Welcome back to the series of The Artist’s Way, Week 3! This week I was recovering a sense of power. A lot of it had to deal with childhood memories of having fun and things I was into, while trying to harness the sense of possibilities and power in current life.

This week’s exercises haven’t been easy. As it turns out, I don’t remember much of my childhood. Adolescence – sure, but childhood – hardly. So it took a lot of work just to remember some details. For example, remembering 5 childhood accomplishment took forever. First, I realized I didn’t really think anything done in childhood was really worthy to be called “an accomplishment” – interesting revelation, my subconscious, interesting indeed:) And second, even after I did recover a few moments I was proud of, my first instinct was to dismiss it as someone else’s success rather my own – my teachers’, my parents’, etc. It’s really interesting how reasonable gratitude has transformed into almost submission in my mind – and how eager I was to dismiss my own experience as mere participation in someone else’s project rather than something I did.

On another note, Artist’s Date was pure fun and an adventure this week. There was a pretty serious snowstorm on Saturday with vicious wind gusts and wet, heavy snowfall. What did I decide to do? Sit at home with a warm cup of tea? Naw, let’s go to the pier and enjoy the ocean view cause it’d be really fun to see the ocean in such angry weather 😀

Just so we’re on the same page, I live on New England’s Cape Cod, in a town called Provincetown all the way at the end of the hook. Winds are not kind here, especially on days like that. I met no people on the way to the pier with the exception of a harbormaster, who was patrolling the area just in case someone (khm) was crazy enough to go out there.

Ocean and the sky shared a similar grey color. Both were angry and not very welcoming. I honestly tried to take some videos and pictures, but holding a phone steady was a challenge even with both hands. So instead I mostly just enjoyed the view.

I’ve seen the Macmillan pier a million times before, but it was hard to recognize it this time. Snow was piled up on both sides of the road. It was reaching my knees in some spots, and if you’ve been to Cape Cod lately you’d know that it’s not quite typical for our weather. However, it was typical weather for my home country Belarus, where knee-high snowfall doesn’t even make the news in the winter, especially in late February or early March, that’s how typical it is. So not only I got a walk down the pier this time, but also a walk down the memory lane 🙂

Another big block of work this week was about recognizing synchronicity, and not sabotaging the progress. Synchronicity, in this case, is basically the universe answering our prayers and wishes for the things we desire, and throwing opportunities to our feet and asking: “Now that you have it, what are you going to do with it?”

I know that this concept takes some people aback. I’ve met some incredibly lucky (in my opinion) people who refused to see their luck, who had rushed to discount and dismiss the opportunities that (drumroll) they’d been working towards. Hell, I used to be one of those people myself not even a few years ago!

Believing that something out there wants me to succeed and feel good about myself is hard at first. It feels like it’s too good to be true. A while ago I read an article that claimed the only difference between lucky and unlucky had been the viewer’s point of view. Luck is in the eye of the beholder, basically, and this way of thinking has changed my life to the better.

Julia Cameron suggests looking the opportunity in the eye and taking a leap of faith. In my case, an opportunity indeed presented itself, but it’s a tad too early to discuss it – but it is here, and I took it! Funny how it happened exactly on the week the book said it would happen, right?

How do you feel about opportunities that appear out of the blue at the moment when you truly could use them? Do you take a step forward, or do you linger in disbelief?