Ink and Vein

I’m on week four of The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron (I posted about the beginning of that in my last post. I’m satisfied with myself for keeping up with the morning pages, and for managing time for the artist’s dates (sort of). I have some mixed feelings on the book, though I am trying to withhold judgment until I complete the full twelve weeks. As is often the case when it comes to self-help books and self-guided programs, there’s a lot of God talk and that just doesn’t sit well with me. It made me not want to get started at all, but it also is encouraging me to confront an inner tension I’ve been pushing aside for quite some time: spirituality and atheism. The spirituality inherent in yoga and meditation practices, and how that sits with me on a personal level as I offer these teachings to others.

That’s another post, though.

Julia Cameron tells us to pay attention to our own resistance. Do we resist the writing activities? Do we resist the concepts? Do we resist thinking of ourselves and others in a certain way? Her book has met a lot of resistance in me, that’s for sure, but I have always loved a good argument, even if it’s with an artist or thinker who won’t answer me back.

So I’m following along with her program, and exploring the points of resistance. I do this anyway; I’ve been a journal writer and a reflection junkie for years. I’m approaching the program as I ask my students to do: with a Beginner’s Mind, trying to be open to the experience without assuming I already get it, already know what it’s going to be like.

And in that spirit, I am embarking on a week without reading.

Cameron calls it Reading Deprivation, and when I first saw it as a task for week four, my first thought was impossible. A week without reading? How? I hardly go a day without reading, let alone a whole seven days.

And then I started to laugh at myself.

I have gone days and weeks without reading before, and the times in my life when I didn’t read were some of the unhappiest, when I felt least like myself. Reading is a core part of my identity. I am a reader. I read books, and I know things, and I share those things with others.

Part of the point of The Artist’s Way is to look at what we always do, to look at our habits and our ways of identifying ourselves, and to challenge them.

Am I a reader, only?

I’m a writer, too, and I want to say that with more conviction and without feeling the need to hedge or qualify it. If all of my time is spent taking in ideas, that leaves little room for putting ideas out there. That’s the point of reading deprivation: give the brain a break from intake, and see what happens.

Because I am a person who finds it all too easy to binge a TV show or scroll social media for hours and then wonder where the time went, my reading deprivation also includes no TV or movies, and no personal social media. I’m still allowing myself to listen to music because sometimes you just need some sound other than the voices in your own mind.

Once I got past the initial feelings of “how can I do this?” I started to anticipate the experiment. I’m wondering if, without the excuse of “oh, I need to finish reading that book” I’ll instead sit down and think, “oh, I need to finish writing that essay.”

At the end of the week, perhaps I’ll go back to my old reading habits, or perhaps I’ll have developed more of a balanced view. Either way, I’m sure I’ll learn something.