Happy Sunday friends! I am so glad you joined me back on the blog for today. I hope you had a great week. Friday was my last day teaching all of my high school art classes on Zoom. We are going back to school on Tuesday and I am so grateful and happy to go back. Teaching on zoom has really given me an appreciation for my classroom and also for working with students in person. “Appreciation” and “Gratitude” are my two words for 2021 that I want to focus on. I have been trying to focus on these words in my morning ages.

Morning Pages

Morning Pages is a type of journaling coined by author Julia Cameron in her amazing book, The Artist’s Way. Here’s how it works. You write for 30 minutes or 3 handwritten pages in a journal as soon as you wake up. Cameron recommends you complete the pages at 5 am.

The Morning Pages are meant to be a place where you write whatever comes to your mind- good or bad. This is a place to get it all out before you start your day. I have been doing the Morning Pages since 2018 and I have tweaked it a couple of ways to make it work more for my own purpose. In this post I am going to share with you how I have adapted the pages for my own morning routine.

My Version of Morning Pages

I use morning pages to focus on my conversation with God. It is like a form of meditation where I write my thoughts and also ask questions in my writing. Sometimes the answers to questions pop up as I am writing and sometimes they do not. However, the Morning Pages have been an excellent way to keep track of my thoughts, my prayers, and all of the good and sometimes bad things happening in my life.

Focus on What Matters to You

Lately I have been writing 5 things I am grateful for and 5 things that would make the day great during my Morning Page session. This has been a wonderful way to focus on the good and also to keep track of what I need to accomplish each day. Usually the next day I go back into the journal page for the previous day and check off anything that I accomplished. It helps me see things are really getting accomplished even if it sometimes does not feel like it.

Insights Into Your Life and Artistic Practice

My morning pages are also great for art ideas. I often write about my struggles, new ideas, things I love currently and I pray for guidance with what I create. It is neat to go back through the morning pages from weeks, months or years ago and see what I was thinking and how my art has evolved and how ideas came to be. Since doing this practice for a couple of years I have been going back to journals from a year ago and reading where I was at and it has inspired me to see how far I have actually come and the growth that is actually occurring.

If you are interested in starting, I recommend getting a notebook (does NOT have to be fancy unless you want it to be!). I go through a composition book a month, so I order a bunch of them through Amazon and just have them ready to go once I finish one. Grab a pen and just set a timer for 30 minutes each morning and write whatever you want. You can literally write “I have no idea what to write…”. I have done that and then soon after, a flood of thoughts came to mind and I started writing. It is just a great way to get everything out onto paper first thing in the morning. Cameron says to write 3 full pages.

Writing is Important – You Don’t Have to Read What You Write (Yet)

With the morning pages you are not supposed to read them until at least 8 weeks later. I have found though that I like reading them, especially when I go back to see what I was able to accomplish the day before. When you go back into them you are to highlight any insights you receive. What is something that keeps coming up? I have noticed the majority of my writing has been just venting, asking for guidance, talking about my art business and teaching, and discussing my day but every now and then there is a golden nugget that gives me some insight into my life.

I have found Morning Pages to be vital to my morning routine. I plan on writing more specifics about my morning routine in future blog posts. Let me know in the comments if this is something that would interest you!

I hope you give the Morning Pages a try, if you do I would love to hear how you like them!

See you next weekend on the blog:)