"Let's say you do something nice for someone. The Monster in the Mirror will tell you that it's actually a covert attempt to control them. The Monster in the Mirror likes to keep you looking in the Mirror, examining you and your motives as if you've got a bad spiritual complexion. If it can keep you picking at yourself, it can probably keep you from doing anything." – Julia Cameron, Supplies: A Troubleshooting Guide for Creative Difficulties, pg. 25.

Yowsa.

That last line. So true. Mind you, I also understand that if it can keep me reading a book about how it keeps me picking at myself, it has found yet another way to keep me from doing anything.

*sigh*

But this book, Supplies, is worth mentioning. As a matter of fact, all of Julia Cameron’s books are well worth mentioning. Not just the title most well-known. The Artist’s Way and the Vein of Gold and Walking in This World. There's also the Right to Write, The Sound of Paper, and Finding Water. Although they are presented with the writer in mind, the words apply and appeal to those with an artist's heart ... and who among us does not have this, to some degree? Some of her readers complain of redundancy, but to me her books always feel like having tea and sharing with a wise friend who knows her way around the block. Literally and figuratively.

Supplies is special to me. It is an artist’s emergency first-aid kit. An anti-venom. A tourniquet. A generous spray of Bactine. At times, the advice serves as the comforting hug that lovingly sends me back out to play. I had, more or less, forgotten that I had it on my bookshelf. I pulled it out this morning and opened it at random to this passage. Food for thought for breakfast.

The first week of Camp has not gone as planned. Today is the fourth day in a row that my daughter has been off school due to the snow/ice storm aftermath. I am out of my routine. I am out of sorts. And I am also out of excuses.

Next week heralds a bright, shiny new month. For those of you keeping track, Mercury will go direct on Sunday, February 1. Monday will be a second chance to welcome the new year. Things should feel lighter, go more smoothly ... a lot less like slogging through wet cement ... or a foot of snow.