Welcome back to another Sunday.

🤤 I'll be taking you deeper with me into my very visceral journey into creativity, as I start this 12 week course-in-book I just started reading: The Artist's Way

📖 Julia Cameron's cult-classic book provides a path to recover the creative self which we somehow lose in life.

✨ Only 1 week in, and I can assure you that this is good stuff. It's smack at the fulcrum of inner work, creativity and spirituality that I have been craving.

👨‍🏭 Expect shorter and more guttural posts, as I focus my creative channeling towards completing my first compiled work in the next few months!

🎙️ Also happy to announce that 6 episodes of the Gumpcast season 2 have been recorded. Can't wait to share these new installments with you when ready!

Week 1: From My Artist’s Journal

The first thing the book did for me was help me untangle the concept of God from my inner problems with religion.

According to her, God is simply a creator, and when we create we are in contact with God. That's it.

That feels right to me, when I write - especially when I write well- it really seems channeled. It's like someone whispers things to me. Weird but true.

It makes sense why the Greeks worshipped the Muses, but that is a story for another time. You can be sure that the Musing about Muses is coming at you one upcoming Sunday.

The Basic Tools of the Artist’s Way

1- Morning Pages:

This entails 3 pages of automatic writing in the morning. The idea is to let all our demons or the 'Censors' of our creativity out on the page.

It's amazing how we can all do that, and how effective it is.

✅ I did my morning pages for 12 days in a row now. I feel lighter and more prepared to create everyday. So this thing works!

2- Artist’s Date:

This is about taking yourself -alone- to a place that your inner child would want to be in.

✅ For me it turned into a 4 hour hike to the redwoods and back. Something I've been wanting to do since I moved to Oakland.

We played a game of writing poems using the words on park benches. That was a lot of fun!

It is always fascinating what happens when I let the inner kid play.

👇 Below is one of many poems that came to me on that trip.

Other activities in my creative recovery that I’ve accomplished last week:

• Remembering a shameful first public speaking experience and how I felt like I let my father down. Realized that this is more alive for me than I expected.

• Revisited childhood memories of friends abandoning me, and how that stifles my freedom of expression through fear. Cleared that shit out too.

• Reflected on my biggest creative advocates -Paul and Khaled- being the most active and oldest voices in my life, alongside my sister and my grandpa. I wrote down something’s they told me about my writing on a Post-It that I keep where I write.

• Found a keyboard and acted out a fantasy of mine of playing with Pink Floyd as part of the band. I played Hey You with Roger Nick and Dave. The crowd went wild.

• Been in conversation with God. He has improved my writing dramatically. Sankis God, as we say in the Middle East.

• Started working on a small collection of Poems that seem to really want to come out of me. This will be my first complete writing work. Beta reader requests will be sent out soon!

End result:

I feel like I'm on a clear path towards my first published work, and feel much more confident in my ability to continue working on the novel regardless of how long it takes.

Also psyched for week 2!

Till then here is a poem that is still in draft mode, inspired by my Artist’s date in the woods.

Rest & Nourish -

A poem to help you be still for a damn second

Rest here and Nourish
    your spirit, among 
        these Redwood elders. 

Trees once so big
    they were landmarks
         for ships in the ocean. 

In only 60 
    first years of the
        19th century

The vast sea of skyscraper plants
   were cut down to a 
       small pond of stumps. 

All that is left are seeds 
    of that Greatest ever 
         Generation. 

So just sit your ass
   and relax,
        and enough doing. 

All that is left
    Is for you to 
        Be seated 

and Grateful that 
   you're still 
        breathing. 
 
Let these trees
   pinch You
     with reality's miracle. 

See you next Sunday 🎪