The Artist’s Way, Week One: Dating Myself

About every five years I decide to embark on a mission to get through The Artist’s Way.

I never finish it. But this time, I’m going to. This time, I’ve got my besties around me, and we’re going to DO THIS.

It’s all a part of my distract-myself-from-the-harrowing-truth-of-reality plan for 2010. Between my current “realistic health kick” (going strong, holla), The Artist’s Way (which lasts for the next 12 weeks), the writing workshop I’m going to take at Green Gulch Zen Center next weekend, and the 10-week Buddhist course I’m starting in February (at Spirit Rock), I ought to be good.

I know I sound like a freak. I sound like one of those people who is always doing something for fear of ever having to spend five minutes alone with themselves. And I will admit that may be a little bit of what’s going on for me right now.

I took this photo in Peru in 2006. It was a desolate rainy day in the Sacred Valley, but so cozy inside the bus. Rain is quite lovely when experienced from the right perspective.

Then again, I did spend all last Sunday by myself. I spent the morning reading on my lovely hand-me-down makeshift-cushioned couch (thank you Anna Fischer). I took a field trip to the library and renewed my library card and took out a book called Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (which I obviously chose sheerly for the title). I went to a matinee of a movie no one else would ever want to see with me, for good reason—The Lovely Bones. I took Christy Brown’s transcendently amazing yin yoga class at YogaWorks (a place I hate to promote because I know from inside experience that they really only care about your cash money, but Christy is the real deal and, in my opinion, the most underrated yoga teacher in the greater SF area).

It was really quite the insular, peaceful, calming rainy Sunday.

The Artist’s Way instructs you to go on what’s called an Artist’s Date once a week. The rule is, you have to do it by yourself, and you have to do something outside of your normal box.

So, I’m greatly looking forward to blocking off the next 12 Sundays to date myself. One of the things I forgot that’s so  wonderful about being single: getting to spend time with the only person in the world who likes to do exactly what I like to do, all the time: ME.