My Artist Dates
in
Pictures
Weeks 1 - 6
Today is the last day of my Artist's Way course. I started this course on Saturday, September 11, 2010, and today is the last day in the 12-week course. First off, let me just say that I am so not done with this course. I am only just beginning, but more on that later.
This post is just about my thoughts on what I discovered for myself over the past 12-weeks. For starters, this course helps you open up and realize all synchronistic events in your life. Just how I found this course was a major synchronistic event in my life. Most people wait until a milestone marker in their life to make changes. Mostly it’s turning a certain age, be it 30, 40, 50, or 60 years of age. When we hit a milestone age we start to look back and forward and see what needs to be changed. For me I am just 48 years old, so no milestone age yet, but I just celebrated my 25th Wedding Anniversary on September 14th of this year. That date was my milestone marker.
The first 12-1/2 years of my marriage was spent living in the suburbs of Chicago. The first six years were focused on taking care of my parents. Once they both died I said to myself, now what is it that I love to do, and let’s make a career out of it. I come from a family of travelers, we love to travel. Even my mother was always trying to push me into the travel field in some way since our family loves to travel. Long story short…on Mother’s Day of all days a job in the travel business just landed in my lap. I spent the next 6-1/2 years working in a field that was meant for me. I had travel benefits and perks, and boy did we use them.
Next, it was not enough to just travel several weeks a year, now I wanted to live in a vacation destination. Long story short…synchronistic events got my husband’s family and us to move to glorious Arizona. Now I wake-up every day and feel I am always on vacation. The beauty of where I live still intoxicates me. My career this past 12 years has been working with hubby and his family in a business. Now with the recent economic decline, business is not very good. With no business or work for me to do, I have more free time to do anything I wish. So back in August before my 25th Wedding Anniversary I was thinking…what is the next phase of my life going to look like? What am I going to do next? I was ready to reinvent myself once again.
Well I am on a lot of e-mails lists, and back in late August I received an e-mail from someone I never heard of inviting me to join his Autumn Series of webinars called Beyond Awakening. He had a link to his blog to introduce himself, so I clicked on and read it. Then he asked people who were interested in his webinar to introduce them selves in the comment section. Well, I read a few of the peoples comments, and one lady said she was looking forward to this webinar series, but she also was very busy doing The Artist’s Way course. A few comments down from that, another woman said she was doing The Artist’s Way course too. Well I just had to Google this and see what this course was all about.
So one e-mail opened, one blog read, a few comments noticed, and one Google search brought me here, and now I am just completing the 12-week Artist’s Way course. If you only knew just how many e-mails I delete without ever opening them, but this one I opened even though I did not know who it was from. Just finding this course was a major synchronistic event in my life. This course is exactly what I need at this phase of my life. It has opened me up to new possibilities that I never even thought of before.
Julia Camerson says in her section about synchronicity, "Answered prayers are scary. They imply responsibility. You asked for it. Now that you've got it, what are you going to do?" Well, what I am going to do first is to keep going on with her courses. I bought her book, The Complete Artist's Way, which contains her first book The Artist's Way, plus her two other books which are 12-week courses as well, Walking in this World, and Finding Water. So tomorrow I shall start Walking in this World. In this 12-week course you still continue to write your Morning Pages, go on weekly Artist Dates, and in this one you take weekly walks, either by yourself or with someone. I pretty much walk or hike weekly anyway, especially now that it is below 100 degrees.
But more importantly I am not going to be one of those people who just takes courses, and never gets off their butt to make changes or reinvent them selves. I asked for it, now I have to do something, and something I will do. Without mentioning what exactly, I came up with a plan of action that I am going to pursue over the next couple of months. This idea never even occurred to me before, but my doing this Artist's Way course, the idea just fell from the sky right to me.
So over the next 12 weeks I will follow Walking in this World course, I will continue to write my Morning Pages, which by the way, I NEVER missed one morning of writing in the past 12-weeks. I will go on an Artist Date with myself weekly. This time I may just stick to once a week, and not 3, 4, or 5 times a week like I did with this past course. I will walk or hike in the mountains once a week. But more importantly I will follow my inner voice with my next phase in my life. I will devote the time and energy to pursue the ideas I came up with. I am starting on a new path, a journey to reinvent myself.
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| My Artist Dates in Pictures Weeks 7 - 12 |
Until we accept the fact that life itself is
founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing.
HENRY MILLER
