Imagine if you could be someone else just for a day. What would you do? Where would your curiosity lead you? I first came across the concept of trying-on-for-size ‘imaginary lives’ in the popular work by Julia Cameron called The Artist’s Way: A Course in Discovering and Recovering Your Creative Self. The book has sold millions of copies world-wide since it was first published in 1992, with its main purpose being to help stuck creatives to become unstuck, to remove obstacles from the path of creative exploration and to encourage those with a desire to live more creatively to simply trust the guidance and give it a go.

The Artist’s Way is, at its most basic, a 12-week course in creative recovery and discovery, with tasks designed to help the reader nurture their creative selves and to grow more confident in their creative endeavours. The foundational tools on which Cameron builds over the 12 weeks are ‘morning pages’ – 3 pages of stream of consciousness writing at the beginning of the day that help to move aside the inner critic and to clear the mind of negative thoughts to enable focus. Alongside the daily writing is the ‘artist’s date’ – a weekly get-together with your child-like self to do something you would have enjoyed as an 8-year-old and which Cameron refers to as ‘filling the well’ or ‘stocking the pond’; in other words, inspiring yourself with fun, intriguing and beautiful things and taking care of your wounded artist self who may have set aside creative dreams to fulfil responsibilities or to get a ‘sensible’ job in order to pay the bills.

During weeks 1 and 2 of the course, one of the tasks is to ponder alternative creative lives you would have enjoyed living. I enthusiastically jotted down botanist, park ranger, potter, dancer and antiques dealer before reading the following instruction which was to do something that would bring me closer to realising that dream life! I was extremely sceptical at first, seeing it as a form of silly and unnecessary head-in-the-clouds escapism, and of not being grateful for the life I have. I did not see how it could inspire me to be more creative. I also did not have the slightest inclination to spend the money on taking a course or classes that might cost a small fortune simply to indulge a fantasy life that would ultimately come to nothing. I decided though to trust the process and thousands of The Artist’s Way enthusiasts who had gone before me and remained open-minded. What could I do that would not break the bank, which might inspire me and take me on a journey that would fascinate me?

Admittedly, it did take me a while to get into the groove of artist’s dates and imaginary lives, as I was wracked with the guilt of both taking the time and spending the cash on a flight of fancy. But eventually, I took myself off to buy new houseplants to indulge my love of greenery and nature, then a pottery painting class proved to be a whole lot of fun once I got over the urge for perfection and allowed myself to experiment freely and without expectation.

I took my camera to a local historical village and pretended to be a tourist, angling for creative shots, so satisfying a hunger for visiting new places as well as a passion for photography. An outing to the beach one summer morning turned into hours spent making spiral art with stones and shells, pretending to be an artist for the day.

A notion one week to be a baker saw me buying the ingredients to make a Christmas cake and I whipped up a batch of gingerbread biscuits while I was at it – the house smelled of cinnamon and childhood memories for days on end. Wandering around old ruins, as autumn sunlight filtered through the arched windows, I donned the eagle-eye and story-making skill of a historian for an afternoon, imagining banquets and betrayals taking place within the stone walls. Collecting berries at the end of summer allowed me to become a wild forager with ancient plant wisdom. I also once fancied being an athlete so trained for a series of trail running events. Nothing is too far-fetched it would seem! A trip to the library to borrow books about Norse Mythology saw me become a researcher for my dream novel and an app on my phone let me survey constellations in the night sky and fantasize about being an astronomer discovering majestic faraway worlds. So many lives to inhabit!

‘Do what intrigues you, explore what interests you;’ instructs Cameron in The Artist’s Way. ‘Think mystery, not mastery.’ The idea is that we will be inspired to live more creatively in our day-to-day lives by visiting places that seem interesting to us or by trying things we have always fancied giving a go. The message being that it’s never too late to play or to reconnect with your creative self, something Cameron is convinced is innate to all humans. And it makes sense once you’ve given it a whirl, that we will feel the quality of our lives expand like a hot air balloon readying for flight; that as we delve into the things we are curious about we will begin to soar and encounter all kinds of new adventures and possibilities, to view the world from whole new perspectives. And, at the very least we will always have something fascinating to talk about!

Words and pictures by Kelly Hargie