If you're doing AW and you're at week four, you'll know about the 'reading deprivation' task. I'm still reading from the 1990s version of this book and I wonder if it's been updated for newer audiences, since a more relevant take on this today is probably 'social media deprivation' which is how I'll be doing that this coming week.
Since I'm completing each chapter over two weeks instead of one, I decided to use the second week to try this out. I know at least one of you is at the end of your 'deprivation' week and I'm looking forward to hearing about how it's going.
It's interesting that at about this time of pulling back attention from the noise, I've settled on a new book called Deep Work, by Cal Newport. All about focus I'm told. I'll how it goes. I'm curious at how the further I get into this exploration of my creative landscape, the louder the question gets: who am I? Creatively, in the world, who am I? Maybe this week, away from the social media shoutscape of who everyone else is, I might figure it out.
Hi! Yes! Reporting from the trenches. I was TERRIFIED by this exercise and this week was hard, but also wonderfully worthwhile.
And yes, I called it a media fast and tailored it to my life:
- I deleted instagram, facebook and games (solitaire) off the phone.
- I reduced all apps and web browsing to what I need for work. I do need insta for marketing/ PR, but it can wait a week.
- I kept WhatsApp because I need it for daily work and decided connection with friends felt good and supportive, but...
- I downloaded an app to block my phone use between 6 and 7am when I write morning pages.
- and I put message tones on silent so that I wouldn't be disturbed by messages if I am busy with something.
- and obviously no books and also no movies/ series, no news, etc.
- I also, very importantly, committed to a 30 day challenge of doing the morning pages every day, without fail. I was patchy with it until a week ago.
So, while working, no problem – it helped productivity. However, it became very, very challenging at the end of the day when I need to unwind and the way that that has always happened is with some sort of media. So on the first evening I sat at home, alone, in silence saying “WTF now!?” for a while, and then sulked and then complained. A lot.
“I can’t be creative when I’m this tired!!!” “This must be for people who don’t actually work!”
Phone calls with partner and friend - which were crucial. I needed support and they encouraged me. Friend suggested colouring in to wind down. I didn’t like that idea, but then remembered how I started drawing mandalas in hard lock down, so I committed to her to doing that and did until I fell asleep. I then showed her and partner the next day and they kindly said Well Done, that’s great. Yay, dopamine! 😊 Anyone can see them too - perhaps this tool is useful for others in AW4. I will put them on my personal Instagram when I’m allowed onto it again: Annwen Mazetti Art – not sure the exact address now.
The Yield:
LOTS, besides the physical mandalas created.
I found a useful thing to fill pages with is either dreams from the previous night or gratitude. Both are great mines of inspiration. The dreams are helping to reveal deeper movements of the psyche which I’ve not been tuned into and the morning pages means I’m now listening and working through them. The themes are often to do with my relationship with the creative process. They are also becoming clearer and somehow more archetypal. They’ve inspired me to action like discussing things with my partner that wanted expressing, to creative effect.
The mandals are playing a role of not only being an easy-access, pleasing, relaxing form of creative expression, but also a place to work through stuff and used by therapists for that.
I also had that buzzing thing come up, Tanya. A sort of localised amnesia which had me dissociating and having to reread pages and track back over trains of thought. It came up with my relationship with commitment. Critic voices saying “You’re going to fail. Don’t bother. Don’t risk disappointing/ disappointment. Long covid has damaged your brain and you can’t do this.” (this may have been the something or other I knew I was avoiding last week) So, I tapped on it (EFT - emotional freedom technique, not the dance) and found that a great resource. I got through to surrender and a prayer:
Dear God, please take this (possibly damaged, certainly chipped) vessel and use it to the best of its ability, for as long as it can be useful and provide beauty, joy, refuge, relief, respite. I understand that my confusion is a sign to rest my will, to surrender my control and nevertheless keep moving. The covid “damage” can be an aide to help me surrender and loosen my grip on ownership. Not my will but thine be done.
Strength to you Tanya as you begin your week. I hope something in this helps and I can't wait to see how it goes for you!
Oh I love this! And thank you for sending through the image of your mandala! It's absolutely stunning – both as a piece of heart work and as an object. The two aren't correlated often so when it happens it's really awesome. And my god, you went far more hectic than I'm planning to go! For me, it's:
- No Insta, Facebook, Twitter. I can scroll endlessly on these. I took FB and Twitter off my phone in 2015, but Insta's stayed and I've had to pull myself away from it in the morning. I could spend – confession time – maybe two hours just scrolling. Shit. I mean. What the fuck? I'm over this now, but still.
– Reading isn't a problem for me since I don't use it as a form of escape (which I used to do), so I might still read in the bath
– Now don't laugh: I'm allowing myself one hour of TV a day. hahahahaha is that cheating? Maybe. I might rethink that.
For me the attraction to the noise happens in the morning, during the day and before bed. (scroll scroll scroll) ... It's helped that I turned all other notifications off on my phone and laptop a while back; but moving away from social media has raised something for me about social proprioception and the role sm plays in setting that through projection and feedback.
When you pull away from that maya, there is a gap, right? a space that opens up as you unhook from that collective. it's been a confusing time for me because I know sm plays an important role in a career, networking and brand-building sense, but since I moved away from Dorothy Black and stopped engaging so much I'm not sure what to bring to that space anymore and why or how ... so i just scroll and scroll and waste the platform. I'm hoping that through this process I'll not just find what my framework is, but how to position it with the outside.
The matter of working with long covid is an eye-opener to me. It sounds like you're taking the only position one can if inner peace is a priority. That's quite a journey though and I'm sorry it's one you're having to face. As for EFT! I use it occasionally and am always surprised at how well it works – and then equally surprised when I realise I've simply forgotten it as a technique!
Thank you so much for what you said about the mandala... made me cry.
Re: EFT - yes, I've known of the practice maybe 20 years and usually forget to use it and then use it and I'm amazed. It's as if being in a panic short circuits the awareness of the tools to deal with panic.
And yes, re media/ social media - the next question for me is: How to engage in it with deliberate discernment? Definitely looking forward to the next episode of The Last Of Us!
Neil Gaiman, he of sexy voice and literary enchantment said this in a podcast interview with Tim Ferris and I thought of it a lot this week:
“I would go down to my lovely little gazebo, sit down, and I’m absolutely allowed not to do anything. I’m allowed to sit at my desk, I’m allowed to stare out at the world, I’m allowed to do anything I like. As long as it isn’t anything.
I’m not allowed to do a crossword, read a book, phone a friend…all I’m allowed to do is absolutely nothing, or write.
But writing is actually more interesting than doing nothing after a while. You’ve been staring out the window now for about 5 minutes, and it kind of loses its charm. And you’re going ‘Well actually, might as well write something.’
love it. the older i get the more I love just sitting and gazing though. when i was kid i couldn't understand how old people could just sit and stare for what felt like hours. now I get it. those folks were in the zone, just being. and it's a super gift. god i can't wait to get to my next story. You know, my biggest wish right now, is that my creative energy isn't spent building other people's business portfolios. gah.
If you're doing AW and you're at week four, you'll know about the 'reading deprivation' task. I'm still reading from the 1990s version of this book and I wonder if it's been updated for newer audiences, since a more relevant take on this today is probably 'social media deprivation' which is how I'll be doing that this coming week.
Since I'm completing each chapter over two weeks instead of one, I decided to use the second week to try this out. I know at least one of you is at the end of your 'deprivation' week and I'm looking forward to hearing about how it's going.
It's interesting that at about this time of pulling back attention from the noise, I've settled on a new book called Deep Work, by Cal Newport. All about focus I'm told. I'll how it goes. I'm curious at how the further I get into this exploration of my creative landscape, the louder the question gets: who am I? Creatively, in the world, who am I? Maybe this week, away from the social media shoutscape of who everyone else is, I might figure it out.
Hi! Yes! Reporting from the trenches. I was TERRIFIED by this exercise and this week was hard, but also wonderfully worthwhile.
And yes, I called it a media fast and tailored it to my life:
- I deleted instagram, facebook and games (solitaire) off the phone.
- I reduced all apps and web browsing to what I need for work. I do need insta for marketing/ PR, but it can wait a week.
- I kept WhatsApp because I need it for daily work and decided connection with friends felt good and supportive, but...
- I downloaded an app to block my phone use between 6 and 7am when I write morning pages.
- and I put message tones on silent so that I wouldn't be disturbed by messages if I am busy with something.
- and obviously no books and also no movies/ series, no news, etc.
- I also, very importantly, committed to a 30 day challenge of doing the morning pages every day, without fail. I was patchy with it until a week ago.
So, while working, no problem – it helped productivity. However, it became very, very challenging at the end of the day when I need to unwind and the way that that has always happened is with some sort of media. So on the first evening I sat at home, alone, in silence saying “WTF now!?” for a while, and then sulked and then complained. A lot.
“I can’t be creative when I’m this tired!!!” “This must be for people who don’t actually work!”
Phone calls with partner and friend - which were crucial. I needed support and they encouraged me. Friend suggested colouring in to wind down. I didn’t like that idea, but then remembered how I started drawing mandalas in hard lock down, so I committed to her to doing that and did until I fell asleep. I then showed her and partner the next day and they kindly said Well Done, that’s great. Yay, dopamine! 😊 Anyone can see them too - perhaps this tool is useful for others in AW4. I will put them on my personal Instagram when I’m allowed onto it again: Annwen Mazetti Art – not sure the exact address now.
The Yield:
LOTS, besides the physical mandalas created.
I found a useful thing to fill pages with is either dreams from the previous night or gratitude. Both are great mines of inspiration. The dreams are helping to reveal deeper movements of the psyche which I’ve not been tuned into and the morning pages means I’m now listening and working through them. The themes are often to do with my relationship with the creative process. They are also becoming clearer and somehow more archetypal. They’ve inspired me to action like discussing things with my partner that wanted expressing, to creative effect.
The mandals are playing a role of not only being an easy-access, pleasing, relaxing form of creative expression, but also a place to work through stuff and used by therapists for that.
I also had that buzzing thing come up, Tanya. A sort of localised amnesia which had me dissociating and having to reread pages and track back over trains of thought. It came up with my relationship with commitment. Critic voices saying “You’re going to fail. Don’t bother. Don’t risk disappointing/ disappointment. Long covid has damaged your brain and you can’t do this.” (this may have been the something or other I knew I was avoiding last week) So, I tapped on it (EFT - emotional freedom technique, not the dance) and found that a great resource. I got through to surrender and a prayer:
Dear God, please take this (possibly damaged, certainly chipped) vessel and use it to the best of its ability, for as long as it can be useful and provide beauty, joy, refuge, relief, respite. I understand that my confusion is a sign to rest my will, to surrender my control and nevertheless keep moving. The covid “damage” can be an aide to help me surrender and loosen my grip on ownership. Not my will but thine be done.
Strength to you Tanya as you begin your week. I hope something in this helps and I can't wait to see how it goes for you!
Oh I love this! And thank you for sending through the image of your mandala! It's absolutely stunning – both as a piece of heart work and as an object. The two aren't correlated often so when it happens it's really awesome. And my god, you went far more hectic than I'm planning to go! For me, it's:
- No Insta, Facebook, Twitter. I can scroll endlessly on these. I took FB and Twitter off my phone in 2015, but Insta's stayed and I've had to pull myself away from it in the morning. I could spend – confession time – maybe two hours just scrolling. Shit. I mean. What the fuck? I'm over this now, but still.
– Reading isn't a problem for me since I don't use it as a form of escape (which I used to do), so I might still read in the bath
– Now don't laugh: I'm allowing myself one hour of TV a day. hahahahaha is that cheating? Maybe. I might rethink that.
For me the attraction to the noise happens in the morning, during the day and before bed. (scroll scroll scroll) ... It's helped that I turned all other notifications off on my phone and laptop a while back; but moving away from social media has raised something for me about social proprioception and the role sm plays in setting that through projection and feedback.
When you pull away from that maya, there is a gap, right? a space that opens up as you unhook from that collective. it's been a confusing time for me because I know sm plays an important role in a career, networking and brand-building sense, but since I moved away from Dorothy Black and stopped engaging so much I'm not sure what to bring to that space anymore and why or how ... so i just scroll and scroll and waste the platform. I'm hoping that through this process I'll not just find what my framework is, but how to position it with the outside.
The matter of working with long covid is an eye-opener to me. It sounds like you're taking the only position one can if inner peace is a priority. That's quite a journey though and I'm sorry it's one you're having to face. As for EFT! I use it occasionally and am always surprised at how well it works – and then equally surprised when I realise I've simply forgotten it as a technique!
x
Thank you so much for what you said about the mandala... made me cry.
Re: EFT - yes, I've known of the practice maybe 20 years and usually forget to use it and then use it and I'm amazed. It's as if being in a panic short circuits the awareness of the tools to deal with panic.
And yes, re media/ social media - the next question for me is: How to engage in it with deliberate discernment? Definitely looking forward to the next episode of The Last Of Us!
And another thing!
Neil Gaiman, he of sexy voice and literary enchantment said this in a podcast interview with Tim Ferris and I thought of it a lot this week:
“I would go down to my lovely little gazebo, sit down, and I’m absolutely allowed not to do anything. I’m allowed to sit at my desk, I’m allowed to stare out at the world, I’m allowed to do anything I like. As long as it isn’t anything.
I’m not allowed to do a crossword, read a book, phone a friend…all I’m allowed to do is absolutely nothing, or write.
But writing is actually more interesting than doing nothing after a while. You’ve been staring out the window now for about 5 minutes, and it kind of loses its charm. And you’re going ‘Well actually, might as well write something.’
That was always — and still is…my biggest rule.”
love it. the older i get the more I love just sitting and gazing though. when i was kid i couldn't understand how old people could just sit and stare for what felt like hours. now I get it. those folks were in the zone, just being. and it's a super gift. god i can't wait to get to my next story. You know, my biggest wish right now, is that my creative energy isn't spent building other people's business portfolios. gah.
*I* can't wait for your next story :-) !