The Artist's Way - Week Four: No Reading

A week without reading. That's what this week was supposed to be. I willfully chose to ignore that prescriptive.

I've been pretty faithfully following the book The Artist's way, by Julia Cameron for the past four weeks. The book is designed to unlock one's creativity. The idea is to read a chapter each week, and complete the accompanying exercises. Most of the exercises revolve around self-reflection - identifying ways in which you sabotage your creativity and self worth, identifying things you enjoy or have enjoyed doing in the past. Readers are encouraged to make time for themselves each week, to write in a journal, to do something fun by themselves, to create.

Julia's premise about not reading is that it takes away from other, more creative and enriching pursuits. I suppose that could be true, although I find the computer to be more of a potential time waster. The book was written in 1992, so I suppose the prevalence of computers in our lives has changed a lot since then. She might very well change that to a week without computers if she wrote the book today.

So, I have decided to spend 2 weeks on this chapter. Next week I will go with minimal computer time. Yes, yes, I'm sure I should go completely without, but instead I have decided to limit my computer time to 30 minutes a day. That means I won't have time to open up all those emails from yahoo groups, newsletters from vendors, and all the other stuff that clogs the inbox. The challenge is to limit email usage to meaningful communication. I typically spend several hours a day on the computer, so that should really free up some time. Now, what to do? I won't have any excuses not to clean and organize my studio, or to work on an art donation for a silent auction fundraiser. Oh dear, I may actually have to cook dinner!

So, do you think you could go for a week without a computer?