Discovering The Artist's Way

I started The Artist’s Way on Monday, October 12th 2020. This was the first day of my morning pages and the start of my active pursuit towards creativity via Julia Cameron’s book.

I was so excited to receive this book in the mail. It wasn’t a normal excited feeling though. It didn’t feel the same as the anticipatory feeling the precedes receiving a new shirt in the mail. With a shirt there's less at stake. But with this book? I had some pretty high standards for this book even before I knew much about it. I am just so thrilled that something like this exists. 

I discovered the book on an Instagram account of someone I really admire. She posted a few images of text from the book and I was instantly hooked. I was too deeply inspired by the small amount of text in the photos to not look further into it, I just had to. I immediately scoured the internet by typing in a sentence from the book. Google handed me the title of this book like a lifeguard throws a lifesaver to someone in need. Except I didn’t even know what I was in need of, I just felt a comforting sense of THIS IS IT. 

 

When it arrived in the mail I didn’t have the urge to rip open the package right away. I wanted to carefully dive into this new book. I wanted to thoughtfully and intentionally begin reading it, and without much distraction. So, I did the best thing I could think of, I began reading the first sentences while sitting on the beach.

A calm fall beach day was the perfect setting to read the introduction. I closed the book after reading a little bit and let my thoughts fester. The way that creativity is described in this book was already so interesting to me. I felt like I discovered something extremely powerful. 

Part of me was really looking forward to starting “Week 1” and to find out what each week beyond that would entail. The other part of me felt a little bit nervous. Was it going to be a big time commitment? Will it strap me into an emotional roller coaster that I do not want to be on? Will it leave me feeling utterly unsatisfied? Is this the right time to begin something like this? I had a lot of questions. 

The only way to find out the answers to these questions was to simply go for it, so that’s what I did. Welcome to my journey with The Artist's Way.