I have been dreading the end of The Artist’s Way programme, so how do I learn to say goodbye?
#Creativity #Last90days
This is the blog I have been putting off writing, you may have noticed I have been writing my guides to doing the steps on The Artist’s Way Programme. This is partly because I think the Morning Pages and taking Artist’s Dates have been helpful, I also think I have been avoiding the inevitable, coming to the end.
As the final week ends, I am reflecting on the resistance that I feel to ending the whole process. This mirrors my continual revising of the ending of the book I am writing, which of course changes the start I come up with and continues the process of drafting for evermore. This may just be the way I write, though I would like to think that there may be a time where I am confident in the writing a story I have plotted, I have a feeling my tangents are part of my process. So why are ending so hard?
Change is the only constant, for one.
I had the opportunity to test out how difficult endings can be, I learnt that someone from my son’s school whole family had moved away over the Summer. As is typical, we had not seen them in the holidays, but I am sure my son would have been happy to see their little boy in his class again, as they have been in school together for the last three years. When I learnt the news, and that they had had to go with no notice, I was shocked. It threw me completely and I think I was far more upset than my son at the change.
I have a history of finding goodbyes challenging and have left schools suddenly myself, so I am sure like a lot of things, this linked back to childhood fears. Saying goodbye is something is you learn to do over and over. So I called the family and also helped out a little here. It felt good to get closure on this phase of my son’s life as well as my own. And I got some satisfaction that I was a good friend on his behalf. I think stopping to acknowledge parts of your life that are changing is very important. That this happened as I finished the programme is something the author Julia Cameron would call synchronicity and I am inclined to agree.
I know as I step off the cliff from the comfort of the programme, I have to carry on writing my pages and using Artist’s Dates. But I also have to get the work done. That is not to say that I will not revisit the programme or dip into the exercises but in a sense, I have done this programme all the way through for the first time. That should be celebrated. Early on in the book, Cameron says a lot of people drop out or resist the programme which in the main part I haven’t. Although I did avoid the digital and reading detox in week eight. I am in fact coming back to it now and will report back soon.
So, it must be acknowledged, I did it! I have found ways to adopt pages into morning although sometimes it means I snap at those around me to leave me alone. I notice if I have a bad day, I will find I haven’t done my pages in the morning. It’s become an essential lifeline. I can also say that I am writing though still not as regularly as I like. The next steps are making the goals into tangible steps and using the #last90days of the decade to really finish what I started. With this in mind, I have a new writing planner on excel including blogging schedules: mundane but necessary to try and use the time I do have to work efficiently.
But the goal of the final week of the programme is to “Recover a Sense of Faith.”And that means being surer that your life will lead you to where you need to be if you continue to work towards what you want. I am still uncertain, of course, but I think I approach doing my work with more confidence than before. And I think having insight into my resistance was a great way to uncover things for me. As I don’t like endings, as is clear, I will leave the post I didn’t want to write on a quote from this chapter:
“Life is meant to be an artist date. That’s why we were created.“
Julia Cameron
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