I don’t have many regrets, but this is one.

On The Artist’s Way & the time I got nature stoned!

My very well-worn copy of The Artist’s Way

I don’t have many regrets in life. I’ve lived enough and, perhaps more importantly, lost enough to know that there’s little to be gained in regretting things. But there is one idea I’ve been ruminating on: how I pay attention to the world around me. 

I took a short publishing break at the start of this year, and embarked on The Artist’s Way. Together, these practices have reinvigorated my creativity. I started work on a new project, which I’m not ready to talk about yet but which has made my world feel richer and more dimensional. It’s made me notice things more acutely, and to want to capture them in language. Things like: 

• How the woman in the cinema gave up on finding her assigned seat, bounced her shoulders and sat wherever she wanted to. 

• How one dog sniffed the other dog’s butt with the thoroughness of a minesweeper scanning for explosives

• How the mushrooms sag and seem vaguely morose when I cook them in a creamy sauce¹. 

When I’m immersed in my creative work, I experience the world in a different way. My senses are heightened. I develop a kind of painterly instinct, noticing idiosyncratic details that I hope will bring my characters to life. It’s hard to describe it without sounding vaguely stoned. But it’s an attentiveness, a perceptiveness, a sudden appreciation for nuance and detail.  

I wrote a first draft of this piece, and then went forest bathing for this week’s Artist Date². The practice, known as ‘shinrin yoku', originated in Japan in the 1980s. It’s essentially an extremely mindful forest visit but I left feeling (what the instructor described as) “nature stoned”. I stroked a tree’s moss and marveled at its cushiony softness. I made a small creative offering, pictured below. I think of it as ‘art installation meets insect buffet’. I nestled into a nook at the base of a tree trunk and almost cried at how perfectly I fit, at how that tree supported me. 

The only photo I took while forest bathing

As I describe it, I realize it sounds bonkers. But that’s the thing about being stoned. You experience the world in a way no-one else does. 

Trauma is like that too. For years, I experienced the world as a dangerous, threatening place. That wasn’t an over-reaction on my part, but a reflection of how painful it was to live in a society where sexual harm is routinely minimized and normalized. Most of us would agree that rape is wrong, and even more so when the victim is a child. But too many of us prefer to ignore or disregard things like non-consensual touching, coercion or sexual harassment. I knew the harm rape culture caused, even if others could shrug it off without a second thought. 

I sometimes think of severe trauma as being similar to being frozen. Rather than having a fleshy, animal body, I was a block of ice that needed to be slowly thawed. Every nerve ending came back to life, vibrating with agony. Every bodily process (breathing, eatting, excreting) had to rediscover its pattern. Every muscle needed to soften and relax. It was excruciating. As with many hard things in life, the ‘cure’ was only slightly less devastating than the illness.   

It’s not surprising that I wasn’t paying much attention to the world back then. But I wish I had. I wish I could travel back in time to my past self and say: you don't need more time to write. You don’t need a fancier headshot or a better website or a smarter idea. You just need to spend some time converting the world you see into words. You need to cultivate attention. The only things that matter are an eagerly observant eye and a commitment to showing up again and again. 

The Artist’s Way is a powerful process. It provides a structure to unearth and see more clearly the blocks that hold you back in your creative work. Undoubtedly, my biggest block (like many people) is myself. When asked to list a few examples of the negative things people had said about my work over the years, I had a lot to point to. I remembered, not so much the negative feedback on a particular piece, but the nasty commentary about how I wanted to make a living as a writer. The audacity of that rankles people, and I absorbed their disdain. 

Those voices are another reason I shifted my attention from what I was seeing in the world, to the noise inside my own head. The negativity somehow seemed more important. I guess we’re all like that. Our egos mean we focus on ourselves, but there’s a lot to be gained if we can do it less. 

Attention is what makes art possible. Protect your mental attention like the precious gift that it is.

---

Thank you for reading. If you’d like to support my work (& stick it to the negative noise in my head), please consider becoming a paid subscriber. 

Huge thanks to Sarah Hourigan from Nature Therapy Ireland for a life-changing first forest bathing experience. If you’re looking for a corporate or team-building event, I think this could be a great option.

💕 If this piece resonated with you, please tap the heart below to help spread the word.

💬 In the comments, I’d love to hear about your creative regrets and/or experiences being (nature) stoned! 😮‍💨

✍️ Beyond Survival is written by me, Clare Egan, an award-winning writer and journalist. You can read more about me here, or look at some pretty pictures over here. 👋 Click reply to say hello anytime. Thank you for being here!

1. I made this recipe which is very good but there are calorie counts so please be aware if that might be triggering for you. 

2. Here’s an introduction to the best tenets of The Artist’s Way.