The Artist's Way: Week 10

     

Oh boy. I felt so much resistance to this week's The Artist's Way. I kept opening the book, seeing the words "overwork" and "competitiveness", then slamming it promptly shut. When I finally made myself read the chapter, I was thunderstruck. How did she know what was going on in my head?

Workaholism

The dominant theme of this week is workaholism. Actually, it's more broadly about our drugs — the things we use to block ourselves the moment the going gets good. Food, alcohol, actual drugs, sex, and romantic obsession count among these for some. 

We tend to experience these habits not as choices, but as things that "coincidentally" happen to us. You know. Like, oh, I meant to do X but it just so happened that he or she texted me or I got hungry or a last-minute work thing came up.

Among the drugs we use to procrastinate on what we mean to do, overwork is probably the most common one. Workaholism is particularly evil because hardly anyone sees it as a negative thing. I mean, just the thought "my professional achievements have impeded my creative growth," kills me with embarrassment. It's an admission of failure as a functional person in late capitalism (that is, a hustler).

Doing the workaholism mini-quiz, I realise how freelancing has made things worse, sort of. After I quit my job, I had expected to work less. But freelance work easily becomes the atmosphere you live in. The work is theoretically infinite: if you're not working on paid assignments, then there's always more you could be doing, from taking new headshots for your LinkedIn to self-marketing to endless admin.

Houseworkaholism?

Even though I burned out early on and managed to avoid the whole freelancer merry-go-round, my overworking tendencies have spilled over to the home front. 

Instead of reflecting and writing, I procrastinate by chopping vegetables and cleaning. This is not the genial pottering-about-the-house it sounds like. No, my housework is reactive, anxiety-fuelled, piecemeal and slipshod. The instant I sit down to write something important, I feel the dishes in the sink screaming at me, urging me to get up, not let things slide. 

And now I've realised that the "scream" from the kitchen sink is entirely from within. I am the one who allowed myself to follow these impulses, so there's only me to blame when Important Things don't get written down.

I told Jon that all this busywork allows me to continue the narrative of "I'm a busy therefore good person", which gives me a legitimate reason to be a creative failure. He laughed and said maybe it's not that deep; maybe it's just my own form of procrastination. Which... might also be also true.

Bottom Lines

Having identified your problematic, self-blocking (or procrastinating) behaviours, we're meant to go on to set Bottom Lines for ourselves. These are specific, quantifiable (thus enforecable) rules. "I will not take work calls after 6pm" is good; the vague "I will take less work calls" is not.

Domestic labour is endless, especially with up to 6 pets in the house. As for cooking, you needn't even wait for the dishes to dry before you can get more ingredients to chop up. 

I sometimes look wistfully at my pets' food and wonder why eating isn't as simple as opening a can or a bag of hay. But now I realise that's a silly thought. If I want a life with less kitchen labour, all I need to do is eat outside like a normal person!

My problem area is around the house, in 3 areas specifically: cooking, pets, and cleaning. So I've created Bottom Lines for them:

• Do bare minimum pet chores in the morning & pre-bedtime. (Max. 15 minutes)
• Complete bulk of pet chores in the afternoon, before I head out for the day.
• Eat lunch outside every weekday and take away food for dinner.
• Designate 1 day per week for all housework including buying groceries.

I think having a part-time job actually does help. Scarcity does make me more careful about using (not abusing) my time. I go to work 4 evenings a week. It's easy to restrict myself on those 4 days where time is limited: I cannot afford to cook or clean or do other fiddly things; they are strictly for writing, reading, and yoga.

As for my 3 days off: 1 day is for domestic labour (housework, groceries, cooking). The remaining 2 days are for fun and/or meaningful things, like spending time with Jon or visiting friends. 

Week 10 check-in

Morning pages: 5/7. There were 2 days where I wrote truncated morning pages, but I managed to pick things up again after this lapse.

Artist date: Wow, this might sound embarrassing, but my artist date for this week was on Wednesday evening. There was nowhere I needed to be. So after work, I hung out in town, looked at UK travel guides and colouring books and things I could buy for myself, and went shopping. I decided to replace my 2 rattiest and grossest T-shirts with 2 new ones. Also, after some hesitation, I decided to buy myself an ice cream sandwich and eat it while looking at Christmas shoppers bustling about with their large paper bags. 

Issues this week: This week, one of the guest bunnies had GI stasis. I could barely sleep, I was SO SCARED he was going to die. For those 2 days, my life was just syringe-feeding and hunting for his elusive poo. Luckily he recovered and is now safely back home.