Tandaan

---

Recovering a sense of Connection

“We turn this week to the practice of right attitudes for creativity. The emphasis is on your receptive as well as active skills. The essays, exercises, and tasks aim at excavating areas of genuine creative interest as you connect with your personal dreams.”

---

Week 7 Tasks

1. Make this phrase a mantra: Treating myself like a precious object will make me strong.

---

2. Listen to an album, draw as you do.

---

3. Take yourself into a sacred pace

---

4. Create one wonderful smell in your house

When reading this, I immediately thought to put on an incense. It’s a scent that reminds me of such a specific time of my life. At the start of lockdown I was looking to be very very spiritual in a sort of crystal and manifestations and meditation sort of way. I get reminded of the jewellery I was making, the space I lived in, the creativity I had at that time, and how crazy it is just how much my life has changed in a few years – how my own spiritual perspective has shifted in a few years.

My favourite part about that time in my life was I was very motivated to do things. My partner and I wrote a short film together! Something we talk about missing and wishing we could do together again.

I think reminders of different time in our life can be very good, sometimes nostalgia serves as motivation. Motivation from the reminder of how far we’ve come, and motivation to regain the things that we’ve forgotten we loved.

---

5. Wear your favourite item of clothing for no special occasion

---

6. Buy yourself one little wonderful, comforting, self-loving something.

---

7. Collage! Collect images that reflect your life or interests, as a form of pictorial autobiography. Include your past present and future.

To sort of know what to even pull together, I decided to list a few key things about my past versions of myself!

So the top row is myself through the years, from childhood in the Philippines, to my party uni phase, then my mature uni phase, and finally is myself as I am right now~ I loved as well the shoe-style evolution through the years! I thought it was cute.

Then the bottom layer is my future as I hope it to be. A bright, warm, woody home. A bookstore where my book is for sale and on display. An art studio, open and bright and filled with my creations, pair with ceramic works, and a exhibition pop up where people are gathered to explore, experience and absorb my art!

---

8. Quickly list five favourite films! Are traces of this in your collage?

1. The Wonder: a very artsy feeling film, a slow story, emotional, mysterious, so interesting to me!
2. Parasite: another artsy film that’s more subtle about its artsy-ness. I love to watch it and observe the film-making!
3. Lucy: Love how it makes me question time, and human capability, and just everything.
4. The Gorge: look I love horror that’s a mysterious, rough, sci-fi-but-still-on-earth type of movie. I love that it shows the monsters instead of obscuring them like most horrors.
5. Mad Max: Love a good old post-apocalyptic setting! A dusty world where you have to fend for yourself, something about it is so enticing.
6. Blade runner 2045: I don’t watch many cyberpunk movies, and I really need to. I love imagining high-tech, low-life world settings, again, incredibly enticing to immerse myself in.

Yes! The Mad Max and The Gorge with its rough feel are in those black boots, Lucy and Blade Runner are in the chrome objects mixed with earthy tones, fashion, cameras, nightlife, and technology, it all feels cyber-sci-fi! Parasite you can see in those humble beginnings of the filipino Sari-sari store and the more elevated living room in the future section.

---

9. Name five favourite topics to read about. Are these topics in your collage?

Let’s change this to “research about”, because I don’t really read. I look up things on Pinterest and watch YouTube, that’s about as much reading as I do… Let me list some of these topics that I always dig into on my feed.

1. Interior design: people’s exploration into optimising spaces or visual aesthetics
2. Video games: horror/zombie games, survival games
3. Art styles: in painting, line art, and character art
4. Clothing/bags: unique patterns and textures
5. Humorous videos: Just lighthearted content, a fun person talking about a light topic. I’ve learnt to stay away from drama channels and instead stick to more lighthearted channels.

Yes I’d say so! Mostly interior design interest, and art haha.

---

10. Give your collage a place of honour.

I’ve stuck my collage bellow my computer monitor! It’s been really nice to see these photos just there as I work. I wonder how much they’ll influence my next few days and weeks.

---

The Jealousy Map, an exercise

I’ll have to do this one privately!

---

Archeology, an exercise

In attempt to search for the buried parts of myself, I have to complete these phrases;

1. As a kid, I missed the chance to join a school play! Would I be more confident if I had?
2. As a kid, I lacked practice in my native tongue. Once moving to NZ, we unfortunately decided to only speak English at home so us kids would learn it quickly for school, but this resulted in us losing that important connection to our culture.
3. As a kid, I could have used more confidence in my voice and words. I thought I wasn’t very smart growing up, so I never tried to be. It really hindered a lot of my education, I only had faith in my art. I might be a stronger writer than I am now if I had a bit more faith in myself earlier in life.
4. As a kid, I dreamed of being an artist! I never had a direct definition, if I was painting or drawing or what, but I knew I would be an artist.
5. In my house, we never had enough …
6. As a kid, I needed more meaningful friendships.
7. I am sorry that I will never again see my childhood home as I remember it.
8. For years, I have missed and wondered about …
9. I beat myself up about the loss of …

And now, I have to take positive stock of what good I have in the present;

1. I have a royal friend in …
2. One thing I like about my town is it’s quiet and safe to walk down the street. There is lots of birds and I love hearing them sing and play in the trees. There are lovely little restaurants and bars, and equally lovely people will be there.
3. I think I have nice
4. Writing my Morning Pages has shown me I can immediately answer questions that I assumed I didn’t have an answer to.
5. I am taking a greater interest in photography! My little camera has me so obsessed with grabbing photos of things! It makes life just a little bit more interesting again, seeing things from a new lens if you will!
6. I believe I am getting better at painting! I didn’t think it was a direction I’d really take far, but now I’m seeing it differently than I have before!
7. My artist has started to pay more attention to meaningful moments in life. Paying attention to synchronicities and pleasant details.
8. My self-care is improving. I’m paying more attention to my inner artist, and make note of when I am neglecting her and working to change my patterns.
9. I feel more inspired to change my life trajectory!
10. Possibly, my creativity is

And finally, I’d like to make note of big-little changes I’ve made in my life which I credit to this course:

• Got a camera! Born is a new interest in photos, documenting my life in a low effort and low pressure way, able to print them in my little printer and put them straight into a photo album.
• Displayed my art again! Motivating me to keep painting, with a clearer vision of my path!
• Keen to write a forgotten story of mine! I’d made note of a dream in my Morning Pages, the story was so good that it got me back into writing my book!!
• A realisation of my dream life, my vision for it becoming clearer and clearer. Incredible, I was never brave enough to voice these words (on paper) to myself, and now I finally have! I’ll share it more with the world soon, but first I will be taking some action privately, solidify my standing first before I share it with anyone else yet. Her prompt of “If I didn’t have to do it perfectly, I would try…” somehow it just brought it out of me, I asked myself in perfect most ideal life, remove the worry of success (in this ideal life, we succeed even when imperfect), remove the worry of money (in this ideal life, whatever we imagine ourselves doing is successful and is the origin of the money we need), what would I want to be doing? I can’t believe I have an answer, I’m refining it each day at the moment!

---

Week 7 check-in

The Artist’s Way has questions for me to answer specifically in my check ins, let me answer them now!

How many pages did I keep up with in my morning pages? All my pages! Hard work man

Did I do my artist date this week? No 🙁 no talking around it, I didn’t do it… it’s very hard for me to do! The work week keeps me busy.

Did you experience any synchronicity this week? What was it? I feel like I have forgotten to make note of synchronicity! I can’t name any… next week I’ll pay attention!

Were there any issues significant for my recovery? No! I had great fun this week, I was able to paint a few times in the week after work, and at the end of the week I went to a big art fair with my brother!

The art fair was so incredibly inspiring. It was incredible to see different art, with different mediums and styles and techniques and stories. It was also incredible to pay attention to the teeny-tiny, big-money price tags next to some paintings! It’s amazing to image myself being able to pay off half a year of rent just by selling a painting… And it isn’t commission, like this is a painting the artist wanted to paint, they decided the style, the colours, the composition and the topic, and it gets bought?? Even with big price tags? It’s amazing, it’s motivating! This is something real, I just walked through hundreds of art where this is what the artists do. It reminds me that yes there ARE many incredible artists already in the scene, but there will never no be space for new artist, and there will always be buyers for art.

I brought my tiny camera to grab photos of the art, and my camera was so small that it just wasn’t capturing the art well enough in the wide shots. I decided to do close up shots, cropping the art to the elements I found most interesting. The restriction of the camera forcing me to reframe the artwork turned out pretty cool!

Also, I ended up in the city quite a few times this week! Here are my “street photography” photos that I took! I feel myself getting braver and braver with pulling out my little camera