The Complete Artist's Way: Creativity as a Spiritual Practice (30 page)

As we become aware of our blocking devices—food, busyness, alcohol, sex, other drugs—we can feel our U-turns as we make them. The blocks will no longer work effectively. Over time, we will try—perhaps slowly at first and erratically—to ride out the anxiety and see where we emerge. Anxiety is fuel. We can use it to write with, paint with, work with.

Feel: anxious!
Try: using the anxiety!
Feel: I just did it! I didn’t block! I used the anxiety and moved
ahead!
Oh my God, I am excited!

WORKAHOLISM

Workaholism is an addiction, and like all addictions, it blocks creative energy. In fact, it could be argued that the desire to block the fierce flow of creative energy is an underlying reason for addiction. If people are too busy to write morning pages, or too busy to take an artist date, they are probably too busy to hear the voice of authentic creative urges. To return to the concept of a radio set, the workaholic jams the signals with self-induced static.

Only recently recognized as an addiction, workaholism still receives a great deal of support in our society. The phrase
I’m working
has a certain unassailable air of goodness and duty to it. The truth is, we are very often working to avoid ourselves, our spouses, our real feelings.

In creative recovery, it is far easier to get people to do the extra work of the morning pages than it is to get them to do the assigned play of an artist date. Play can make a workaholic very nervous. Fun is scary.

“If I had more time, I’d have more fun,” we like to tell ourselves, but this is seldom the truth. To test the validity of this assertion, ask yourself how much time you allot each week to fun: pure, unadulterated, nonproductive fun?

For most blocked creatives, fun is something they avoid almost as assiduously as their creativity. Why? Fun leads to creativity. It leads to rebellion. It leads to feeling our own power, and that is scary. “I may have a small problem with overwork,” we like to tell ourselves, “but I am not really a workaholic.” Try answering these questions before you are so sure:

The Workaholism Quiz

1. I. I work outside of office hours: seldom, often, never?

2. I cancel dates with loved ones to do more work: seldom, often, never?

3. I postpone outings until the deadline is over: seldom, often, never?

4. I take work with me on weekends: seldom, often, never?

5. I take work with me on vacations: seldom, often, never?

6. I take vacations: seldom, often, never?

7. My intimates complain I always work: seldom, often, never?

8. I try to do two things at once: seldom, often, never?

9. I allow myself free time between projects: seldom, often, never?

10. I allow myself to achieve closure on tasks: seldom, often, never?

11. I procrastinate in finishing up the last loose ends: seldom, often, never?

12. I set out to do one job and start on three more at the same time: seldom, often, never?

13. I work in the evenings during family time: seldom, often, never?

14. I allow calls to interrupt—and lengthen—my work day: seldom, often, never?

15. I prioritize my day to include an hour of creative work/play: seldom, often, never?

16. I place my creative dreams before my work: seldom, often, never?

When we are really honest with ourselves we must admit our lives are all that really belong to us. So it is how we use our lives that determines the kind of men we are.

CESAR CHAVEZ

17. I fall in with others’ plans and fill my free time with their agendas: seldom, often, never?

18. I allow myself down time to do
nothing:
seldom, often, never?

19. I use the word
deadline
to describe and rationalize my work load: seldom, often, never?

20. Going somewhere, even to dinner, with a notebook or my work numbers is something I do: seldom, often, never?

In order to recover our creativity, we must learn to see workaholism as a block instead of a building block. Work abuse creates in our artist a Cinderella Complex. We are always dreaming of the ball and always experiencing the ball and chain.

There is a difference between zestful work toward a cherished goal and workaholism. That difference lies less in the hours than it does in the emotional quality of the hours spent. There is a treadmill quality to workaholism. We depend on our addiction and we resent it. For a workaholic, work is synonymous with worth, and so we are hesitant to jettison any part of it.

In striving to clear the way for our creative flow, we must look at our work habits very clearly. We may not think we overwork until we look at the hours we put in. We may think our work is normal until we compare it with a normal forty-hour week.

One way to achieve clarity about our time expenditures is to keep a daily checklist and record of our time spent. Even an hour of creative work/play can go a long way toward offsetting the sense of workaholic desperation that keeps our dreams at bay.

Because workaholism is a process addiction (an addiction to a behavior rather than a substance), it is difficult to tell when we are indulging in it. An alcoholic gets sober by abstaining from alcohol. A workaholic gets sober by abstaining from overwork. The trick is to define overwork—and this is where we often lie to ourselves, bargaining to hold on to those abusive behaviors that still serve us.

In order to guard against rationalization, it is very useful to set a
bottom line.
Each person’s bottom line is different but should specifically mention those behaviors known to be off-limits. These specific behaviors make for more immediate recovery than a vague, generic resolve to do better.

If you really have no time, you need to make some room. It is more likely, however, that you have the time and are misspending it. Your time log will help you find those areas where you need to create boundaries.
Boundary
is another way to say bottom line.) “Bottom line, I will not _______.” That is your boundary. See Setting a Bottom Line in this week’s list of tasks.)

As with creative U-turns, recovery from workaholism may require that we enlist the help of our friends. Tell them what you are trying to accomplish. Ask them to remind you gently when you have strayed off your self-care course. (This will backfire if you enlist the help of people who are active workaholics themselves or who are so controlling that they will overcontrol you.) Bear in mind, however, that this is
your
problem. No one can police you into recovery. But in some parts of the country Workaholics Anonymous meetings are springing up, and these may help you enormously.

One very simple but effective way to check your own recovery progress is to post a sign in your work area. Also post this sign wherever you will read it: one on the bathroom mirror and one on the refrigerator, one on the nightstand, one in the car.... The sign reads: WORKAHOLISM IS A BLOCK, NOT A BUILDING BLOCK.

DROUGHT

In any creative life there are dry seasons. These droughts appear from nowhere and stretch to the horizon like a Death Valley vista. Life loses its sweetness; our work feels mechanical, empty, forced. We feel we have nothing to say, and we are tempted to say nothing. These are the times when the morning pages are most difficult and most valuable.

The life which is not examined is not worth living.

PLATO

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.

JALAL UD-DIN RUMI

During a drought, the mere act of showing up on the page, like the act of walking through a trackless desert, requires one footfall after another to no apparent point. Doubts sidle up to us like sidewinders. “What’s the use?” they hiss. Or “What do you expect?” Droughts tell us that they will last forever—and that we will not. A haunting anticipation of our own death, approaching long before we’re ready for it, long before we’ve done anything of value, shimmers ahead of us like a ghastly mirage.

What do we do? We stumble on. How do we do that? We stay on the morning pages. This is not a rule for writers only. (The pages have nothing to do with writing, although they may facilitate it as they do all art forms.) For all creative beings, the morning pages are the lifeline—the trail we explore and the trail home to ourselves.

During a drought, the morning pages seem both painful and foolish. They feel like empty gestures—like making breakfast for the lover we know is leaving us anyhow. Hoping against hope that we will someday be creative again, we go through the motions. Our consciousness is parched. We cannot feel so much as a trickle of grace.

During a drought (during a
doubt,
I just accurately wrote with a slip of the finger), we are fighting with God. We have lost faith—in the Great Creator and in our creative selves. We have some bone to pick, and bones to pick are everywhere. This is the desert of the heart. Looking for a hopeful sign, all we see are the hulking remains of dreams that died along the path.

And
yet
we write our morning pages because we must.

During a drought, emotions are dried up. Like water, they may exist somewhere underneath, but we have no access to them. A drought is a tearless time of grief. We are between dreams. Too listless to even know our losses, we put one page after another, more from habit than hope.

And yet we write our morning pages because we must.

Droughts are terrible. Droughts hurt. Droughts are long, airless seasons of doubt that make us grow, give us compassion, and blossom as unexpectedly as the desert with sudden flowers.

Droughts do end.

Droughts end because we have kept writing our pages. They end because we have not collapsed to the floor of our despair and refused to move. We have doubted, yes, but we have stumbled on.

In a creative life, droughts are a necessity. The time in the
desert
brings us clarity and charity. When you are in a drought, know that it is to a purpose. And keep writing morning pages.

To write is to
right
things. Sooner or later—always later than we like—our pages will bring things right. A path will emerge. An insight will be a landmark that shows the way out of the wilderness. Dancer, sculptor, actor, painter, playwright, poet, performance artist, potter, artists all—the morning pages are both our wilderness and our trail.

FAME

Fame encourages us to believe that if it hasn’t happened yet, it won’t happen. Of course,
it
is fame. Fame is not the same as success, and in our true souls we know that. We know—and have felt—success at the end of a good day’s work. But fame? It is addictive, and it always leaves us hungry.

Fame is a spiritual drug. It is often a by-product of our artistic work, but like nuclear waste, it can be a very dangerous by-product. Fame, the desire to attain it, the desire to hold on to it, can produce the “How am I doing?” syndrome. This question is not “Is the work going well?” This question is “How docs it look to them?”

The point of the work is the work. Fame interferes with that perception. Instead of acting being about acting, it becomes about being a famous actor. Instead of writing being about writing, it becomes about being recognized, not just published.

We all like credit where credit is due. As artists, we don’t always get it. Yet, focusing on fame—on whether we are getting enough—creates a continual feeling of lack. There is never enough of the fame drug. Wanting more will always snap at our heels, discredit our accomplishments, erode our joy at another’s accomplishment.

Truly, it is in the darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.

MEISTER ECKHART

The unconscious wants truth. It ceases to speak to those who want something else more than truth.

ADRIENNE RICH

Real learning comes about when the competitive spirit has ceased.

J. KRISHNAMURTI

(To test this, read any of the many fan magazines—
People,
for instance—and see if afterward your life somehow feels more shabby, less worthwhile. This is the fame drug at work.)