The Artist’s Way - Week Six
“This week may feel volatile.”
I have never subscribed to the idea that suffering is virtuous. I have tried to convince myself that struggling builds character, and that’s what everyone must go through to become great. I can't believe it, though. My suffering doesn’t make me a better person. It makes me jaded and complicit. If the higher power supposedly wants us to be happy, then why would it make sense for difficulty to be virtuous?
You have to work. You need money to survive. I’m saying this as someone who, most weeks, lives paycheck to paycheck. I have just enough to get by and pay my rent. I know I need to focus much more on understanding and rehabbing my finances (get ready for that upcoming series), but I have a very hard time giving in to the idea of suffering to do so. The minute I don’t like a job, it’s time to start interviewing elsewhere. I’ve worked shitty jobs over the years. I’ve worked some better ones. Neither paid me particularly well, but the better ones gave me time and resources to act, to write, and hopefully find something better. And I try to trust that, when it really matters, the money will come.
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I do believe that self-care is a luxury we can not afford to ignore. It empowers us. Being creative requires us to feel empowered in ourselves.
Luxury and self-care look different for everyone, but it begins by listening to your mind and body. What sounds fun, freeing, relaxing, etc.? What would make you happiest just for the sake of it? I’m not talking about anything expensive. It’s a dollar store candle that smells like fresh linen. It’s a walk in the park. It’s a mindset more than anything else.
Time is a luxury. One that, as we discussed last week, we must give ourselves. Space is too. Growing up, my mother taught me that you can live a pampered, luxurious life no matter how much money you currently have in the bank. You might just need to pick up a hot glue gun and craft it yourself.
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This chapter and my thoughts on it are a lot more concise than they have been for the last couple of weeks. Looking back on it, it was a very emotionally volatile week. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that this chapter on money coincided with the end of the month and my starting training at a new job. That’s the universe at work.
There’s always a lot of anxiety surrounding the end of the month with rent, credit card bills, and student loans all coming within a week of each other. There’s an inherent anxiety about time and money that comes with starting a new job. New York also had an awful heat wave this week, and to top it all off, my air conditioner keeps getting its delivery date pushed back. I reiterate, it was a volatile week for me.
I write these posts by hand in a notebook as I read the chapter, then I type them up at the end of the week to get posted. As I was typing the section on self-care, I realized I had hardly given any to myself this week. I tried really hard to listen to my mind and body in hopes of feeling better, but I was so anxious that my mind wasn’t exactly the most helpful thing to listen to and with an apartment that was almost unlivable for half the week, it grew exceedingly difficult to give my body what it wanted.
It’s jarring to type out something I wrote a week ago, and still believe today, but realize in the moment I didn’t listen to at all. There are weeks when it becomes hard to take care of yourself. I’m sure that if I did though, the week might have been just a little bit easier. Let’s keep that in mind for next week.
