Actionable Steps

Up a Winding Path by Steve-h

So, it's Week 8 in The Artist's Way. Week 8's subtitle is "Recovering a Sense of Strength." I think part of this is also recovering a sense of clarity of purpose, or that's what I'm getting out of the two days that I've been in Week 8.

I've been thinking a lot lately about my pseudo-pending move to Los Angeles. As of right now, I'm planning on moving to LA after grad school ends, which isn't until May 2013. It's so far away and fuzzy that it seems like a HUGE deal, and if I think about it too much I get pretty anxious.

This often leads me to ignore it completely.

Working on one of this week's tasks, a Goal Search, is making it seem less fuzzy and more accomplishable.

The Goal Search steps include:
Name your dream.
Name the event that signals the accomplishment of your dream.
In five years, where do you want to be in relation to your dream?
What action can you take this year to move closer to your dream?
This month?
This week?
This day?
Right now?

My dream, as of right now, is to act in movies. There was lots of other soul searching that went into this task, but the point of this post is what I realized at the end of the list of questions. As the goal search forced me to break down the huge task of moving to LA and becoming a movie actor in actionable steps, I felt a weight lift from my shoulders. Follow the path that you've created for yourself.

I found multiple things that I could work on today that would help me in my eventual career move. And, because the anxiety was gone, I no longer ignored my big fuzzy dream by watching TV on the Internet (and imagining myself as one of these people following my dream), but I did something about it! It's only research at this point, but research now means less research time, being informed and having more fun later.

I often run into a similar problem at the beginning of each quarter of grad school - when I am handed a syllabus that tells me all of the things I will have to accomplish in the next ten weeks, I'm struck by this overwhelming need to finish every single assignment immediately and it's all just too much. When I realize that no teacher expects me to do all of the work at once or to turn everything in the first day, I am able to step back and just work on the next assignment. One step at a time...

So often as creative people our dreams are washed in big strokes of color, hope, and chance. Taking the time to concretize the steps towards a dream may make the dream less glamorous, but so much more achievable.

Los Angeles in a good light by kla4067

Week 6: Recovering a Sense of Abundance

Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves by Mukumbra

At the end of each week of The Artist's Way, you're asked to do a check-in about how the week went, how you felt about using the tools (morning pages, artist's date), any creative freedom that you noticed or other things helpful to your recovery as an artist. I'm going to start doing a little round-up for myself on here as well.

This week, as you may tell from the title of this post, is themed as "recovering a sense of abundance." In really broad strokes, it means that I'm supposed to be examining my relationship with money. What I think about it, how I feel about it in relation to my art, etc.

I read the chapter this week with a similar feeling to how I read it the first time I did the workbook. That is, "this doesn't apply to me right now."

Last time, as I have mentioned, I started the book as I was starting my final semester of undergrad. I didn't have any sort of job to speak of, and my parents were supporting me.

This time around, I'm in my second year of grad school. My tuition is paid for by the school, I get paid for the classes I teach at school, and my parents are still helping me out.

So, both now and then, I thought that my financial circumstances were out of my control. This week in particular, I noticed myself reading the chapter and thinking that my money problems would be fine if I had the time (like other non-grad-schoolians do) to just go out and get a job. Or two.

And then I realized that this is exactly the sort of thinking that we are meant to examine. I have, unconsciously, placed myself the victim of my circumstances and have allowed that to change the way I perceive money in relation to my creative endeavors.

I have just as much ability to go out and find work as anyone else. My hours are more limited, so my options are more limited, but it is my thinking that is stopping me from going out and trying. (Also, feeling like it's not a great idea, as much as I'd like a little more financial security, because grad school keeps you busy.)

I did, however, start to think that it would be nice for a little extra change to come my way, and - in a nice little bit of synchronicity - a friend of mine had a couple of voice students that she couldn't fit into her schedule, and asked me if I'd like to take them on. Why yes, Universe, I would.

So, once again, thank you Julia Cameron, for making me think about my life. Particularly for making think of the parts of my life that I try not to think about. I'm more and more grasping the fact that my life is what I make of it, and that's an empowering, humbling thing to know.

A Tale of Synchronicities

Alice in Wonderland by Brandon Christopher Warren

Four years ago, this week, I got a callback for an audition. I had been telling my friends and my parents that all I wanted after college was to get a job as a professional actor, so, to that end, I participated in the Theater Bay Area General Auditions. I did a monologue and a song in front of 200 or so casting directors, directors and other representatives of the theaters around the Bay Area, thinking that it might lead to some familiarity when I came in to audition for other shows at these theaters throughout the year.

Even though I had my wisdom teeth taken out 8 days before the audition, I got a callback! I was asked to come read for a part at a professional Shakespeare company. At the time, I lived in Berkeley, and the callback was in San Francisco (for those of you unfamiliar, about an hour's drive). BUT, the first day of a class I needed to finish my minor started ONE HOUR after the callback. At UC Berkeley, if you don't show up for the first day of a class, you are automatically dropped, and since it was my last semester I couldn't take it another time. So, with all of these things stacked against me, I decided to go.

"Wait, go?" you say. Yes.

Why? Synchronicity. 

The first time I started working through The Artist's Way was a few days after I got my wisdom teeth out, those same four years ago. In it, Julia Cameron talks about synchronicity - when you put a wish, a dream, a hope out into the universe, and something just happens to fall into your lap that fulfills it.

Hadn't I been telling everyone how I wanted to work professionally after college? Hadn't I gone to the general auditions just to meet that end? And yet, there was that part of me that wanted to look this glorious gift horse in the mouth and say "I can't go to this callback because I can't get dropped from my class."

But, something in me started to open up, even with only a few weeks of Artist's Way work under my belt, and I went anyway. (No one's going to die if I don't finish my minor, I finally let myself realize.)

And you know what? It went swimmingly. It was like the part was waiting for me. I had to be able to do Shakespeare, I had to be able to play fast Irish music on an instrument, and I had to be able to sing folk songs. Oh, and dance. Sure, I've only been training my whole life to do exactly all of those things.

So I got the part.

*

by 85mm.ch

I thought of this story recently because it was the biggest example of "yes, this book is helping me change my life" that I could think of as a reason to do start working through it again.

Keep an eye out for when the universe answers the questions you're asking. But you have to ask the questions. Put shit out there. What do you want to accomplish? Just open the door, and watch for when the answers ask to come in. They may not always happen in the ways you thought you wanted, but trust that they will be just what you need.

Beginnings...

A new day, a new blog.

I've never written a blog before. I've toyed with the idea, but I always thought my inclinations for writing were to varied and vague to be distilled into one concise theme. Creativity, however, includes whatever the hell I want it to - so here we are.

I hope to write about things that inspire me, enrage me, spur me to create, to work, to change.

This blog was inspired by my second round of working through Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. For those of you unfamiliar with the book, it is a sort of 12-step program for your artistic self. I love that it's just structured enough to inspire and not bog you down. I'm currently at the beginning of week 5, and will surely post about how the process is working this time around.

Please peruse, enjoy, create.