The magic of the artist date

Hello welcome to my newsletter today. It’s rainy here in in Northern Michigan and as my digital boundaries continue to be steadfast I find myself waking up with more ease and peace. With little to no thoughts other than my own flying between my ears.

I have been working on a new website that more accurately displays how I want my readers and students to feel when they’re looking for new classes to take, podcast episodes, and creative advising. I pitter patter away on Squarespace while I rewatch Schitt’s Creek and June curls up next to me. One of my favorite things about June is that after she has her breakfast and goes outside she comes back in, gets on the couch, and goes right back to sleep for at least an hour, no matter what time it is. Also June never gets up before me, I have to wake her up every day.

I find that without my own access to Instagram I am entering an inventory phase of how my digital container does and does not reflect my goals and hopes for my work. I am always walking the line between artist who teaches online and online person who makes art. I don’t usually identify as a business owner although that is technically what I am in addition to being a writer and artist. Not in addition to but woven together, I am many things all at once.

Gemini season has stirred these thoughts up to feel like a chaos rush, instead of a pleasant reordering of what does and doesn’t work. I have never put too much effort into a website, almost priding myself in its simplicity using social media as the place to express my ideas and imagery to go alongside my art and writing. As I shift away from that place it requires new orders of business. I don’t believe just disappearing from social media makes sense if you’ve built your whole identity there without moving towards other channels for creative expression. This is why I tell everyone to make a newsletter.

I have been eating frozen dinners lately and while it is a great way to get my vegetables I find myself missing living with another person and the shared responsibilities of a household. Only one person to take out the trash, walk the dog, cook the dinner. A routine I find that 95% of the time I am so grateful to do alone and 5% I find myself wishing for every old life I ever had.

The thing I am most looking forward to in the Artist Way Book study is doing my weekly artist date. I have been through Julia Cameron’s books many times but I have never managed to do an artist date every single week of the 12 weeks.

The artist date is an invitation to take your inner artist on an adventure of sorts, nourishing the part of you that needs art and creative expansion to survive. A trip to the museum, taking your camera out in the woods, going to a movie by yourself, watching a documentary and drawing at the same time. The possibilities for artist dates are endless.

In our book study each week we will report :

How did your artist date go
How were morning pages
Three sentence reflection about the week

The book study is for paying subscribers of this newsletter, each Friday for three months starting June 16 (the first week we will share our intentions) you will receive an email pep talk where you will share these reflections in the comments, with a zoom meet up during week six and twelve

Subscribe now

I find that going through the book brings me back into consistency with my morning pages, and I am always looking for something to bring me back to my routines and habits that keep me in the middle, not too down and not too up.

Something about the artist date always eludes me. I think I can trick my way through the process and that “everything I do is an artist date”. This is not true. There is a a specific intention behind planning this time with myself, alone, and the artist that I am and that lives inside me - that fills me with the deep knowing of who I am and my role and purpose in the world.

When I stray from this, I stray from trusting my own experience and my own values. I let what other people think of me, my work, and my life take up space in my mind and I let this distract me from my writing and sewing and dancing.

I feel now more than ever the dire need to protect my energy, time, and resources. This is actually the way to be most of service to those who read my work, and those who I am close with outside of the digital spaces I exist in. As a recovering people pleaser and codependent it is my first impulse to take care of everyone else’s needs first, when this is actually the backwards path to generosity.

What a gift to romance the person I will be in relationship with the longest, myself. To take in the art of others as a gesture of self research and fulfillment.

It is no joke when I say working through The Artist Way has changed my life and completely shaped how I offer my gifts to the world. Giving me the confidence to call myself what I am : an artist. No longer making excuses for what I am and am not, it has given me an entry point to find myself again and again.

May my artist dates feed my creative spirit
May my artist dates give me a chance to reinvent myself
May my artist dates bring me into more artistic knowledge
May my artist dates help me discover new artists
May my artist dates show me the way forward
May other people’s artist dates show me what is attainable
May the book study bring hundreds of people into the reality of what is possible and the delight and responsibility of being an artist while the world is burning

Subscribe now

Listen to the newest episode of Common Shapes

For me, as an artist and a writer and a teacher, I don’t want to encourage constant consumption of the email form. And so to me it’s really important to make my Monday newsletter be a container that holds so many different things — my writing, the new episodes of the podcast, the things I’m paying attention to, and the things I want to promote that are happening in my own business ecosystem.

I can’t recommend newsletter this week enough. Especially if you are making work and sharing it publicly. The critiques will come, and it is our job to stay true to ourselves and protect our energy.