Last night I had my first meeting of book club. I met Lisa, a fellow Humane Society volunteer, at gift wrapping over the holidays. She invited me to join, and I took her up on the offer. She is friends with Kristal, who (I believe) works with Melody, who invited her to join. I think Melody also works with Aleta (I think that's her name), who brought her friend Cassie for the first time last night (*sidenote: Aleta and Cassie met at a Buffy group!). Melody did an Artist's Way course in 2006 with Kathy, and they formed the base of the book club, and thus leads us to the current selection: The Artist's Way.
In a nutshell, it's kind of a self-help book to unblock your creativity. It's certainly not something I would just pick up on my own, but I'm actually kind of excited to work my way through the "course." It's a 12-week program, and we'll be meeting every two weeks to discuss. The core of the process is daily pages and artist dates. Meant to dispell all the crap from your brain each morning before you begin your day, the daily pages are just three pages of freehand, free-thought babbling that should help you feel less blocked throughout the day. An added bonus for me will be the help actually getting up in the morning. I plan to start this... tomorrow! Yeah! Tomorrow! The artist dates are weekly "dates" you take with yourself to do something creative or naturey or just plain thoughtful. Spending 20 minutes on the beach alone (I wish!), going to an art gallery, visiting a garden, scrapbooking! I've already got two lined up: my cheese class, and Melody suggested, as a paper fan, that I visit Hollander's in Kerrytown and check out all the paper.
In addition, each week has a chapter to read, followed by a list of tasks. We're meant to do the one task that we we really want to do and also the one we really don't want to. I haven't gotten that far yet, so I don't know what kind of tasks I'll be doing. But I think it'll be good.
The whole thing oozes of cheese, but it could also be helpful and fun. I need something to get me out of this lump stage. I love love love working from home, but I find myself falling into the do-nothing-but-sit-on-the-couch trap. I love to do my scrapbooking, but I hardly ever venture downstairs. I love to take photos; I used to love to write. Now the most I do is make lists (although dammit, I love to make lists). I've long since given up the hope of being a real writer (I peaked when I was published in 12th grade! ha ha), but I still like to do it, and writing news blurbs at work doesn't quench the thirst. Thus, this blog. But I still feel lazy about that even. So here's to a creative 2008... To 12 weeks of inspiration, getting off the couch, getting crap done, and hopefully reawakening a teeny part of my brain that closed up long long ago.........
PS. The first meeting itself was fun! I'm the newbie so I mostly just listened, but everyone was super nice. And Melody, the host for this particular book, made stew and carrot cake! Yum! Can't wait to see what she whips up for our next meeting in two weeks!
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