feel like I’m seeing Julia Cameron as a peer instead of some all knowing educator. me starting The Artist Way journey again… is coming at a divine time. it feels like synchronicity that i get back to reading, writing, ritual, and journaling in a time in my life where my nervous system and body are letting me genuinely…. feel things, and experience life again.

✩°。⋆ reflection questions from nikki ::

the version of me that first found this book from in 2020 was just getting into taking her photography business seriously in terms of marketing, making content, and being perceived on social media. i guess the mindset i was in at the time when i first read the book really imprinted on my perspective for a decade, and warped all future experiences reading it. except this time.

the version of me that finished the book for the first time was in 2023, deeply chasing my Highest Self… deeply stuck, rooted in pleasing others at my expense. a one-track-mind time in my life where everything feeling like a performance for social media.

but me returning now? feels different. i’ve dropped the performance. in fact, this essay isn’t for anyone except my future self to see where she started. and that is so freaking freeing for me.

☾₊⊹ same book, different nervous system ⊹₊☾

the timing feels suspiciously divine.

new apartment, lake mornings, ducks, Substack girlies, and the strange feeling of being emotionally met.

i genuinely feel mirrored by interactions on substack app instead of being fought, misunderstood, or just left unmet. and i’m realizing, after a week and some change of living at my new apartment: journaling down by the lake every morning might be a non negotiable, mandatory ritual. i basically already started my “morning pages” practice a few days before i even picked the book up again. diary/stream of consciousness journaling empties my mind and creates stillness. consequently, this week i feel peace more often than anything else. lately sitting in it willfully, with abandon, and joy.

and the substack app might have truly changed my life… i don’t say that lightly???? my entire brain feels rewired. just the right timing for this book to be brought back front of mind. and now i have an entire app of girlies into it with me and with 0 pressure on my end! YAY!

✩°。⋆ reflection questions from nikki ::

✩°。⋆ the lake said: girl, exhale ⋆。°✩

this time, i want to be the artist.

last year i tried to lead a book club around this book, craving depth in my life. few were able to meet me emotionally during the process. i was the facilitator which exhausted me and left me not pouring into myself but into others which depleted my mental bandwidth and sapped my creativity.

so this time, i love that Maria is sorta facilitating it for us! because me holding everyone’s emotions and internalizing others lack of action weighed heavy last year when i tried to run it for a group of photographers online. it was soul leeching experience, i felt as if i was shouldering everyone’s disappointed or random expectations of the book. it took me getting to the end to realize the whole episode had felt very performative in a desperate “humans like me when i talk about this book so i’m gonna try to teach it” kinda way… ha. in a way, i deeply confused leadership with self-abandonment. a sad theme in my recent years, unfortunately.

but i’m learning: i can enjoy a thing and not have to be burdened with the expectation of teaching it, lol.

✩°。⋆ reflection questions from nikki ::

⋆༶⋆˙⊹ participate, don’t perform ⊹˙⋆༶⋆

safety is the first creative practice.

a lesson: my body is a living thing, not a productivity app. yeah. apparently my inner artist does not want a productivity plan. who knew? she actually just wants a body that stops having to clench itself, less muscle pain, less chronic fatigue, less brain fog. basically… nervous system regulation. gosh, i mistook dysregulation for laziness for years.

i just realized right now that the first chapter is about safety and that’s the bottom foundation of Maslow’s Pyramid / Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. BOOM. and just like that the book connects with me in the way it needs to, not in the way Julia Cameron is trying to force down my throat.

and this past week when i moved out of my old apartment complex? marked the end of YEARS worth of ‘survival mode’ instincts beginning to fade… because my new home by the lake actually felt safe.

✩°。⋆ reflection questions from nikki ::

✧༺ safety first, self-actualization later ༻✧

week one, but make it field research.

ducks, wet grass, abandoned flowers, a tiny notebook, and my dog acting like the main character. i took my dog Nike around the 1.5 mile loop trail around the lake today and i was worried it would be too long of a walk for him. but he was running in front of me the whole time, i was telling HIM to slow down the whole time and wait for me! i thought walking him would feel like a chore but it didn’t as long as i kept my hands free of his leash - being able to use my hands to journal/type on my phone changed the whole ‘walk’ from a chore into an adventure. i was exploring and dreaming and scavenging, and found many abandoned flowers i picked up from the trail. post-walk, i was sweaty and hot and definitely feeling it in my legs by the end. but also feeling content, peace, mindfulness, presence, meditative, happy, joyous…

✩°。⋆ memory fragments ::

when I stopped rushing the walk, the gentle observations of life came flooding in. and suddenly there was poetry in my head.

i don’t even like birds and ducks, i thought. until all of a sudden? they feel sacred. a symbol of being able to return home.

₊˚⊹♡ nature walks + vlogging became the artist date ♡⊹˚₊

artist dates are starting to mean something different to me…

less buying myself a dopamine treat, more filling the well with slowness. this week i started filming horizontal style video clips since picking up the artist way book. at the time i didn’t know why, except i instinctively knew it was for this substack essay and video diary. i already know from past experiences with this book that Artist Dates… are sacred for me.

this time around i want my artist dates to serve filling my artist well and filling my mental inspiration bank that craves the romance of a slower life.

and suddenly the week was over, and i lamented “not taking an artist date” as i stayed up until 2am editing my video diary in Adobe Premier - a new program I’ve been trying to learn lately, and the challenge is always such a joy to fuss with and overcome). and then i realized it. my artist date was taken as pockets of time all week where i got to be reflective and dive inward with my journal, book, and vlog camera in hand. i was actually creating this very video diary.. a love letter to my future self to reflect on her journey.

✩°。⋆ memory fragments ::

☀︎⋆。𖦹° artist date, but make it a life rhythm °𖦹。⋆☀︎

i am learning to filter the book through myself

i finally realized no one can stop me from making this book a “magical in my own way” experience. because honestly i can feel my eyes rolling into the back of my head when i read Cameron’s rElAtAblE anecdotes and mentions of gOoD oRdErLy fLoW.

…yes, God may be my trigger word. but i’m so curious to attempt this book in a more woo woo magical-spirituality way than a woo woo masked-religious kind of way this time around. and i finally realized… no one can stop me!

luckily time softened my perspective moving forward. listening to the audiobook genuinely serves as a kind of ritual for me. it’s magic. i obsess. i listen. i listen over and over again. i listen while driving, while i decorated my letter-to-self with stickers, and listen while i work on chapter tasks. and there i was, listening to the basic principals chapter for the millionth time over this week, trying to get my jumpiness around the word God out of my system, or something.

after a few days, i could feel less reactive to her words that didn’t resonate with me. i simply chose to filter out the nonsense in her words (unless i loved the nonsense). and that has been my guiding light ever since, and it allows me to feel less irritable enduring some the language Cameron chooses to call spiritual.

✩°。⋆ memory fragments ::

✩₊˚.⋆ filter the nonsense, keep the magic ⋆。𖦹°

your editor and your inner child entered the chat.

Cameron tasks us with writing a letter to the editor in our defense. i’ve done this practice before, but i realized this time that writing it some vague notion of ‘editor’ felt really abstract until i grounded ‘the editor’ in just being me, as my Current Adult Self… aka… the Internal Family Systems (IFS) ‘Manager1’ part of me… who also shows up as my inner critic sometimes as well.

my internet diary girl subscriber chat saw it first:

i write it down in letter form as well and physically mailed it to myself. actually feeling like i am pen pal-ing with myself was so fun. i used to do pen pals like ten years ago. that’s crazy how i’m reconnecting with my playful childlike younger self literally through these chapter tasks already.

✩°。⋆ memory fragments ::

✧･: nikki entered the room :･✧

creative blocks are not always cute.

i found myself working on the chapter tasks and creating my “hall of monsters” and naming several of my historical nemesis and vices while also acknowledging recent relational pain related to who used to be my photography muse and friend. it weighs heavy on my chest things ended the way they did and i feel like that is a creative block inside my body right now.

ugh. not everything about healing is poetry and sunset skies… sometimes it’s just overcoming chronic self-inflicted nervous system pain, friendship grief, and self-inflicted mental torture loops. who knew!

this clarity, though? this newfound sense of stability, safety, and peace? i feel SO amazing and while i have some grief around friendships, i am still very much living in peace with being with myself. now i just need to learn to live with being okay with others projecting theirselves onto me, which has already proved to be a scary problem in past relations.

✩°。⋆ memory fragments ::

☾⋆。𖦹 not everything healing is sunset skies 𖦹。⋆☽

whimsy and boundaries can coexist.

apparently i can be magical, skeptical, soft, intense, irritated, peaceful, grieving, and still not abandon myself. wild.

i re-discovered an interest in indie personal mini zines. i used to obsess over them, fascinated, in a “i’ll never do that’ kinda way.”

but substack inspired me to create my first one in two days. imperfect as hell but you know what i did learn? how to do it better next time. and it was fun, a true labor of expression.

and i sure as hell learned more the last two days doing it than i did in a decade of idle fascination/procrastination.

i started filming horizontal style video clips all week since picking up the artist way book. at the time I didn’t know why… but eventually everything evolved into this video, this essay. and here we are…

just like that, i am creating art for myself again. in parting, i leave you with a friendly reminder:

₊˚⊹♡ just make the weird little thing exist first ♡⊹˚₊

(you can make it better later.)

xoxo, nikki. 💕