Reading ahead

Week Four on the Artist Wayfarer path, I find myself at a curious crossroads. With two books in hand, which one to follow? According to The Artist Way , first published in 1992, week four is dedicated to the experiment of Reading Deprivation.

Seems hard enough.

With the proliferation of electronic reading material, The Artist Way at Work , written in 1998, expands the concept to include all media. No TV, no NPR, no music with lyrics, no net surfing for pleasure, no email! Furthermore, Media Deprivation is introduced in week six in a chapter on solitude and meditative techniques entitled “Pearls of Wisdom.”

I could take the easier fork in the road, stay with the agenda of the second book, postpone the Media Deprivation for another two weeks, when coincidentally I will be out of town on vacation anyway. But, no in the spirit of our communal effort here, I’ll take on the challenge this week. I have a writing assignment at work where I find myself foot-dragging and procrastinating. I am indeed familiar with he detours and distractions of online drifting with its guilty pleasures of junk reading and window shopping, -- so here goes, 10 minutes to midnight. I'm posting my declaration for the week: no media!. Ouch. Will see how it goes.

In the meantime, noting that a picture is worth a thousand words (as the cliche goes) I'm posting a favorite photo, grabbed in New Orleans with my little Fuji camera. Photography is my husband’s creative outlet. He takes beautiful pictures. But from time to time, I get lucky -- catch a shot like this one, quite by accident.

Midnight: time to post.