The Artist's Way -- Week Two

Chapter two of The Artist's Way is titled "Recovering a Sense of Identity." Most of the exercises involve looking at your life, figuring out where your time is going, listing things you enjoy doing, looking at the last time you did those things you enjoy, etc. Basically, examining whether your life truly reflects who you are as a person deep down.

It's rather hard to apply this when your life is presently in transition, as mine is and have no job, as I don't. Then again, it's kind of fun, to see how many of those things you can fit in when you have all the time in the world. (Excepting the job searching time. The party's gotta end sometime!)

One exercise that's kind of fun:

If you had 5 other lives to live, what would you do in each of them?

1) A Dive Master: I really do enjoy scuba diving. I have both basic certification and advanced certification, but I did not continue past there, since I was intimidated by the dive rescue aspect of the class. I'm pretty secure in the first aid aspect of the rescuer course, but the scuba equipment is really heavy! I can barely haul myself up onto a boat after a dive, never mind hauling somebody else with all their wet gear onto a boat when they were injured.

Now I know that I would not be doing everything all by myself. At the very least, there are two staff members on any dive boat, plus the other divers who could assist. I would be able to take care of anything I needed to take care of with teamwork.

In my other imaginary life, I'd be living on a Caribbean island, diving every day.

2) A Travel Writer: I love to travel. I LOVE to travel! I can imagine traveling around the world to different countries and writing about it. Exploring cathedrals and museums, hiking and biking through the country side, staying in quaint bed and breakfasts, and writing about it. Putting together possible itineraries for travelers who enjoy active vacations or tasting local flavor. How fantastic would that be?

3) Professional Organizer: Believe it or not, organizing things is something I really like to do. It's nice to create order out of chaos. I like categorizing things, putting them together, and placing them in nice little decorative containers so they can be easily retrieved. It's a good thing I like this, too, since I'm cleaning out my parent's garage right now and its quite a task.

4) Personal Trainer Extraordinaire: Of course. Of course this is on the list. I love working out. I'm constantly evaluating friends' and family members' workout programs and tweaking them to make them either more effective or less likely to cause injury. I could totally do this for a livelihood.

5) Outward Bound Instructor: I had to quit my job in order to hike for 5 months. What if hiking for 5 months was my job? Taking people out into the wilderness and introducing them to the joys of nature? Teaching people the ins and outs of packing a backpack, putting up a tent, cooking on a camp stove, planning menus for trips? How about climbing, rappelling, negotiating rocks and roots, fording streams. Finding water sources. The principles of Leave No Trace camping. Of course, it would involve a lot of responsibility. But man oh man! To be outside all day every day for your job. I can think of nothing better!