the artist way: integrity + media deprivation ✿ pt 4 field notes

recovering a sense of integrity, but it's just me paying attention to a suspiciously present bird

⋆。°✩ youtube video (same as pt 3 essay’s video) ✩°。⋆

the video diary (week 3 and 4 combo)

WEEK 4 REFLECTION

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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.

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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!)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.)

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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. 💕