Week 4 nearly made me quit and I am so glad I did not.
I want to write this while it is still fresh because I think I need to remember that week four happened exactly the way it did.
I started The Artist's Way about six weeks ago after years of telling myself I was not really a creative person, that I had missed my window, that whatever I used to feel when I wrote or drew or made things had just dried up somewhere in my late twenties and was not coming back.
The first three weeks were uncomfortable but manageable. Morning pages felt pointless for about ten days and then started feeling necessary. The artist dates were awkward because I genuinely did not know how to spend time with myself without filling it with productivity or scrolling.
Then week four arrived and something in me just revolted.
I stopped doing morning pages for five days. I skipped the reading. I told myself I was too busy which was partially true and mostly not. I felt guilty about it and the guilt made me avoid the book entirely which made the guilt worse.
On day six of that gap I sat down at six in the morning before anyone else was awake and just opened the journal and started writing. Not because I had figured anything out. Just because not writing was making me feel worse than writing.
What came out of that session was the most honest thing I have written in probably ten years. I am not going to share what it was but I cried while writing it which has not happened to me in a very long time.
I do not think I would have gotten there without the resistance first. The block was showing me exactly where the thing I needed to reach was buried.
Still here. Still showing up. Week six now and something has quietly shifted that I do not have the right words for yet.