Our guest blogger Marilyn gets honest, real and a little crazy in Week 4 – but finally gets to call herself an artist. Read on:

Marilyn says:

“Your old life has crashed and burned; your new life isn’t apparent yet.  You may feel yourself temporarily without a vehicle. Just keep walking.”

Yes, yes and yes. This week has been particularly tough.  You want truth and honesty?  Boy I got it.  The morning pages have been telling me straight, and I’ve had to face up to some clear truths – I need to have courage of my convictions, I need to get out more, I need to start living MY life.

When I read the exercise to address the situation where you are still stuck, I thought ‘That’s not me’… until I did the morning pages and they told me otherwise.  Those things that were ‘OK’ I’ve had to admit I’m not fine with, and I now have to do something about it.

I have felt very emotional this week, positive and energetic one minute, then angry the next with stabs of sadness in between (and I’m wondering why DH is approaching with caution, a quizzical look on his face…). Mostly I’ve felt incredibly fragile as the new me emerges. I’m very conscious to protect it and keep it safe.  I think Julia Cameron describes it best as the ‘place between bafflement and faith’.

Ok let’s get to the biggie, Reading Deprivation.  Sunday I don’t think it really sank in and I found myself languidly flicking through the free Sainsbury’s magazine reading about food intolerances…when bang!  It hit me that I wasn’t meant to be reading at all.. and definitely not this.

Monday saw me half crazed, scrubbing the house from top to bottom in a cold turkey frenzy.  By Tuesday I was exhausted and looking longingly at tube adverts (‘go to confused.com and save yourself a bicycle’ over and over again).  But I have held out, steadfastly refusing my usual diet of internet surfing, crap telly and reading shampoo bottles.

It has been worth it.  I’ve had so much more time, and more time to THINK.  Instead of surfing online, spiralling down the black hole of time wasting, I’ve looked around me and noticed the present. I’ve focused on one activity at a time.  And my mind has doodled and meandered around the paintings in my head and a story I’d like to tell.

To my utter astonishment, I’ve had many moments of serendipity this week just gifted to me when I actually make the effort to get out of the door.  I’ve been asked to write an article, been offered some work, met a good friend that somehow I haven’t seen for 8 years.  All those miraculous helping hands that Julia Cameron talks about are so effortlessly happening, I just have to make one step in their direction.

And for the first time ever, I’ve been able to say, quietly, I am an artist.