Tasks I Forgot About While NOT Walking in This World

Peonies in the front garden this morning

As I think about the week ahead I'm trying to chose some small thing as an artist's date.  Yeah, I'm still reading Walking in This World, but for me they should have titled this book Not Walking in The World in One Easy Step: Don't Bother At All.  Sounds good? 

Before I went on to the next chapter in "Not" Walking, I revisited these suggested tasks to combat the feeling of restlessness.  Sometimes we don't know what we feel like doing, where to go, how to proceed in our creativity and elsewhere.  Nothing feels right and we need to be alert to experience that change.  It's like an itch we can't scratch, but somehow ideas snap up.  Mind you, if we sit in front of the easel and wait to scratch the itch it may never happen.  Art does not exist in a vacuum.  The answer, according to this course, seems to lie in artist's dates where we can get a breath of fresh air and recharge. 

Here's the list of tasks I forgot about:

1. Visit a quiet church and sit in the back for a few minutes.  Sitting tucked in a pew brings calm, humility and a sense of faith.
2. Visit a large plant store or greenspace which can give a sense of another world where plants can show us their secret life.
3. Visit a forest or a park to sense a difference rhythm of life.
4. Seek out a fine Oriental carpet store for a sense of the sacred in the patterns.  This will remind us of the beauty in our own life.
5. Drop in a travel shop for a sense of adventure.  An imaginary trip could be strangely calming. 

I'm going to add one more to this list which is to visit a large book store or the library, two of my favorite places.  The library is even better if it's large, quiet and has stacks I can hide in so I can grab a pile of books and flip through them sitting on the floor. 

Chosing one of these tasks is on my agenda this week.  I'll let you know when it happens...or not.