the artist way: power ✿ pt 3 field notes

recovering a sense of power, but make it softer, slower, and slightly bird-coded

⋆。°✩ youtube link ✩°。⋆

the video diary ::

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⋆。°✩ 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.

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⋆༶⋆˙⊹ 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:

“why do i care what anyone else thinks? i made the art for me.”

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.)

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☾₊⊹ 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.

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₊˚⊹♡ 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.

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✧༺ 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 ::

ft. ::

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⋆。°✩ 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.

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❋ 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.

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

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.

^{“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe or someone}

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⋆༶⋆˙⊹ 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 ::

ft. the photos in question ::

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₊˚⊹♡ 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. ::

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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.

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

( ^ a love note from me to me )

xoxo, nikki. 💕