Making art is only fun once you stop keeping score

Week 11: The Bare Minimum Artist's Way

We’re on week 11!!! of our 12-week journey through The Bare Minimum Artist’s Way — our ADHD-friendly version of The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.

If you’re just landing here for the first time — welcome! We’re suspending the dogma rules about morning pages and artist dates and doing the bare minimum with The Artist’s Way, because we believe half-assing it is better than giving up on Week 3 .

Sound like you? Join us here on Substack and listen to our weekly companion episodes every Wednesday on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

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Somewhere deep in the Pinterest perfect fantasy of your “creative life,” you’re carrying around the idea that one day you’ll “make it.”

You’ll finally be able to quit the job or the freelance clients or the dog-sitting or the copywriting gig.

This fantasy presupposes that full-time creative freedom will arrive like a perfectly wrapped package on your doorstep, containing a singular, clean, socially acceptable career identity.

Writer.

Artist.

Filmmaker.

Something that fits neatly inside the 150 characters of an Instagram bio and is miraculously the only thing you do for money!

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Week 11 of The Artist’s Way reminds us that the creative path isn’t a career ladder. It’s not even a winding path. It's a spiral, a loop-de-loop, a scavenger hunt with clues that only make sense after you’ve committed to playing the game.

But what if the game was only fun if you stopped counting the points?

This chapter questions a myth deeply embedded in creative culture: to consider yourself a real artist, your art must earn you a full-time income. That’s when you’re a Capital-A-Artist.

This myth taunts us that if we were really that good, we wouldn’t still need the day job or the freelance clients. It tries to convince us that real artists don’t write newsletters for software companies or make Tiktoks for brands to pay the rent.

But the reality for almost every working creative is far from this fantasy.

We’re cobbling together income streams, doing project-based consulting, part-time gigs, freelancing, tutoring, maybe even selling vintage furniture on the side and all of that is normal and good. Problems start to arise when we want it to also feel somewhat like the spectacle of the corporate world with it’s empty promises of certainty and predictability.

Cameron writes, “I have to free myself from determining my value and the value of my work by my work’s market value.”

This is about just relaxing around the external algorithm of likes, sales, applause, vacations and tuning back into the internal one: am I making what wants to be made? Am I showing up for it? Am I making sure my needs are met energetically and financially? Am I letting my life be big and interesting enough to fuel the work?

The myth of “finding your thing”

It would be so nice if the creative path were linear, because the world promises a straight, predictable path will give you straight, predictable outcomes.

We think we just need to “find our thing,” and then we’ll be able to do it in the same way, with the same tone and clarity forever and we’ll never get tired of it. Until, of course, we do.

Cameron writes, “Sometimes I will write badly, draw badly, paint badly, perform badly. I have a right to do that to get to the other side.”

Because this is just about getting to the other side of the mountain this time. There will be more mountains. But your legs grow stronger as you climb, so you’ll be fine.

Autonomy means accepting that you will sometimes write badly. Perform flatly. Post something that doesn’t land. Record a podcast episode that makes you cringe three days later. You have to let it alllll be okay.

If you can find it in yourself, try allowing each creative output to be a little experiment because each one reminds you what growth, movement, and possibility looks like.

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If your art is boring, so are you.

Is it not true????

Cameron says, “To a large degree my life is my art and when it gets dull so does my work.” When our lives get dull, so does our work!!!!

When your work feels off, it’s worth looking at your life and asking what needs to shift.

So many of us are overwhelmed. Tired. Scrolling. Trying to do it all alone. Wondering why we’re not hearing the whispers of inspiration anymore.

And the treatment plan is actually quite simple, but not always easy:

Nurture yourself.

That means taking the damn walk.

It means asking if you’re getting your needs met and doing what needs to be done make sure you are safe and supported.

It means reconnecting with your senses and feeling present in your body again.

Letting the creative drought be a signal to turn reflect and release, not a reason to panic.

It means actively enjoying life however you can, not just trying to be more productive.

The creative spiral

Unfortunately success and growth don’t always show up the way we want them to. Sometimes success looks like doubling back, switching lanes, starting over, not because you failed, but because you’re evolving— and the “success” was letting go of what felt unmanageable.

As Cameron says, “An artist cannot replicate a prior success indefinitely.” You can’t keep trying to catch the same lightning in a bottle. That’s not creative evolution. That’s brand marketing.

The artist’s path isn’t a straight shot toward more, or a formula we can just keep replicating forever. Sometimes we land on a formula that puts wind in our sails, but eventually the wind dies down and we must change directions.

The spiral lets you revisit old parts of yourself with new perspective, because you’re wiser now, less precious, and more available to the mystery of the process.

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That’s why it can be so valuable to see a museum retrospective of an artist’s work, watch the film archive of a favorite director, or even just scroll all the way back to the early posts of someone you admire You see the mess, the pivots, the flops. You see the slow and often unsexy evolution. And you remember: they were just trying to figure out how to let the art come through them too.

There is no perfect roadmap or checklist that guarantees the good stuff will happen to you. That’s the bad news and the good news.

You’re allowed to keep learning, start over, and change what you want. You’re allowed to be both tired and inspired. You’re allowed to make it weird. You’re allowed to let it spiral.

The real win is showing up for yourself day after day to nourish your creative spirit. That’s creative autonomy.