A Date With Yourself
I’ve been revisiting Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity.
The book's language and framing may feel unfamiliar to many men, yet I read it quite a few years back, applied the practices, and they proved helpful.
One of the practices Cameron suggests is taking yourself on a 'date'. Not in a romantic sense, but simply setting aside a couple of hours each week to spend time alone, doing something you enjoy, without purpose or outcome. What strikes me isn’t the idea itself, but how rare that kind of time actually is.
Most time has a function. There’s always something to get done, something to respond to, something to keep moving forward. Even downtime tends to fill quickly in ways that still feel like activity. A 'date' cuts across that, not in a big way, but enough to notice what it’s like to spend time with yourself without needing to justify it. To follow something small. To enjoy something for its own sake. To have a bit of time that’s yours.
There’s something in that which feels unexpectedly light. Not a breakthrough or a practice to master, just a small reintroduction of time that isn’t organised around performance.
The 'morning pages' journalling practice that comes with it sits in a similar place. Less about working things out, more about having somewhere for things to land without needing to shape them.
None of it looks particularly significant from the outside. But it shifts something. A bit more space. A bit more ease. And maybe a reminder that not all of your time needs to serve a purpose in order to matter.