spring rain smells like life change

The problem with being a cradle catholic is no matter how many times you denounce the catholic church, no matter how far you stray from the golden hue of the vatican’s theological grip, no matter what you even personally believe now, being baptised in the church means that you are eternally a catholic (according to the theology). You can be a fully practicing jedi knight and the church will still be able to claim you amongst their number. To them you are one of the saved souls that will be in whatever number they claim as their active church goers until they have your death certificate. 

Because of this, I spent a significant part of my life spending my springs giving up the things I love and changing things about myself in deference to a god I never really liked. Since moving on from the church, I still find spring is when I feel the undeniable urge to commit to significant change. It may no longer be in the name of lent but I can feel the siren song of commitment to change pulling me further into the sea. 

This year, that looks like picking up the artist’s way – a book that has at the very least gifted us Doechii. I tried to get into this, like, three years ago? I was living alone and quite literally the most depressed I have ever been, and just could not make myself see the good in any future situation when the book came into my life. I have moved on from that (thank the gods) and now desperately need to knock myself into the next phase of pushing myself to follow my creative path. I have so many ideas, so many projects I want to work on all at once, and am absolutely overwhelmed by the magnitude of what I want to do and the reality of how my life currently looks. 

For some insight, I work in a hospital as a nursing assistant at the moment so three to four days a week I am being annihilated by my job and then whatever free time I have I try to use the most of to work on all these things. I just finished my first and last run of five days in a row and I truly haven’t felt this physically exhausted in a long time. I need to get out, I need to actually do what I want and the last five days proved to me that I have started to get comfortable and that needs to stop. 

There are a myriad of underlying systemic problems that I cannot fix with a spunky attitude and the perfect playlist, but there are problems (read: my horrific habits and the inability to focus on one thing at a time) that I can fix with both of those things. I have an extensive library of playlists, and while I am currently so tired I cannot feel my hands, my attitude will align itself. 

So this is week 0. The prologue. The Fool stepping off the cliff and into the unknown with the sun on his back and a smile on his face. I read the introductory material and thank the gods I have recently become obsessed with journaling in the morning. Most of the first bits of the book are about what to expect, and Julia Cameron really impresses into the reader a few things: 

1. Get really comfortable with the marriage of the creative and the spiritual, because they are intrinsically linked. 
2. No, seriously, if you do not have some universal force that you do no believe in get fucking comfortable with believing in the Creator.
3. You will write your morning pages, and you will treat them as devotionals to yourself and your innate creativity. 
4. You will be spending time with your inner artist and you will be connecting with them and you will accept that there are some wounds that you will simply have to get through when it comes to this particular step. 
5. Most people go through the five stages of grief throughout this process. Get some tissues, grab some chocolate, and trust that there is healing on the other side. 

Cameron takes significant time to warn you that committing to this is something real, something that will not work if you do not actually put in the effort and want it to work for you. In order to make this commitment as really real for myself as I possibly can, I will commit every week to writing a little something here and posting some sort of video about it. The second thing is the truly scary bit for me – I can write and pretend that I am merely screaming into a vast cavern which feels cathartic, while posting anything involving my face and voice means that I am a person on the internet who is real? Yikes. 

It is, however, on my list of things that I want to do. I really miss the part of academia that was getting lost in whatever it was I was studying (yes it was humanities), and then pouring all that into writing something and talking about it until I got sick of it. I am convinced that video essays will scratch that particular itch, but the last time I threw a video together I was getting graded on it. I need to get better about my own commitments that I make to myself – I find it incredibly easy to take on commitments for the people in my life, and have yet to fully see through one that I make to myself. Picking up this book that most people consider to be a cry for help feels like a step in the right direction, no matter how hokey and embarrassing some of the work will be. 

As I write this, it is an incredibly sunny day and I have the windows cracked so I can listen to the birds sing while I type. It’s one of those pre-equinox days where you can physically feel the shift from winter to spring and I can feel the shift from deprivation in deference to abundance with joy. It currently feels like a small crack in my chest, right in the center. I have plans, goals, and with spring in the air I will finally be able to take a step further into the sunlight. Onto week one and some actual work.