I’ve been experimenting with Morning Pages as described and prescribed by Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. Three pages of words. Regularly. Period. Despite my skepticism, there have been a few interesting finds. Turns out I like time alone and quiet, in part because I feel free from my own reflexive sense of responsibility to connect, communicate, and care for. That I am concerned with what supports and ignites aliveness, a sense of purpose, and meaning is no big news flash, but how connected that currently is to creativity and generativity – making sh*it – wasn’t something I had necessarily noticed or worded.
I began to notice during these Morning Pages that when I wrote in conversation with myself, and only myself I wrote lots of words and thought lots of things that didn’t add up to anything new. It was like getting from A to B on one of those airport conveyor belts, the ride is smooth and automatic and requires zero engagement. Like hopping on a frictionless thought slide. I got bored, quickly, as it was all very same old same old. When I pulled my head up out of my own navel and wrote about what I saw – a bright pink book jacket, a stray bit of tortilla chip tucked behind a stool leg, literally whatever caught my eye – a super interesting thing happened. Either the train of thought went to a novel destination, or it went in a familiar direction but got there more generatively, passing through the world around me.
A funny string of associations followed: when making something out of clay, say a handled coffee mug, smooth is what you want for the body of the thing but when it comes time to attach the handle you want to scuff up the two surfaces to form a stronger bond. It takes the ridged side of a coin to scrape away that silver coating on a scratch ticket to see what’s under the surface. A straight-up massage feels great, but the addition of salt is next level.
My takeaway from all of this is that, for me, right now what feels good is to create things, not out of thin air, but out of what’s around me and I am more generative in conversation with what is different or unfamiliar or a bit messy. I consider this a real gift, as it suggests that I have enough that is smooth, solid, and durable to experience rough surfaces as places of creative conversation. I hope you all can find ways to take a minute and check in on what feels good for you, right now. Sometimes it might surprise you.
xo Jill