This week I completed Julia Cameron’s Walking in This World. I’ve been reading a compilation of three of her books, beginning with The Artist’s Way. About halfway through the first book, I decided to document the second one here on the blog—not only for myself, but also for anyone interested in the book and in following along with my personal creative journey.

This week focused on personal responsibility in our creativity, self-respect, resilience, and the willingness to start anew. I’m beginning to feel like starting anew is one of my specialties.

This week took a deeper look at friendships and relationships as they relate to our art. I’ve always been a strange mix of introvert and extrovert, but when it comes to my art, I find myself leaning heavily toward the introverted side.

This chapter showed up exactly when I needed it.

I’ve been feeling a little off lately in a way I’ve had trouble defining. A bit lost, a bit irritable, hopeful, and fearful—all at the same time. I get this way from time to time, when I’m not quite sure what I’m doing and feel like I should have figured it out by now.

As has happened before, this week’s tasks took me a bit longer than seven days. And as in the past, I’m giving myself grace to understand that the timeline isn’t as important as the tasks themselves.

Week 7 focused on small, doable actions and examining procrastination as a creative block. We all have that list of things we need to do that seems to just keep growing, and I feel like mine has grown significantly since leaving my job and trying to figure out what comes next.

This week focused on self-nurturing by counteracting and neutralizing toxic inflow. It also explored the importance of not sharing your work too soon—or with the wrong people.

Full disclosure: I was not feeling it this week. I had a cold and was just feeling a little run-down from all the travel and having several things on my plate, but I persisted and completed week 5 anyway. I felt disconnected while completing most of the tasks overall.

Week 4 focused on creating a greater sense of freedom, open-mindedness, self-acceptance, and self-expression. 

Typically, this is where I would go off the rails and proclaim “I’ll pick it back up when things go back to normal.” But this time I’ve chosen to keep moving. It may not be perfect, and a few things may not get done, but I am not going to quit altogether. I have decided to take it one day at a time and do the best I can. That alone is a step in a changed direction for me.

This week's focus was on identity, transformation, and becoming larger. As children, we often have many dreams of what we will become. Over time, those dreams are either nurtured or extinguished by the world around us. I recall dreaming of becoming an actress, dancer, model, photographer, singer, and lawyer, just to name a few. But I never truly felt that most, if any, of those were attainable dreams. Was this because I was never fully nurtured to pursue anything? 

Since the purpose of this blog is to document my own journey in creativity, spirituality, and life in general, I decided to start a blog series for the second book in the collection called Walking In This World. I just completed Week 1.