I signed up for a writing habits class back in December. My top goal when I signed up was that I wanted to have a more consistent, sustainable relationship with my writing practice. I wanted to rebuild my habit from scratch mostly because by the end of 2020 I felt like I had very little of it to hold onto anyway. While I didn’t talk about this publicly, I spent a better half of last year working on a book proposal that didn’t end up selling.

From a marketing and business perspective, I completely understood the why and the how. On a personal level, I was gutted. The book was memoir personal essays and not selling it felt like the world reflecting back to me that I wasn’t a good writer, that my story had no value, and that I couldn’t write the kind of stories I wanted to spend my time on.

I’d seen The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron on bookshelves for years, but had never picked it up. To be honest, I only picked it up in January because it was the main read of a class I had signed up for through Literary Arts. Sifting through their website a few months ago, I was drawn to the course because it said it was dedicated to helping students cultivate a writing habit, which is something I felt I was missing.

I could have never imagined what the first six weeks of the class - and of working through The Artist’s Way - would actually entail. True to its name, it is a recovery workbook and it weaves into more than just your creative life. I still have six weeks to go in the program, but I have already felt such a shift in my own process.

January was one of the hardest months I’ve had in the last year. I am definitely hitting my COVID wall. All I could think about these past few weeks was how much I missed the old routines that were so mine a year ago and now are nonexistent. It hasn’t helped that the days in Portland are so short right now. At its worst the sun was rising close to 8am and setting by 4pm. The grey cloudy skies got old pretty quickly and I missed the sun, warmth, and just a visual reminder that life didn’t look like how I felt.

The strain I’ve felt on my mental health is something I’m working to relieve. As a result, a lot of my February mental wellness routine is catering to where I actually am versus where I wish I was (in sunny Mexico and feeling like life was great and COVID-free). While part of me is frustrated because I wish the same things would work all the time, the truth is that my routines have to iterate to respond effectively to my mental health.