This past week, as part of The Artist’s Way, I had a week of media deprivation. According to Julia Cameron, media deprivation means no reading, tv, podcasts, emailing, texting, no internet, etc. The concept is that when we are constantly interrupted and inundated with information from other sources, our own creativity doesn’t have a chance to show itself. It makes sense in theory but when I read that chapter that introduced it, I immediately channeled David Rose.
Of course, the no reading really had me up in arms. I couldn’t even fathom going a week without reading. Just the thought had my body entering into a fight or flight response. I found it interesting how my body revolted. It let me know in no uncertain terms that it was not a fan of this idea.
Deprivation Allowances
To get my nervous system on board, I made a few allowances. I allowed myself five minutes of non fiction reading in the morning. This media deprivation was not going to break my 1022 day reading streak. Plus, I figured that since I typically read over two+ hours a day, five minutes might as well be none. My morning book happened to be The Book of Joy. I was almost finished with the book, so my five minutes consisted of their joy practices.
After the first day or so, I didn’t really limit my texting much either. I tried not to have my phone handy so I wasn’t checking as much and didn’t initiate, but I responded when people texted. I made this allowance because I felt really isolated. While, the whole idea is to free up brain space by limiting exposure to others, I found that between not being about to be around my family much in the evenings when they watched tv, not being on social media, and not playing any of my games, I wasn’t feeling freed. I was feeling anxious.
I also allowed myself to look up crochet stitches or instructions for creative endeavors I was undertaking.
Crochet Projects
Some projects did get completed this week. I finished a few crochet projects (that just happened to check off a Proper Mountain Woman badge.) I started out making a wine bottle cozy, but ran out of the yarn, so it ended up being a can cozy.
After that I switched gears and started on a mug cozy. That pattern didn’t start with a magic ring, so it was already as easier project and it came together pretty quickly. To make it more Fall, I added a pumpkin. Here is the pattern I used for the mug cozy and the pumpkin.
Over the weekend we took a trip to see my Dad in Oklahoma. That road trip was a pretty big hurdle in the whole ‘no reading’ challenge as we usually listen to audiobooks any time we are in the car for more than an hour. We went old school and listened to music during the drive.
To help pass the time, I pulled out the new yarn I planned to use for the wine bottle cozy. The yarn was a tangled mess that took me almost the entire 5 hours to get it untangled and rewound! It took forever, but it ended up a good meditative activity.
It wasn’t until we were on the way home that I actually began on the wine bottle cozy. The magic ring gave me fits like normal, but once I got going the double crochets added up quickly. I love how it turned out. Here is the pattern I used for the wine cozy and sunflowers (and the can cozy, I just stopped after a few rounds).
Organization Projects
One more allowance I gave myself: I could be in the room with the tv on as long as people were watching sports and I was working on something. This let me still be with my people since we drove 5 hours to see them. I don’t usually watch football anyway, so I didn’t feel like I was stretching the rules too much.
The project I worked on while in Oklahoma involved downloading photos from the cloud, deleting duplicates, and sorting by date onto an external hard drive. I took Miss Freddy’s Backup Bootcamp course ages ago and use the steps/programs she taught every few months. I hadn’t done it in a while, so it took a minute to download everything and then run all the programs. It was the perfect project to do while being able to engage with my family (and ignore football). It felt really good to have that completed.
My other organization project occurred at work. Our workroom had become overrun with therapy materials and toys. Games and books were stacked everywhere and the shelves were in a state of disarray. I looked up about halfway through and seriously questioned what I was thinking. The clean floor and organized shelf made it all worth it in the end.
Final Thoughts
So, do I feel like the week of media deprivation increased my creativity? Not really.
It could be that all my allowances let in too many of the distractions that the media deprivation should’ve culled.
I don’t think so though. I spent most of the week in this state of low level anxiety and restlessness, and not the productive kind of restlessness. It was the ‘can’t focus’ kind with too many hours to fill. I felt like I always had to be doing ‘something’ creative which made everything seem forced and kind of manic. Projects were being done for the sake of doing them, not because I felt any creative drive propelling me to complete them.
There were just too many hours to fill. In previous seasons of my life, chauffeuring kids, sports, and school took up most of my time. I feel like a week of media deprivation during that time wouldn’t have been so daunting because there was less time to free up. We are basically empty nesters at this time so we have an abundance of time. We’ve also spent a lot of time cultivating our lifestyle to fulfill us now that we don’t have the boys to keep us busy. I already had a lot of time to devote to creative pursuits so adding more due to no media was just overwhelming.
The feeling of isolation was unexpected. I am an introvert and typically love my alone time, but I found through this process that I like to be in control of when I separate myself from others. During the week I felt sequestered away, which added to my low level anxiety instead of freeing me to let my creativity loose.
My main goal in working through The Artist’s Way is not to increase overall creativity, because I feel like I’ve got that covered. I specifically wanted to unlock creativity in regards to my writing, and unfortunately I haven’t felt much benefit yet. While I really didn’t want to do the media deprivation, I was holding out hope that I would wake up with all the writing ideas. I guess it did prompt me to write this blog post so maybe it helped more than I’m giving it credit for!
Ultimately, I’m glad I did my version of the media deprivation week. Maybe I’ll try it again sometime.
I had a somewhat similar experience. Can’t wait to chat about it with you. YOU are such a talented writer!