Reading deprivation

The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron, is a beloved guide for creative recovery. In addition to Cameron’s famous morning pages and weekly artist dates, each chapter takes wayfarers through a weekly teaching on how to search for and step fully into a creative life.

I’m winding my way through it imperfectly and at a snail’s pace. So, it takes me about a month to complete a “weekly” lesson. Still, I’m doing it and had been feeling fairly confident (maybe even a little smug?), when I encountered something truly alarming:

A week of reading deprivation.

“Warning,” Cameron says up front, “do not skip the tool of reading deprivation!”

This book may have my number.

Cameron argues that constant input and distraction overwhelm and block our own creative expression. My more enlightened self agrees, recognizes this common struggle in myself, and aspires to the art of noticing. I was nodding along, earnestly.

“For most blocked creatives, reading is an addiction. We gobble the words of others rather than digest our own thoughts and feelings, rather than cook up something of our own.” - Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

My regular, not-so-enlightened self, on the other hand, was appalled. I was so repelled, so thoroughly resistant, so immediately anxious that I knew I needed to try.

Of course I failed.

Even with a modified approach to allow some work reading, I struggled. Despite no fewer than 18,000 youth baseball games to keep me occupied (I see you, Little League parents), I still sought out distraction.

I squirmed and scooted and scallywagged my way into reading more than I intended. Defying both the rules and the spirit of the experiment, I turned to my phone way more than I want to admit. I was rebelling hard, and, more to the point, floundering.

Even so, it was good for me.

I had to admit to myself that I suck at being bored.

I relearned how to fall asleep without a book.

I actually felt my FOMO. It genuinely saddens me that I can’t read everything I would like in one lifetime.

I noticed a few patterns around how, when, and why I seek distraction.

Best of all, I caught a glimmer of the stories that I sense are mine to tell.

“Our reward will be a new outflow. Our own art, our own thoughts and feelings, will begin to nudge aside the sludge of blockage, to loosen it and move it upward and outward until once again our well is running freely.” - Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

Being a wide and curious reader is a great thing. However, like most strengths, overuse can generate an opposing weakness.

In my forties, I’ve become aware of my strong preference for divergent thinking. It took me decades to appreciate that vs. feeling like a failure who couldn’t specialize. Now I see this as a gift to celebrate and handle with care. In the next phase of my work, I hope to leverage it with more selective convergent thinking. The two modes—divergence and convergence, going wide and focusing down, facing out and turning in—belong in a dance together.

I wish I could wrap this story in a tidy bow for you, but it remains a work in progress over here. Instead, I will leave you with Cameron’s assurance, below. To me, it is both quiet enough and sturdy enough to be (just maybe, fingers crossed, I can almost see it!) true. And I’m actually a little excited.

“But what will we do?” comes next… If you are not reading, you will run out of work and be forced to play. You’ll light some incense or put on an old jazz record or paint a shelf turquoise, and then you will feel not just better but actually a little excited.”
- Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way