Killer Creatives

Unblocking the Inner Artist

Editor’s Note: This is the first installment of a weekly 13-part series. If you would like to join Jessica on her journey, we suggest getting hold of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. Best of luck!

“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But, when I became a man, I put away the things of a child.”

— 1 Corinthians, 13:11

 

Confession: I am a blocked artist.

Growing up, creativity illuminated my world. You name it, I indulged in it: art, acting, piano, dance, singing… heck, I have a bachelor’s degree in creative writing. After graduation – yadda, yadda – LIFE. And increasingly, my Censor’s voice (the fear that begins with well-meaning parents and culminates in adulthood responsibilities) became louder than that of my inner child, my artist. I’ve tried meagerly to justify the wasting away of my talents and found excuses for spending nearly a decade of my life transitioning from job to job in order to make ends meet. I’ve found some joy in helping others try to achieve their dreams. But something inside me – a tiny voice grown faint from starvation – whispers that it needs to be fed. It needs to be loved. It needs to be nurtured. It needs me to remember that it exists.

Enter Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. It’s not just a book. It’s a 12-week course designed to help people like myself transition from wishful artists to active artists. I’ve moved through the pages that set the foundation for the course and have begun my first week; I have to say that it’s a slow, cathartic process that is producing many tears, sighs and moments of sheer “aha!” In short: Julia Cameron is reading my mail. She’s attempting through this book to open the portal to my innermost dreams, desires and long-forgotten hopes for life lived in the bliss of artistic freedom, colored with neon-tinged happiness in a world of cubicle grey and dim fluorescence.

For the next 12 weeks, I will be documenting my progress. I invite you to join me and, if you’re so inclined, take the course alongside me and share your own experiences. In the meantime, don’t neglect letting your inner child out to play. Let’s be, as Julia says, “kindred souls making kindred leaps of faith.”

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Read the rest of this series:

1. Unblocking the Inner Artist
2. Of Monsters and Champions: Let the affirming begin!
3. A Case of the Crazymakers
4. The Power of Breaking Down Boxes
5. The Flow of Letting Go
6. The Trouble with Being “Good”
7. The Joy of Living Luxuriously
8. The Myth of Perfection
9. The Beauty of Being in the Moment
10. The Language of Loving Yourself
11. Getting Out of Our Own Way
12. The Dance of Discovering Yourself
13. The Stream of Surrender: An Artist’s Way Epilogue