THE ARTIST’S WAY II
After twenty years in a creative career, you’d think I’d be used to the unpredictable nature of the weather. But recently, something shifted beneath me - suddenly and without warning - and I found myself questioning everything I thought I knew about the direction of travel.
In moments like that, I think of Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. After the trauma of being buried alive, she doesn't scream or demand an explanation. She simply walks into a café and calmly asks:
“May I have a glass of water, please?”
There is a dignity in her response. A simple, necessary gesture. A determined forward motion. Sometimes the only control we have is in the grace of our reaction.
The truth is, there is a constant friction between creativity and the mechanics of survival. When your livelihood depends on how the world responds to your creative output, the pressure of money inevitably shapes the hand that creates. I’ve felt that weight. I’ve taken on projects just to keep the lights on, and I’ve watched beautiful ideas wither in the dark simply because I didn't have the financial capacity to feed them.
Early on, a book on creative practice introduced a metaphor: a table with many legs, each supporting the whole if one falls away. This really struck me and I’ve since shaped my life around that principle - making sure that I have several income streams so that if one dropped away I would still be standing.
When I started selling screen prints or painting murals for the cost of the materials, I wasn’t just building a "business model." I was rooting myself in many directions at once, trusting that if one root hit a rock, the others would still find water.
In the early days, I moved through a different rhythm to most people around me - one that often felt unsustainable, even when it was leading somewhere. Slowly, the answers arrived: my creative work began to sustain me, the other jobs fell away, and at last I was living entirely from my practice - the life I had once only dreamed of.
Even now, there are mornings when the horizon is still. Between the chapters of a long career, there are gaps that feel like a leap of faith. Fear is a quiet, draining companion; it makes you want to retreat. And sometimes, that’s okay. Step back. Sit with the silence.
But not for too long.
At some point you must reach for that glass of water, dust yourself off, call a friend who believes in the possibilities of life and start pushing forward. The right people don’t require your life to look perfectly stable to stand beside you; they don't confuse a difficult chapter with a flawed foundation.
During these weeks I have been continuing the morning pages and weekly tasks in the Artist’s Way. Using each day as a stepping stone to the next and creating the building blocks for stability: the quiet practice of staying grounded when the world gets loud. It’s the act of returning to the work, even when the ground feels uncertain.
Three pages of longhand writing with my trusty biro. A way of clearing the static before the day begins, even if the map hasn’t been drawn yet.
That is a stillness we have to build for ourselves, page by page and day by day.
This week, Julia Cameron describes art as “the act of tuning in and dropping down the well. It is as though all stories, painting, music, performances in the world live just under the surface of our normal consciousness”
I find myself in a season of new beginnings. I’ve dropped down the well and I’m taking to the studio not to find immediate answers, but to work out what comes next.
Stability is trusting that a difficult season is just a chapter, not the whole story. We are not failing; we are simply "living the questions" until, one day, we find we have lived our way into the answer.
And on that note, I’d better head to the studio.
