"What would you do, if you didn't have to do it perfectly?"

Perfectionism, Inspiration, and The Artist’s Way

I was talking to my brother a few weeks ago and I told him “oh, I’ve been doing this like 12 week class for creatives. I’ve been doing it since like 2023, but that’s neither here nor there.”

He laughed warmly and said, “Sure, 12 weeks doesn’t have to mean 12 consecutive weeks.”

And honestly, hell yeah. I think that’s the attitude to have.

I originally heard about Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way in the summer of 2023. It was a time where I was particularly lost in my life. The previous autumn I had left a job that was so toxic, but that I cared about so much. I had stayed as long as I could, but finally one day I snapped and decided that I had to choose my own sanity. 

Then about 6 weeks later, I got home, soaking wet, from an unexpected 16 hour overnight shift at my new job to two soggy cats who had sadly been waiting for me all night in the rain. Me and the cats went inside, dried off, and took a nap. I woke up a few hours later to an infuriating text from my ex who was still taking up all my time and jerking me around because I was too nice to tell him to fuck off, even though I had broken up with him more than a year prior. That was the moment I realized that I was not just sleep deprived. I was exhausted. I didn’t recognize my life anymore. Something had to change. I decided that day that I was done with whatever my life had become. I also decided to take a week off for my birthday, as a treat. Through one thing and another, I ended up not working again for 6 months. I also never spoke to my ex again. 

But here’s the thing. Cutting stuff out is only half the battle. Sure, I freed up my time, but I didn’t know what else I wanted to put there. I wasn’t interested in dating. I wasn’t interested in the new job I had fallen into. It was a job that many people in my industry would love to have, but it wasn’t really what I wanted at all. It paid well, but it was harder and less fun and less creative than anything I had done previously. And honestly, none of my previous jobs had managed to be anywhere near as creative as I wanted. Objectively, I was at the high point of my career, but my heart wasn’t in it. 

So then the universe started sending me whispers about this book. Or was it a class? I wasn’t really sure. It kept popping up randomly in used bookstores and articles and in stuff I saw online. It promised to be life changing. That sounded pretty hot. I was in the market for a life change.

Around the same time, TikTok was showing me many many beautiful videos of journals. I had never kept a journal, unless you count the camera roll on my phone. Had never seen the appeal before really. It honestly just seemed like blackmail material that you made yourself. But I was entranced. Enchanted. I loved seeing these amazing raw creations from people’s minds. Not digitally enhanced, not edited. Just these books that people used as playgrounds for their imagination and creativity. I loved the journals that were just walls of text. I loved the journals with stickers plastering the cover. I loved the journals with scraps of paper and ticket stubs and funny little drawings. Seeing this glimpse into other people’s journals killed some part of the perfectionism that has held me back creatively since I was very young. Something finally clicked and I realized that it didn’t matter what you put in these books. You could put anything and everything. Stuff you loved and wanted to remember forever could coexist next to the worst feelings you’ve ever had. And it would still be beautiful, not in the way that a fresh blank notebook is beautiful, but in the way that things that are very loved are beautiful. 

So on a very hot August evening, an hour before it was going to close, I went to my nearest Barnes and Noble to pick up a notebook. I chose one that was beautiful and sleek and like 10x more expensive than any notebook I had ever bought before and I went home and started writing morning pages. The only pen I had bought in the last 10 years quit after 3 days, but I was already hooked and I ran to the store the next day and bought another.

And to my surprise, a little over two years later, I am still writing my morning pages and working on The Artist’s Way. Every day? Sometimes. So far I find that winter is not a creative season for me and my motivation for working on both of these endeavors tends to wane. But then the winds of spring blow through and I’m reborn and back at it again. 

The 12 week course has taken me a lot longer than 12 weeks. I’ve had tantrums while working through this book, but I’ve also had epiphanies. I’ve had weeks where it felt like Cameron was speaking directly to me, and weeks where I thought she was spouting utter nonsense and I’d toss the book aside until several weeks later when something would spark and I’d be back to scribbling franticly and unpacking trauma I didn’t even know I had.

That first year I only got to week 4 and then stalled hard. To the point that when I decided to be serious about it again this spring, I really felt like I had to go back to the beginning and take a running start at it. And I’m not sad I did. I learned a lot. I see a lot of what Cameron talks about differently than I did back in 2023. 

They say when the student is ready the teacher will appear. This book and journaling/morning pages showed up at a time when I really needed them. And as my knowledge of myself and my abilities have developed from showing up consistently in my journal, the lessons that Cameron teaches have made more sense to me. Rather than forcing myself through the course in the way that was perhaps intended, it has shown up as guideposts on my journey, pointing the way when I reach a wall. I’ve taken several side quests where I thought whatever else I was working on at the time was more important/interesting than continuing my reading, but when I get stuck, I’ve come back to the course and surprisingly it usually says exactly what I need. 

Currently I’m on week 7. I read the chapter like 6 weeks ago then promptly forgot it. Like quite literally had no idea what the theme even was. Tonight, I was feeling like I wanted to make something, but couldn’t for the life of me think what. No subject matter came to mind, no drawings or stories itching to escape. So I decided to read chapter 7 again. And surprise, it’s about perfectionism and listening. 

Not forcing, not sculpting.

Listening. 

Cameron says in this chapter to complete the sentence “If I didn’t have to do it perfectly, I would try….” And suddenly I heard my brother’s voice in my head, laughing and saying with no judgement: 12 weeks, but not consecutively. 

When Cameron said in the introduction “There are a number of ways to use this book. Most of all, I invite you to use it creatively,” I took her very seriously. I honestly was so exhausted and burned out when I started, I knew that was all I could do. I’ve always had a wide perfectionist streak, but Cameron gave me permission to play and it felt like benediction. I’ve certainly broken or bent almost every “rule” that the book sets out. I’ve played around with all sorts of mediums in my morning pages and done them at all times of day and I have never forced the pages to be any particular length. I’ve gone to see friends as an artist date. I’ve spent weeks working on a single chapter. I have never cared. It’s enough for me that I have continued to show up again and again, even after I have “messed up” or “fallen off.”

But one thing has bothered me. If you know anything about The Artist’s Way, you probably know that people love to document their journey in videos and blogs week by week. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought, “well, I can’t do that because I didn’t think of that when I did week 1.” Honestly, I wasn’t ready in week 1 to share, either time I’ve done it. It’s only been quite recently that I’ve been interested in showing my work. But I told myself that because I didn’t show the whole process, and because I haven’t done the process “perfectly” that it wasn’t worth sharing, that probably nobody would be interested. 

But…  if I didn’t have to do it perfectly, one of the things I would do is show how much I have learned and grown from giving myself a try. I may not have done this course by the book, but it has still been life changing.