Check In:
How many days this week did you do your morning pages? How was this experience for you?
6.5. I woke up a little late one day this week and had to do my pages from the office a few hours after waking up. I think that it was better to do it that way than to skip the day. I only ended up writing like a page and a half before I felt like people were watching me. Overall the experience is still good. I don’t think my “radio” is working, and I wonder if I’ll continue after week 12. But so far so good.
Did you go on your artist date this week? What did you do? How did it feel?
I took myself to the Halloween store yesterday. I’ll be working through Halloween proper so once again I’ll be missing out on the fun, but I liked walking through. Their home decor section is really stepping up and has some things that I totally would use to decorate my everyday space.
As sort of a part 2 I ended up visiting with a friend and playing board games late into Sunday morning. While by definition this doesn’t exactly count as a date since I did it with other people, I’m still counting it as it was something that brought me out of my usual day to day schedule.
Did you experience any synchronicity this week? What was it?
Actually yes, I did. So one of my “I want to_______” statements from week 2 (that didn’t really get mentioned in the blog) revolved around the idea of romantic relationships and wanting to move towards having one in my life. Because of the massive delays in my trip home, I was offered a travel voucher that was right at enough for a round trip plane ticket to spend some time with someone that has been in my life since college, and truthfully is the only person with whom I even have any sort of remotely romantic relationship with (or the possibility of such). I’m working out my schedule to go visit this person sometime very soon.
Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant to your recovery? Describe them.
There were a couple of exercises this week that I chose to skip.
The first one asked me to describe myself at 80 and it wanted me to specify what I did in my life between 50-80. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. I barely know what it’s like to be 30, much less to be 50 or even 80.
The second wanted me to write a letter to my 8 year old self, and to be honest I’m not even sure I have any positive concrete memories of 8. I’ve worked very hard to block out large parts of that time for my own sake.
If you broke your media deprivation write about how you did it. How do you feel about it? Why?
The deprivation lasted about a day. And I’m really not sure how to feel about it. I certainly wanted to make it the whole week. And I’m a little ashamed that I couldn’t make it. But I found that I when I completed all the work for my day job that I quickly became bored and all I wanted to do was read about photography related things and try to learn more. I wanted to stretch my creative wings, even though I was in a place where I couldn’t for several hours in a stretch.
I understand why we were asked to fast, it does really truly show how much time is wasted doing things that don’t really push us forward. But at the same time, reading and learning for me are helpful to keep the gears turning and moving forward. I already have removed one social media account from my phone, and find the others mostly constructive so they can stay. But I do agree that sometimes, time can be better served doing vs reading.
