Weeks Since the HRC Has Called Texas Out on Harmful Policy: 0

Again.  This time, Gov. Abbott and Attorney General Paxton are out to harm transgender youth and the family members and medical professionals who support them.  From Texas Signal:

After Ken Paxton issued an attorney general opinion classifying certain procedures or medications for trans children as “child abuse,” Abbott followed up with his own directive to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS). Abbott’s letter to the head of DFPS orders the agency to investigate any claim of gender-affirming care as “child abuse.”

This is hardly the first time the Texas GOP has put policy into place attacking transgender youth.  See also this article from The Texas Tribune: “Trans kids and supporters say new Texas law will keep them out of school sports”

So, I’ve written up another postcard to ask Abbott, Paxton, Lt. Gov. Patrick, and any GOP state senator or representative what they intend to do when harm comes to transgender youth directly because of their recent actions.  Update them, use them as is, print them, share them: just make sure your voice is heard.

Oh, and, there’s an election this fall.  Just a reminder….

Invitation for my Fellow Radio Enthusiasts

Hello after yet another long stretch away.  Life has been, well, busy in the last year, so I haven’t blogged much, but I do plan to do so in 2022, particularly in the run up to November here in Texas….

One of the other projects I have been working on is Postcard Panorama, which is like a listener mailbag program but focused on themes instead of programs or broadcasters.  We’ll be going out on shortwave and YouTube starting January 1st.

The first theme is “In with the New.”  I’m looking for radio “origin stories” from enthusiasts, how you got started as a listener, hobbyist, content creator, or broadcaster.  I’m also looking for what your radio-related plans are for the new year.  You can interpret the themes pretty loosely, so anything goes.  I’d love to have more stories from progressive radio geeks (we exist!).

So if you’re into any aspect of radio–all bands, all tech, all formats–and you’d like to submit a story for me to read on air and/or post on our website, visit https://www.postcardpanorama.com

I’ll also have news about my other shortwave program, Short Waves / Short Poems early next year, too.

FtB Mothers Day Anthology: Tradition

As part of the FtB Mother’s Day Anthology, here is a science fiction flash story, “Tradition.”  Also, it’s a day late, because of technical difficulties….  Anyhow, I hope you had a good May 9th, however you chose to spend the day.

Tradition

by T.D. Walker

As soon as the baby arrives, she can breathe in that deep hollow way she couldn’t for the last few months. So there’s that breath.

And then the baby’s first breath, first cries. He’s cleaned, medicated, diapered, and wrapped in a soft blanket that the nurses remove when they lay him in her arms. Predictable, neat, orderly.

Her husband grins, red-faced, breathless. The same as last time. Almost. This time, his graying hair sticks to his forehead. Wrinkles trellis his eyes. Hers too. She passed her fortieth birthday years ago. They spent the last weeks of her pregnancy planning his fiftieth.

They: she, her husband, and their twelve-year-old daughter. Their daughter, that’s new, isn’t it? Now their daughter waits beneath the holodome her tablet casts around her. She watches videos while clutching her grandmother’s hand in one hand, clutching the teddy bear she loved to the point of needing repair in the other. The bear was a gift from her now-gone grandfather. The bear will be a gift for the new baby. So there’s that.

She snuggles the rooting baby. This moment. So many that will come: the first steps, first words, first day of school. Soon, she’ll have his newborn pictures done, and she’ll send out the announcements. And then the thank you notes for all the little traditional soft gifts he’ll receive–the blankets, wraps, and hats–though the house can keep the tiny space the baby occupies at a steady 74 degrees.

And later, they’ll see the baby’s traits in one family member or another. Her dark hair, her husband’s gray eyes. Her mother’s ears, her late father’s high forehead. Just as they had done for their daughter. Just as her parents had done for her.

But it wasn’t the same, not entirely. Not the pregnancy. Elderly multigravida, her chart said. Elderly. Strange word. The odd, happy looks from family and friends. The confused look from their daughter who didn’t believe her mother could get pregnant again. Or should.

She did the quick calculation after the positive pregnancy test–there was another custom–she’ll be 49 when the baby starts kindergarten, 62 when he graduates. Will there be enough time? Her husband will be 54, 67. Will that leave them enough time?

They were healthy. The doctors said that again and again: if they conceived so late, they were healthy. Could look forward to long lives. More traditions: those milestone birthdays and anniversaries. Retirement parties. Long days of leisure in their empty nest. Grandchildren. Their daughter, inspired by her brother’s imminent arrival, announced the name of her years-off future child, the same name for a boy or a girl. So not grandchildren, but a grandchild. Their daughter knows. Their daughter understands.

Their daughter, who’ll be 34 when her brother graduates from college. When he’ll be shipped off planet. First children are for Earth, later children for the stars. Something noble in that, all that exploration, isn’t there? There were no laws, just the tradition of it. The cryosleep, decades and decades of it, before they reach wherever it was they aim for. Her son will be 22, she’ll be 66, her husband 71. Not so old.

Not so old that the memory of him will diminish too soon. She knows parents who eagerly and at such young ages had second and third children, only so see their daughters and sons shipped off. No laws, just a binding to tradition. Those many long decades of wondering. Where will their children wake? When will their children wake? And the terrible thought they all return to, whether their children wake?

No, she won’t think about it. No, not now, not during these precious first moments. She watches her son sleepily pull away from her, sink back into her arms. That first sated nap. So much could have gone wrong, but it didn’t. Here is this perfect baby, perfect in spite of his parents’ advanced age.

She’ll have all the time she needs to give him; they’ll have time, together, as a family. Her age, it gives her perspective, doesn’t it? Makes her more grounded. She won’t repeat the mistakes she made with her daughter. She’s calmer now, more sure of herself. This is just how it goes with second children, isn’t it? She’ll be better at capturing and cherishing those traditional moments this time. Her age won’t stop her from that. Months ago, someone asked if she regretted waiting so long to have her second child. As if she won’t have time to give to her son. She has time. She finds herself saying that again and again. She has time. She and her husband both. What she couldn’t say then, what she doesn’t want to say now is that she has the time to give him here on Earth. But after he leaves, how long then? How long will she pause on the balcony of her flat, looking up, unable to see the stars but knowing him among their presence?

He’ll wake. He’ll wake wherever, whenever he arrives. They’ll all be long gone then, won’t they? She and her husband, their daughter, their grandchild. He’ll have to make his own traditions then, he and all the other young people he wakes with. They’ll manage some new welcome on opening their eyes again, breathing in the world they’ve come to, fragile, uncertain, but so wonderfully full of possibility.

Q&A with FTB Blogger Megan Rahm, Author of Free to Roam: Poems from a Heathen Mommy

FTB From the Ashes of Faith blogger Megan Rahm’s poetry collection, Free to Roam: Poems from a Heathen Mommy, was released last week.  I spoke with Megan about her book, which is published by Freethought House.

Freethinking Ahead: The poems in your collection, Free to Roam, examine what it means to be a nonbeliever in a believing society, particularly what it means to be a woman and a parent. Why did you choose poetry as a medium for this exploration? And what do you hope your readers come away with after reading your collection, especially if they tend toward prose rather than poetry?

Megan Rahm: I have only been writing poetry for about two years. It was something I was experimenting with and enjoyed very much at the time I began writing the book. Using poetry for Free to Roam felt like creating a mosaic out of little bits and pieces of stories. I felt it worked very well to give an overview of my life as an atheist mother.

I think my poetry is different from the work of many present-day poets. I feel a lot of poems are difficult to decipher. I want to make art with my poetry, but I want it to make sense, too. This is why I think people who tend toward prose might enjoy my poetry.

I still really enjoy writing poetry and I’m currently writing erotic as well as inspirational poems.

FTA: The image of curls appears again and again in your collection. In the first section, “Curls and Cornfields,” we see curls that “burn,” “hit the earth,” and “screamed / as they were straightened.” Later in the book, curls appear again, this time in hopeful form, for example in “The Curls” in which “they are a part / of something radiant— / a little girl.” We see them again in “Weekend Aftermath,” “Alphabet Soup,” and “Dance for Strangers” in this joyful light.

I was struck by a sense of returning, as curls wind around and seem to return to a starting place but not quite. What sparked your use of the curls images, and did your view of the image change as you wrote the poems in the book?

MR: I chose to use curls because my daughter and I both had curly hair. I say “had” because since writing the book my daughter’s hair has gotten a lot longer and her curls have grown out.

When I was little my family made a big deal out of my curly blonde hair. When I was older I was always trying to straighten my hair to fit in with the other girls at school. Now I consider my curls a part of my identity and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I feel bad for trying to straighten them in the past.

In “Curls and Cornfields” I talked about being raised in a conservative rural area where I often felt trapped. I was different from everyone else and I didn’t think I would ever make it out. That’s why my curls took so much abuse in that section. It symbolizes the judgment I received from others.

Later in the book, I talk about my daughter’s curls as something joyful and innocent. I would describe my daughter as a free spirit, a state she’s in free of judgment. She doesn’t mind being silly, funny, and trying new things. I felt the opposite growing up. My daughter is growing up in a place that is way more diverse than where I grew up. I’m hoping that in a way that might make her feel comfortable in her own skin.

FTA: The poems follow a chronological path from childhood to adulthood into parenthood. Did you write them in roughly the order you have them in the book, or did you move around in time as you wrote each poem? What surprised you most in writing and ordering the book?

The poems were written mostly out of order. My poems often start out as words and phrases from whatever is on my mind. Then they tend to have a life of their own. I think it would have been impossible to write anything in order.

MR: What really surprised me about the book was how well the sections worked. I can’t believe I could come up with something structured out of an unorganized pile of poems. I had an end goal but I was surprised when everything worked out so well.

FTA: Which poets do you enjoy reading? Are there any poets who were particularly influential to you as a freethinking poet and a “Heathen Mommy”?

MR: It seems challenging to find freethinking poets, but I really enjoy the work of Mark Doty and Sharon Olds.

Creativity for Skeptics Episode 11: The Artist’s Way Week Five Recap and Week Six Preview

In this episode of Creativity for Skeptics, I’ll recap week five of The Artist’s Way and preview week six. Since task #5 involves sending postcards, I mention A Month of Letters at lettermo.com.  Transcript below.

Or download here.

Transcript:

Hello, skeptical creatives and creative skeptics. Tammy here. This is episode eleven of Creativity for Skeptics. Another quick one today, just recap of week five of The Artist’s Way, and a preview of week six.

How did your week five go?

My major light bulb moment wasn’t from the tasks or from the Morning Pages, but from the Artist Date. Or the thing I’m calling an Artist Date because of the pandemic but wouldn’t otherwise call an Artist Date.

On Friday, I had to run some errands in a part of town that I used to go to daily, but I haven’t driven through for almost a year. It was weirdly familiar, but enough of it had changed that it wasn’t quite. Anyway, why am I calling this an Artist Date? First off, it was the most “out of the house” I’ve been all week, so there’s that.

Second is the aha moment I mentioned. For me, and maybe for you too, the pandemic sheltering in place and physical distancing has changed the way I think about where I am. Before all this, if I were driving somewhere, if you ask me if I’m in place A or if I’m just driving through place A, I’d say I’m just passing through. Now, it’s different. Maybe because I haven’t been there in a while, I felt more present even just driving through. The upshot of all this is that because of the pandemic, being somewhere in my car feels more like being there than it did previously. I’m curious about how you’re affected by a sense of place after nearly a year of sheltering in place.

On to week six. The first section, “The Great Creator” section is, of course, full of god-talk. But as I’m rereading this, I kept thinking, “This isn’t an artist problem, this is an America problem.” If you’re listening from outside the US, I’m curious about whether or not this first section resonates with you.

I do love the “Luxury” section, just pay attention to the idea of authentic luxury and luxury’s connection to play. The two exercises are helpful as well, but the first one, about counting what you spend, that will be interesting for a lot of us when we’re trying to be out as little as possible.

Again, great tasks for this week. In a nice coincidence with task #5, February happens to be A Month of Letters, and I’ll link to that in the show notes. It’s just lettermo.com. For years, I’ve said, I’m going to do that, and I never have, so maybe I’ll do five days this week.

So that’s it from me today. If you have any questions about creativity you’d like me to address, feel free to send me an email, [email protected]. Or post a comment over at my blog, freethoughtblogs.com/freethinkingahead

Thanks for listening to Creativity for Skeptics. For more information about the show or to listen to past episodes, go to creativityforskeptics.com. We’ll talk creativity again soon.

Creativity for Skeptics Episode Ten: The Artist’s Way Week Four Recap and Week Five Preview

It’s Episode Ten of Creativity for Skeptics: The Artist’s Way Week Four Recap and Week Five Preview (and a recommendation).  Transcript below.

Or download here.

Hello, skeptical creatives and creative skeptics. Tammy here. This is episode nine of Creativity for Skeptics. In this episode, I’m going to take a slightly different approach to The Artist’s Way to recap week four and preview week five. At the end of this episode, I will have a plug for a poetry book I think you should check out, but for now let’s talk morning pages, or really, lack thereof. And energy. Also lack thereof.

Morning pages didn’t happen for me this week. And when I look at the check in, I see Julia Cameron’s huge accusation there, “Tantrums often show up as skipping the morning pages.” Okay, fine. But skipping the morning pages doesn’t necessarily mean you’re having a tantrum. In my case, it’s just that I’ve been running especially low on energy the past few weeks. I think the main idea I want to get at here is that just because X can cause Y, X isn’t necessarily the cause of Y. When you, like me, have multiple chronic health problems and things hurt and you’re tired and a bit foggy oh, yeah, there’s still a pandemic going on and a lot of people aren’t behaving as if there’s a pandemic going on, you’re probably not having a tantrum if you skip the morning pages.

All that to say, be gentle on yourself. If you skip things, if you need to skip things, be gentle on yourself.

Anyway, I did have an artist date, which involved me and my younger kid watching travel videos about London. Our main takeaways are that I want window boxes filled with flowers and she wants to go to the country that has that many unicorns on its signs. Me, too, kid. Me, too.

And to the tasks. I’ve been working to change my environment to better suit my creative work. Unfortunately, I’m making a giant seemingly intractable mess in the process, but I’m getting there. I have been making piles of clothes to donate and things to trash or recycle or just give away, and it’s freeing. I’m just not there yet. Anyway, if you’re kind of in the same place as I am, know that you’re not along and I’m cheering for you.

So, how did your week four go? I’d love to hear about it. I’d love to hear what you did last week for an artist date and anything you have planned. Leave a comment at freethoughtblogs.com/freethinkingahead or send me an email, [email protected] Or if you’d like to share your thoughts on the artist date, what you did, how it went, you can record a clip and send it along. I’ll play selected clips on upcoming episodes.

On to week five. Lots of God/creator talk in this week. The section “The Virtue Trap” is difficult territory, but well worth sticking with. I wish I’d paid more attention to this earlier in my life and left a bad several years-long relationship sooner, left a bad job sooner, left a bad career sooner. But I’m at the point in my life where I know that giving myself time makes me a better writer and a better parent, a better partner, a better person. Do complete the joys and wishes 101 to 103, and you might surprise yourself.

Tasks for this week start off with one that makes no sense for a non-believer, but I love Julia Cameron’s focus on images. I got on Instagram a while ago to try to focus more on the visual details of my world, and the tasks this week fit with that for me.

I don’t like the “Ten items I’d like to own” because right now, I’m trying to purge the house of things and clutter, and this exercise feels like it works against that idea. That said, and this is something I’m going to do an episode on later, after The Artist’s Way weeks, I encountered this idea about the difference between owning beautiful things and experiencing beautiful things, and that so resonated with me. So, it’s the idea that it’s better to have a painting in a museum where thousands of people can see it, can experience its beauty or shock or thoughtfulness, whatever it invokes, than to own a painting that only you can ever see. I’ll go into more detail on that and how it relates to creativity in another episode. But for now, I’ll just say that the things I want to own are more along the lines of “airline tickets to some city with fantastic museums.” And maybe postcards from that trip.

Now, time for a recommendation. I read an ARC (an advanced readers copy) of my fellow Freethought Blogs blogger Megan Rahm’s new poetry book, Free to Roam: Poems from a Heathen Mommy, published by Freethought House and available on February 2, so a couple days from when I’m recording this. A fascinating look at the journey of a woman who struggled as a child with her surrounding religious community and how that awareness of her own beliefs shapes her relationship with her own daughter. I recommend it, and I’ll have a Q&A with Megan posted on my blog in the coming weeks. I’ll post a link to the book in the shownotes.

So that’s it from me today. If you have any questions about creativity you’d like me to address, feel free to send me an email, [email protected]. Or post a comment over at my blog, freethoughtblogs.com/freethinkingahead

Thanks for listening to Creativity for Skeptics. For more information about the show or to listen to past episodes, go to creativityforskeptics.com. We’ll talk creativity again soon.

Creativity for Skeptics Episode 9: The Artist’s Way Week Three Recap and Week Four Preview

In episode 9 of Creativity for Skeptics, I’ll recap week three of The Artist’s Way and preview week four. Transcript is below.

Or download here.

Transcript:

Hello, skeptical creatives and creative skeptics. Tammy here. This is episode nine of Creativity for Skeptics. In this episode, I’ll share my experiences with week three of The Artist’s Way as well as preview week four. Keeping this one short again this week yet again, no intro or outro or recommendation.

And what a week it was. Here in the US, I think there was a collective moment of peace when the storm was over, we have a new President now. But, to extend that metaphor, now’s the time we have to look outside and see what damage there is that we have to fix. And we have to acknowledge that for so many Americans, the storm is far from over, the storm has never subsided for them.

I think my own creative journey has paralleled my social and political journey. That manifests itself in the political science fiction stories that I’ve written and the blog posts I write, but it’s also in the fact that I feel like I can speak out now, especially to elected officials. There’s a lot that I write that isn’t directly political, but it informs my work no matter what I write.

It’s been an exhausting week for other reasons too. Some good reasons. I attended an online Zoom for a local writers’ group, and it was wonderful and everyone was lovely and after meeting with a dozen new people, I want to sleep for a week. Like I said, I’m an introvert.

I do want to note here that I gave a talk on Creativity for Skeptics for Freethought Blogs in 2020, which was a reprise of a talk I gave in 2018 for Fellowship of Freethought Dallas. I talk about our need for community in that one, and I may devote an episode to that soon. And also, I think after the twelve Artist’s Way episodes, I’ll grab the audio from the 2020 version and post that in the feed.

Heading back toward The Artist’s Way. Another little personal note. One thing that I like about Julia Cameron’s tasks is that it’s a lot of list making. I love lists. I live my life through little daily lists and grander yearly lists. It’s how I get stuff done.

Anyway, what’s this got to do with creativity? I’m working on a series of sonnets that I’d like to craft into my next poetry chapbook, and the work I did on a few preliminary poems was in the direction I wanted to go, but there was something not grounded in the physical experience of the woman I was writing about.

So, I’m making lists for her. I make pages and pages of notes for each poem I write–like a ten line poem, I can write pages that I hone into those ten lines. But this is different. I’m starting not from the arc of any story I want to tell, any emotional and intellectual movement from one point to another, which is what I usually do. This is more me looking at the stuff around the speaker of these poems. What does she hold on to? Why? What is meaningful to her, particularly in light of the losses she contemplates in the poems? So, lists. That’s one way doing the tasks has helped me in a larger project. I’ll report back on this way of going about composing the poems, if it worked any better or not.

I’m also making a list, a spreadsheet really, of agents. Which is the more intimidating list, but it’s a list. It’s a start, right?

So, week three. No morning pages, no artist date. I’m wondering if that happened to a lot of us this week. Anyway, I did do tasks, and I wanted to note a couple things. First, task number four, one of my bad habits is scrolling through social media. I’m on Instagram as a writer, and honestly, I don’t know what I’m doing there. I wanted to use it as a chance to get more in touch with the visual, rather than just words. But thinking about social media, my platform or whatever, that’s become less about presenting my work and more about a thing I can worry about so I’m not working. Anyway, I’d be curious to know whether social media would make it into the list of bad habit examples if Julia Cameron rewrote this for the 2020s.

Also, was anyone else just grossed out by the treats in task three? Some things I would have happily eaten as a kid–like fruit-flavored candy–those are not a food item. Also, mac and cheese. Which garnered negative associations for me in my 20s, and which I now refer to as acrimony and cheese. Anyway, I’m making a peach cobbler, which was something I liked as a kid and something I still consider a food item.

So, how did your week three go? I’d love to hear about it. I’d love to hear what you did last week for an artist date and anything you have planned. Leave a comment at freethoughtblogs.com/freethinkingahead. Or if you’d like to share your thoughts on the artist date, what you did, how it went, you can record a clip and send it along. I’ll play selected clips on upcoming episodes.

Anyway, on to week four. Lots of good stuff in the first section, “Honest Changes.” I think “okay” which she talks about in this section is a word I’m going to remove from my day-to-day use. There’s a powerful paragraph on page 82, one worth focusing on: “[…] creativity is grounded in reality, in particular, the focused, the particularly observed or specifically imagined.” This goes back to my poem lists, and it’s definitely a “this is why I love this book” moment. In spite of the woo in this section.

The “Buried Dreams” section contains a useful exercise. But I’m not convinced by the “Reading Deprivation.” Two things. First, I don’t think I’m the person she’s talking to here. I read at night and it feels like a luxury. I’m not getting lost in others’ words to avoid my own, if that makes sense. I think that’s a lot to do with why I don’t watch TV, though.

Which leads me to number two. If you’re not reading, I’d think it would be easy to plop in front of the television or scroll through social media. Which isn’t about doing something active. Her list is about doing things, experiencing things, and if you use reading not to do things, then I can see the point of this exercise. But my days as a stay at home and homeschooling parent are filled with the sort of “doing” she lists. We paint, we putter in the garden, we do math and science and read. We dance and sew. And in the evenings, after all that, I write. Only after the day’s work has been done, do I read. So, I don’t know, if you’re like me, maybe this won’t do much for you. This is just something to think about.

Tasks, lots of good stuff here. Number four reminds me so much of Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own.” If you haven’t read it, I encourage you to do so. Also, I’m trying not to laugh at number seven. A “small vacation” isn’t happening right now.

So that’s it from me today. If you have any questions about creativity you’d like me to address, post a comment over at my blog, freethoughtblogs.com/freethinkingahead

Thanks for listening to Creativity for Skeptics. For more information about the show or to listen to past episodes, go to creativityforskeptics.com. We’ll talk creativity again soon.

Creativity for Skeptics Episode Eight: The Artist’s Way Week Two Recap and Week Three Preview

In episode 8 of Creativity for Skeptics, I’ll recap week two of The Artist’s Way and preview week three.  Transcript is below.

Or download here.

Transcript:

Hello, skeptical creatives and creative skeptics. Tammy here. This is episode eight of Creativity for Skeptics. In this episode, I’ll share my experiences with week two of The Artist’s Way as well as preview week three. Keeping this one short again this week, no intro or outro or recommendation. Just the minimum, because sometimes, you have to go with that, right?

How did your week go? Mine could have been better, but it was pretty low energy all around. I did finish the third draft of the mystery I’m working on, and it’s off to beta readers after I get this to you.

Morning pages happened, but my artist date, which involved looking through the half dozen seed catalogs didn’t do much for me. First off, I just really want to go to a garden center or a nursery, and I can’t.

Second, I looked up some plants online and ended up reading reviews and there’s nothing like reading lackluster reviews of gorgeous sunflowers I want to plant to push me out of the childlike wonder that artist dates are supposed to engender.

Also, I have this vision of walls of sunflowers. Some of them would be up against the house to make up for the fact that houses don’t have window boxes here. Not sure why, but they’re wonderful, and why not? That’s enough of that tangent.

One other observation, in case any of you had the same problem, regarding the “other lives” tasks. When I’ve done The Artist’s Way before, I loved these tasks. This time, however, it just made me tired. I don’t know if it’s just that present situation is just exhausting enough that I don’t want to have to live other lives too, or if it’s that I’m pretty happy with my life as it is now. My life is definitely not following the norm of mid-40s as being the least happy time of people’s lives. I’m so much happier in my 40s than I was in my 30s, and my 30s were exponentially better than my 20s and teens. But that was kind of a low bar. Anyway. Back to the tasks. How I got myself to do the tasks was to ask myself, okay, if you don’t want to live these lives, then who would you want to write about? So, research for writing projects, that felt refreshing, not exhausting.

Another task I wanted to touch on is the life pie. I mentioned last time that I wanted to replace spirituality with something like awe or wonder, then when I was listening to NPR this past week, I heard a segment about awe versus wonder. Wonder is more cerebral, whereas awe is more visceral and tinged with fear. Which maybe could encompass spirituality? I don’t think I have a good answer yet. Wonder goes along with another category Julia Cameron has in that task, play, so maybe I need something else to fit in the spirituality slot.

How did your week two go? I’d love to hear about it. I’d love to hear what you did last week for an artist date and anything you have planned. Leave a comment below.  Or if you’d like to share your thoughts on the artist date, what you did, how it went, you can record a clip and send it along. I’ll play selected clips on upcoming episodes.

On to week three, “Recovering a Sense of Power.” This section. The “Anger” section. This is powerful stuff here, y’all. I want to read the last line of this section: “Anger is not the action itself. It is action’s invitation.” That’s probably the most important piece in this week’s readings.

I have trouble with the ideas in the next section about “Synchronicity.” It’s hard not to point to examples of synchronicity and say, well, if you’re talking about your work with other people, then you’ll have more chances to collaborate with them or show your work to them and so forth than if you weren’t talking to people. That’s my skepticism talking there.

The “Shame” section is important too, and I don’t disagree with what Julia Cameron says about the topic.

I do appreciate her advice on how to handle criticism in the next section. I’m thinking about a time when I left a group situation, and it was the criticism of other people’s work that pushed me out of it, if that makes sense, even though there were other good things happening in the group.

I’d also like to add here that there is a difference between criticism and critique, and I think that just as you grow as a creator, you grow as a critic. Criticism rarely helps anyone, that finding fault with things. Critique, on the other hand, is so very useful, even if it’s not what you want to hear. Giving feedback is a skill, so that’s something to keep in mind as well. Some people are just better at it than others.

Lots of good things to think about in the last two sections, and I’ll leave that there.

The one thing I want to touch on in the tasks for this week is in number four. I don’t watch TV, because I needed to cut out as much as I could to have time and energy to work. And for me, watching TV is draining–it took me a long time to realize that. I bring up TV here because Julia Cameron mentions it as a possible bad habit. I like this task because it ties in neatly to a problem that a lot of creatives have–when do you find time to work? Between jobs and family and friends and keeping the house clean, when do you work? If this is a problem for you, keep your answers for number four in mind.

So that’s it from me today. If you have any questions about creativity you’d like me to address, feel free to send me an email, [email protected]. Or post a comment over at my blog, freethoughtblogs.com/freethinkingahead

Thanks for listening to Creativity for Skeptics. For more information about the show or to listen to past episodes, go to creativityforskeptics.com. We’ll talk creativity again soon.

Creativity for Skeptics Episode 7: The Artist’s Way Week One Recap and Week Two Preview

On this episode of Creativity for Skeptics, I’ll recap week one and preview week two.  I’ll also recommend the podcast Radio Survivor. Transcript below.

Or download here.

Transcript:

Hello, skeptical creatives and creative skeptics. Tammy here. This is episode seven of Creativity for Skeptics. In this episode, I’ll share my experiences with week one of The Artist’s Way as well as preview week two. And I’ll also talk about a podcast I recommend at the end of the show.

So, first off. Let’s talk about this past week. I’ll generally steer clear of politics on this podcast, but then things like January 6th happen here in the US. And how can you separate something as disturbing and terrible as an attempted fascist coup from creative recovery? I can’t. I didn’t. And if you didn’t either, if it totally derailed you, you are not alone.

I’d had a pretty good stretch of writing for an hour or two at night, then I spent Wednesday afternoon and evening glued to NPR and CBS Radio. I couldn’t work that night so shortly after getting my kids to bed, I crashed. The next day, I was glued again to the radio, NPR and BBC World Service.

This was supposed to be a week in which we were recovering a sense of safety, and I was worried about the chronic underlying anxiety about the pandemic, but then the domestic terrorist attack on the US Capitol happened. That’s all I’ll say about this for now, but I’ll leave it at this. After I made a huge step toward writing poetry again after years of being away from it, I felt that I could do things like write to my elected officials and voice my opinions on issues. Those two things were more closely linked than I would have thought. Tomorrow—Monday the 11th—for instance, I’ll be mailing off postcards to the junior senator from Texas and to our attorney general as well adding my voice to those urging them to resign. That’s politics for now.

On to the rest of week one. How’d it go? Morning pages happened more or less in the morning, but since I do my creative work at night, I wasn’t worried if I had to write them in the afternoon. No walk, per the last task, just ran out of time. It snowed here appreciably today, for the first time in six years, so that would have made for an interesting walk. But it melted pretty soon after. Anyhow, no solo time meant no solo walk.

The artist date did go better than I’d planned. I listed placed I’d go if I could, and second on the list to a bookstore was a fabric store. So, I took out my small trove of fabrics and threads and reorganized them. Colors, textures, it was quite lovely to be surrounded by all that. I’m going to be sewing more this year. Basically, if it can be covered in fabric, it will be covered in fabric. I just had five seed catalogs arrive last week, so I’ll probably brew up a cup of tea and sit down with those for a while next week sometime in lieu of going out. Not as good as going to a garden center, but it’s what I can do right now.

I’d love to hear what you did last week for an artist date and anything you have planned. Leave a comment at freethoughtblogs.com/freethinkingahead or send me an email, [email protected] Or if you’d like to share your thoughts on the artist date, what you did, how it went, you can record a clip and send it along. I’ll play selected clips on upcoming episodes.

I didn’t quite get through all the tasks. I did make a list of creative champions, one of whom I will be emailing sometime soon. But, in a nice coincidence, January 10th-16th is Universal Letter Writing Week, which I like because, hey, it’s the whole universe. Which reminds me, I might spend some time with stationery one of these weeks for an artist date.

A few observations I made. I don’t know if it’s because I’m in my mid-40s now, I’ve been at this for a while, and for the most part, I don’t really give a right royal rat’s backside what people think about the fact that I write space poems and now cozy mysteries. I do care about what editors think and I do care about making sure I don’t write something that would not pass a sensitivity read, but overall, the recent past creative monsters aren’t people. Or not directly, anyway. Sure, there was a recent horror story involving some comments about a project I was working on, but I quickly backed away from that situation. The three recent old enemies were more along the lines of my own lack of energy and so on. Maybe the creative enemies were people or things draining me, not necessarily people attacking my work, then? Something worth thinking about, I suppose.

How did week one go for you? Let me know.

On to week two. Julia Cameron opens the chapter using a term that some might find offensive, one that has been historically associated with mental illness. In fact, I find something problematic with her idea of “going sane,” as if creativity is associated with mental health. In some ways it is–as someone who has struggles with depression and anxiety, I’ve found that my most productive times have been the times when I’ve had both under control. But I don’t think these need to be related. There’s a common stereotype that great artists and writers are, as a whole, not the most mentally healthy group. Which is dangerous–you don’t have to suffer from a mental illness to be a great artist or writer, and, conversely, being well doesn’t preclude you from being creative. So there’s that, something to keep in mind.

The next two sections, language aside, are very important–they’re about making sure you protect your inner artist and your creative recovery from people who are not supportive of you and your creativity. This is vital stuff, and I’ve lived some of it myself. Protect your time and space to work on your creativity–it’s absolutely necessary.

The “Skepticism” section contains a fair bit of “the conscious universe” concept, which I’ve never found helpful, but maybe it won’t bother all of you listening. That said, I do want to point out that Julia Cameron argues that we set aside our skepticism to open up to possibility, and I’m reminded that there are many, many versions of skepticism out there. My use of skepticism is about the supernatural, but I’m totally on board with opening yourself up to the possible. I’m all for a sense of wonder about the world, so I’m going to use that in place of a higher being. And that sense of wonder ties into the last section, Attention, quite nicely. Another good one to focus on there.

The “Rules of the Road” have good stuff too, though you can filter out the ones that might not apply if you don’t believe in the supernatural. I love the first three especially. Number seven needs a bright gold star by it. So many people “talk away” their creative project, they tell people about it but never do the work. If you need a creative companion to gently remind you to do the work, then here’s my gentle reminder to do your creative work when and how you can.

Great stuff in the tasks. The one small tweak I’m going to make in number seven is to relabel “spirituality” with “attention” or “wonder.” Julia Cameron suggests going out to correct some of the neglected areas in our lives, which we can’t do. So more opportunity to be creative with this one as needed.

So that’s the week two preview. I’ll be back with episode eight on January 17th to recap the second week and preview the third week.

And now, for a recommendation. I listen to so many podcasts, and one of the ones I look forward to most is Radio Survivor. From their website: “The Radio Survivor podcast is a weekly show that explores the future of community media, with a focus on community radio, college radio, low-power FM and public access TV, along with podcasting and internet radio. ” So many good episodes to recommend. They dive into politics–there’s a recent episode, number 277 – “How Does the FCC Solve Anything?“–but my favorite episodes involve the arts. One of these is episode 190, an interview with artist and filmmaker Amanda Dawn Christie. I got to see her film Spectres of Shortwave online, which is about the closing of Radio Canada International’s shortwave service and the destruction of the antennas at their relay site in New Brunswick. Fascinating film, great interview. Go check out Radio Survivor if you’re interested at all in radio. A link will be in the show notes.

So that’s it from me today. If you have any questions about creativity you’d like me to address, feel free to send me an email, [email protected]. Or post a comment over at my blog, freethoughtblogs.com/freethinkingahead

Thanks for listening to Creativity for Skeptics. For more information about the show or to listen to past episodes, go to creativityforskeptics.com. We’ll talk creativity again soon.

Texas Freedom Network Calls for Resignation of Senator Ted Cruz

I will post more regarding yesterday’s events in DC and their Texas connections, but for now, here’s a news release from the Texas Freedom Network, The Road to Sedition: Ted Cruz, Ken Paxton Must Resign Now:

Texas Freedom Network President Val Benavidez today called on U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to resign their offices immediately for helping fuel the unhinged conspiracies that have led to today’s pro-Trump chaos and violence in the nation’s capital.

I’ll have postcards up soon asking for Sen. Cruz’s resignation, both addressed to him and to his fellow Republicans who should pressure him to resign in the disgrace he knowingly and viciously cultivated.