{"id":34483,"date":"2023-12-05T13:20:35","date_gmt":"2023-12-05T21:20:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=34483"},"modified":"2023-12-05T13:24:54","modified_gmt":"2023-12-05T21:24:54","slug":"some-thoughts-on-the-war-of-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/some-thoughts-on-the-war-of-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Thoughts on The War of Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt\u2019s about ten-thirty now. I sit down and plunge in. When I start making typos, I know I\u2019m getting tired. That\u2019s four hours or so. I\u2019ve hit the point of diminishing returns. I wrap up for the day.\u201d[1]<\/a> I read this book, The War of Art<\/em> by Steven Pressfield, on the heels of completing the first of the two papers we have due at the beginning of next week, a rough draft of a sermon I\u2019m preaching the day before the papers are due, and an article for our church e-news. On top of all the required writing I needed to do, one of my sons was turning twenty-one, another son was returning from college, Black Friday and Cyber Monday were taunting me to get my shopping for the season done, and there were a host of Christmas parties to attend (and Christmas parties always come before writing assignments)! Spending the week at my computer, I was trying to be a machine, churning through assignments, checking off tasks. I completed the e-news article, a sermon draft, a term paper. I did my Christmas shopping. I celebrated my sons. All of this while also keeping up with normal life chores. And, yet, I never felt productive enough! The reason: because I took breaks throughout my day to work out, to walk my dog, to go to the grocery store, to spend time with my daughter, to eat, to shower, etc. At some point in my life (and I think I know when and how) I was programmed to think that if you are not working all day long, every day, then you are not being productive, and to be productive is to be worthy, valuable, all the “good” adjectives.<\/p>\n

Part of my work during this doctoral program has been letting go of perfectionism, learning to say, \u201cMeh, good enough!\u201d while handing in the paper or the blog post. I\u2019m learning to turn off the computer when my brain is tiring because, like Pressfield said, \u201cI\u2019ve hit the point of diminishing returns.\u201d Lieberman also pointed this out in Spellbound when he discussed how our brain learns new things while we sleep or rest! When Pressfield said he doesn\u2019t even sit down at the computer until ten-thirty in the morning and then wraps up his work around 2pm, I felt a little less alone. I\u2019ve been trying to convince myself that writing for however many hours my brain is functioning and then stopping for the day, OR, writing an hour or two, taking a long break and then coming back to it for another two hours, is enough. I *know* that this is true and yet, I constantly hear that little voice that loves to guilt me, saying things like \u201cother people sit at their computer all day long and you only have a few hours in you?\u201d Ugh. The books we\u2019ve read this semester have helped to give me permission to let my brain rest!<\/p>\n

In this book, Pressfield talks a lot about Resistance and how it is out keep us from accomplishing our work. While I appreciated many of his examples of Resistance, such as procrastination,[2]<\/a> gluttony,[3]<\/a> victimhood,[4]<\/a>and most interesting to me, chronic lateness.[5]<\/a> As someone who is chronically a few minutes late I probably need to consider how I am using lateness as a form of resistance to doing my work. What gave me pause was his argument that Attention Deficit Disorder, Seasonal Affect Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder are not diseases but are marketing ploys.[6]<\/a> He says, \u201cDoctors didn\u2019t discover them, copywriters did. Marketing companies did. Drug companies did. When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul\u2019s call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers. Instead of applying self-knowledge, self discipline, delayed gratification and hard work, we simply consume a product.\u201d[7]<\/a> As the mother of a young adult son who lives with ADHD and who has found medicine to be THE thing that allows him to get his work done, I disagree with Pressfield that we are simply consumers who have fallen prey to the resistance of marketing ploys if we need medication to get our work done. In a later chapter Pressfield quotes Socrates saying, \u201cThe truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.\u201d[8]<\/a> For many living with mental illness or one of the \u201cmarketing ploys\u201d Pressfield mentions, \u201cconsuming a product\u201d[9]<\/a> (medication) is what makes them free, how they govern themselves so they can do their work.<\/p>\n

Towards the end of the book Pressfield writes about the day he finished his novel, The Legend of Bagger Vance, \u201cThat moment when I first hit the keys to spell out THE END was epochal. Nobody knew I was done. Nobody cared. But I knew. I felt like a dragon I\u2019d been fighting all my life had just dropped dead at my feet and gasped out its last sulfuric breath. Next morning I went over to Paul\u2019s for coffee and told him I had finished. \u2018Good for you,\u2019 he said without looking up. \u2018Start the next one today.\u2019\u201d[10]<\/a> I had a similar reaction when I finished my Workshop Design Report. After my computer crashing and deleting the entire FINISHED report, I had to re-do the entire paper. I turned it in late one evening. The next evening my husband and I were driving to a Christmas party and I excitedly said, \u201cI turned in my term paper!\u201d \u201cHm,\u201d he replied. \u201cDon\u2019t you still have another paper to finish?\u201d Ugh again.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Steven Pressfield, The War of Art Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles<\/em>, Sanage Publishing House North Egremont, MA, (2002), 14<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid. 37<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid. 39<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid. 44<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Ibid. 40<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Ibid. 42<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Ibid. 41-42<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Ibid. 52<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Ibid. 42<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Ibid. 119-120<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt\u2019s about ten-thirty now. I sit down and plunge in. When I start making typos, I know I\u2019m getting tired. That\u2019s four hours or so. I\u2019ve hit the point of diminishing returns. I wrap up for the day.\u201d[1] I read this book, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, on the heels of completing the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":170,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2489,2197],"class_list":["post-34483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp02","tag-pressfield","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/170"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34483"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34485,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34483\/revisions\/34485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}