Why you should do The Artist’s Way

(especially if you feel like you don’t have the time)

Hey Neighbor!

It’s raining here, my exact favorite kind of weather. I hope that whereever you are that the weather is doing well too.

I’m writing you because it is coming up on the year anniversary of me completing the artist’s way, and coming up on the two-year anniversary of my father’s passing. I’m sure your wondering what these two things have to do with one another. One is a success and the other a great loss.

Well, for me neighbor these two things are very much one in the same. You see, when I first started the Artist’s Way it was exactly 4 weeks before my father passed. I know that it was four weeks because when my father passed I remembered looking at looking at the title: Recovering a Sense of Integrity, and feeling completely defeated. Honestly, showered. Coming off recovering a sense of power in the previous week had me deeply in my feels as I witnessed what was happening to my father. I am grateful for having made it to week four, because week three gave me the strength to do the last rites for my dad. I’ve talked about this before, but my father was a big man and the coroner was unable to carry him. So me, and my French teacher from undergrad turned coroner, and a Victor Van Dort looking motherfucker were the one that had to remove him from the house.

This is something my mother is very proud of me for, and I suppose in some way I am proud of myself too, but primarily i am bitter because despite my father being clean carrying his lifeless vessel made my hands shrivel and die, and disconnect from my mind. My hands are my most useful manifestation tool, and they were then and there cut off from my spirit of creativity who had subsequently curled up in the dark small void behind my heart and told me that they wanted to be left alone.

My father was a poet something that we had in common, and there was nothing poetic or romantic about his death. To this day I still lack the words to properly explain or explore what it was like to watch him die, and to bury him beneath the earth.

This as you can imagine manifested ion a large creative block which of course was exactly what I needed in the middle of my MFA program. A program where I did nothing but write creatively, and study creative writing all day every day. I was cornered trapped under the weight of the my own machinazations.

Now, not to be presumptuous but I’m sure you’re wondering what this all meant for me. I was stuck, I was grieving, and I had given up on the artist’s way before I had really even given it a chance. I didn’t even make it to the half way mark.

During this time I also realized that the business I was running—a publishing house— was actually sucking the life out of me and mostly filled with people who secretly hated me or wanted to steal my business out from under me. I am not being hyperbolic here. Only two people other than my IntiMate were actually good people. Which is insane.

However, I don’t want to digress too much from my point here. Which is that at the time of my father’s death I was overwhelmed in all directions and as such shucked away the idea of ever completing The Artist’s Way. I looked at the course as a poison meant to distract me from what was really important: distracting myself from work.

The irony here is that the same thing I was blaming was actually the curative that I needed. For a whole nother year, I buried my self in my work both educational and publishing. Meetings, Readings, and Assignments covering up ever broken part of me with whiteout until I could rewrite something new. I had ideas, but it was as if I could no longer remember how to execute them.

How do you make a sentence when you do not see meaning in the words that make it up? How do you infer meaning in a scene that does not evoke emotion? The answer is you can’t or you don’t or in my case you do but its not very good. You become obsessed with feedback and other people’s ideas because it is easier to write what you are told then to tell yourself what to write. Even though it feels wrong, it feels foreign, even when it is begging you to be creative.

So,after a year of banging my head against the brick wall of creative abscense, I woke up one evening to the moon streaming through my window sill, the glow lighting up the dust floating in the air and something else. The Artist’s Way. It sat on my book shel glowing under the gaze of the moon and I was reminded that I had abandoned so much of me when my father died.

So, I started the book the next day. I was diligent for the first few weeks. Doing my morning pages before I even took my morning shit. MY artist’s date the highlight of my week. I kept it my secret. Close to my chest, and I blasted through week 4 when it came determined to leave the ache of my father's death behind me, but then I hit week 6. Recovering A Sense of Abundance. It was here that things began to become tough.

I close my business. Took a break from TikTok. I had an increase in clients, I was also finding myself outsourced to artist’s markets to help my friend. Abundance had come for me, and it was a spiritual test to insure that I was committed.

Morning pages became Evening Pages, and the weekly Artist’s date transformed into homework dates. I read all through the media break. I had assignments after all,. And the deeper I went into adapting to The Artist’s Way the more I found myself feeling lost confused. What had I started this journey for? Am I really showing up authentically.

I started to say no. Turn down responsibilities I would usually take on. I changed my schedule around to focus on writing. I centered my art, and by doing that I centered myself. Slowly my self deprecating thoughts, and passive suicidal urges disappeared and my mind was quiet.

I’d forgotten who I was trying to be, and I just was. Something I hadn’t done before my dad got sick. I was vulnerable. I was scared. But I kept on doing the work, and eventually I was on Week 12. Finishing the Artist’s Way which had in my learning become Hues’s Way.

All of this to feel empty blank, like I was made up of nothing.

But then, something amazing happened.

That nothingness made room for me.

Without realizing it the Artist’s Way made room in my life for me.

It set a schedule that worked best for me.

While I was still not feeling creative (yet), but there was room for me to feel safe.

And slowly but surely my inspiration returned as I continued to walk the path that I was able to carve for myself.

This is what the Artist’s Way can do for you. And if you are feeling like you don’t have the time, don’t have the space, do it anyway. It will help you make the space.

May Fortune Smile Upon You, and Love Light Your Way

Hues