Romancing yourself

Julia Cameron is a fan of the 'Artist Date' a period of time of 1-2 hours perweek doing something you love and enjoy on your own. The point is to fill your interior well of images and experiences which are the basic material of creativity, to refresh the spirit, to give something back to yourself and finally to make friends with yourself. A lot of people are uncomfortable with spending time with themselves which makes it pretty difficult to be creative as most forms of creativity are in part or wholly solitary activities.

JC recommends an all day artist date when doing her course - I did mine yesterday. I extracted myself from the computer and got the train to the next door city. I love traveling by train, the mix of landscape and sky awakens my sense of the visual.

When I got to Glasgow I went by Underground to Kelvinbridge and made straight for Otago Lane. Firstly I went to Voltaire & Rousseau a secondhand bookshop with two shopcats. One orange was sleeping curled up on a pile of books the other a young and fiesty black & white cat came up for head rubs. After some bookbrowsing, buying and cat communing I went further down the lane to Tchaiovna - a tea house which has a small platform over a wooded area which the Kelvin River flows through. A small oasis in the middle of the city. I ordered Rose Pouchong tea from the 80 + varieties and settled back to enjoy the homemade sweetpotato soup, the skyscapes over the city, changing from sun to storm to rain and back again. Finally I left to spend money in boutiques for birthday presents, indulge in excessive magazine buying before getting the train back and wondering if one could fit more pleasure in a day.

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Ask yourself when did you last have a day all to yourself, just for yourself?