As for Morning Pages...
The thought of 3 pages isn't daunting to me, not the writing-it-all-down part. What is daunting to me is finding the energy in the first 30 minutes of my day to sit down and write. As it is, I have a hard time waking up when the baby wakes, and so I only get out of bed when she is up for the day. Which means I go right into "mommy-mode" and it is impossible to sit and write with a newly-crawling 8 mo in need of your attention.
Then, by the time she goes down for her nap, it is no longer "morning" and I've done a million things, so my morning pages aren't the first thing I do, and therefore, I do not attempt to do them at all...Sometimes I do write during a quiet moment in the day, jot down lines that come to me, ideas, words that I can't get out of my head, maybe a bit of journaling, letters unsent, that kind of thing...but I don't consider them to be my Morning Pages.
As for the Artist's Date...
I think I'll find this a heck of a lot easier to stick to than the pages. One of the things I intend to do is take my digital camera out on the town and give myself a minimum number of pictures I have to take before I get home. (I don't think I'll have a problem with this--LOL.) I will aim for the random and arbitrary, things I wouldn't normally stop to photograph. I'm hoping that somewhere in the resulting pictures, perhaps I'll find some inspiration.
As a spin on the above idea, I think I will also take another date and go out with the 35mm manual Nikon and take a couple rolls of film. It takes far greater skill to take good pictures with a manual camera...and then, having them developed and sorting through them can be a completely different Artist's Date for the following week...taking the rolls and dropping them off on my way home from the initial date, then picking them up a week later, taking them to a coffee shop and looking at them there...choosing my favorites, etc.
Another date...to our local museum. It isn't spectacular or filled with classic pieces of art, but it is large and quiet on the inside, and I enjoy sitting in the overstuffed chairs in the children's area while looking through the art books they provide for the kids.
Another date...out to a park or riverwalk with a notebook or journal. Writing down what I see--nothing required to be cohesive, perhaps just one word, a few phrases, descriptions of my surroundings...
I intend to go to a movie by myself.
I like to go to the big book stores and stand and listen to the music samples they provide at the end of their kiosks...just scrolling through this huge music library, listening to new music and rediscovering old favorites.
Those are some of my ideas. I hope they help.
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