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I started my exercises, thinking exercises. You know, the kind that brings you back to your most awful and most wonderful memories and make you remember shit from the past so that you don't leave any pages unturned and carry the weight over to today. Yes, that kind. It's not fun and it's vastly personal so I'm still debating whether or not to share stuff that happened to me and obviously might not mean the same things to you. It's hard to depersonalize your own past and put it out in the open in present day as if it's somebody else's past, somebody else's story and you're just the storyteller. It takes courage and I have to have that courage because I signed up for this, nobody else. No matter how hard some parts of this 12-week process are, I said I would do this so I will deal with it. In another blog post, not today.
One thing I will tell you though is that Julia Cameron, author of The Artist's Way, pushes the reader to believe that s/he is a very talented and creative individual, whom needs to be reminded of his/her capabilities; and reminding begins with you. You have to remind yourself that you are talented so that your talent's shy little head can start poking around. Reminding in my case means writing. So everyday I sit down and write stuff like Oh I am so talented, I am a brilliant writer, I do this so well and so on. When you do this, you are supposed to provoke your Debbie Downer side so that it starts speaking out. That side is what keeps you blocked, or trapped or whatever you might want to call your problem, so you want to work on eliminating it. The more you write how great you are, the more that side will try to convince you of the opposite. I didn't believe it at first but even I was caught off guard when I found myself thinking I write like shit as I was completing my 20th sentence writing "I am a brilliant writer". It was so sudden and sharp but quiet at the same time, talking way back in my mind, my Debbie Downer whispered that I wrote like shit.
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Probably because I did see results in exact order that Julia Cameron explained, I decided to just go with it. So now, I sit down at the kitchen table every morning writing I am a brilliant writer for at least 25 times, waiting for my dark side to speak up. The idea here is that dark side has a reason to have moved into your head. What is it? Discover it, deal with it and get rid of it. Easier said than done. I did figure out a few memories already. Now the only thing I need to do is invent a time machine, go back in time, destroy that memory, make sure it never happens or differently if it must, get back on your machine and come back to present, where you already are a famous writer because those bad memories that kept you blocked this whole time, never really happened. Simple, no?
No. So what? I don't know. I've fucking given up on trying to know everything, to be Ms Know It All. I don't know but I'm hoping Julia will tell me in the following weeks and if she doesn't? Screw it, I will have written hundreds of pages of good morning blabber. I would take that over not writing any day under any circumstances. So really, with or without answers, we all win here. I am not trying to sell you on this book by the way, no worries. Salesmanship stops when I get a pen in my hands. Other than those precious times though, I can't stop selling something. I am always either selling an image or a vision or an opinion or worst case scenario a product. Aren't you? Screw you! Yes, you are. We all are always constantly selling something and the problem, personal dilemma, depression, whatever it may be for you, starts when you don't believe in what you're selling.
So you've just told your best friend that you're in love with your boyfriend when in fact you can't even stand his being and you know you can't. The only way for you to accept that person goes through you changing him. Oh you're so screwed. You'll probably waste a long time of yours and his, not to mention you will add to both of your misery. But go ahead tell your friend he's the one and you love him so much.
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Wait a second, I like this, what else? Let's think about it here guys. You might have told your aunt a few days ago that you love your fucking job. You just loooove, love, love, love working at the bank as a risk analyst. LOVE IT to death. That's right, you will die doing it if you don't stop...like...yesterday because you know you don't enjoy it. You don't like it, you never have but you aunt helped pay for your college degree on finance with her hard earned money cleaning hotel rooms since 1985 so you didn't have to. Go ahead, tell her you hate it, tell her it was a mistake and her money was wasted for nothing because you don't want to do it anymore. You would rather clean hotel rooms than analyze financial risk. Tell her that! What's that? You can't? OK wait until she's dead. Then maybe you might quit.
Let's not forget that troubled sister you've been supporting for god knows how long. She is so delicate, so young, so clueless of the real world you have been facing since you were 16. You don't want her to go through the same troubles but at the same time you're fucking sick and tired of being the big sister, aren't you? You want to be taken care of sometimes, hell you deserve it more than she does. What did she do all her life? Be pretty, be smart, read a lot of books, eat all the right foods and wear all the right clothes? You could have done those easily but you were never given a chance, only a role. The big sister role that you are tired of playing but when your mother asks you how things are, you say "Great, she's great. I love her and I am happy supporting her. She will become a great XYZ." Bullshit, you don't even think she can make an omelet on her own but you prefer lying. Well, you shouldn't have sista.
I don't know...Examples are endless. These are just what comes to my mind first. Love, work and family. Whatever your little lie could be, you have to stop it. Or else? Honestly, nothing would change but that is precisely the problem.
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