There I was on the couch, desperate and miserable.  

“There’s no fucking point in dreaming and my life has no meaning or purpose. What’s the difference if I’m distracted by a fun little episode of One Piece or not?” I thought.

That’s when it hit me. That’s the whole point of this week… 

REWIND: The Initial Shock of No Media Week 

When Miss Julia Cameron said that the fourth week of The Artist’s Way was a “reading deprivation” week, I thought, “Absolutely not. I will not do that.” 

Mind you, “reading deprivation” was a 90’s concept that in the 2020’s has turned into a full blown “media deprivation” week. 

You read that right. No media for an entire week. No books, no social media, no podcast, and no consumption. Did I mention she also says no MUSIC!?

Who in their right mind would commit to this?? 

Clearly, I’ve never been in my right mind, because after much internal battling, I started to see how I might need this. And oh boy, did I need this. 

Before I could commit to this ridiculous notion of shutting myself off from the world, I went through every stage of grief. 

My god, grieving over the fact that I can’t watch One Piece or scroll on social media… I’m so embarrassing. 

Enter: denial. 

I thought I would silently skip this week and hoped that my best friend, also reading the book, decided the same thing.

“There’s no way we are doing this.” I hoped.

Next, the anger rose inside my body. I had just read two books in one week for the first time all year. I was so proud of that. Look at me choosing healthy ways to spend my time instead in front of a screen. Granted, I was reading books on a screen, but we don’t have to talk about that. 

Did Julia think I was just going to stop my reading streak in the name of what? Creativity?? No, more like torture?? 

Immediately, I called my best friend.

“What the heck are we going to do… Are we actually doing this??” 

Much to my dismay, she said, “We are doing this.” 

Fuck. 

That’s when the bargaining began. 

We would do this silly little week of torture, but we had some terms and conditions. 

“Fine, no social media, Julia.” We said, “BUT, we might read a book by the pool. And, we are going to watch one episode per night of our favorite show, One Piece.” 

Of course, we had a really good reason for breaking the rules with these two conditions. I was on a reading streak and I could not stop now. Also, One Piece was coming out with a HUGE episode on August 6th. We were trying to get caught up on the 1,000+ episodes we needed to watch. If we didn’t get caught up, we’d miss out on a monumental episode!

Together, we deleted all our social media apps from our phone. 

It felt bad.

I felt like someone had stabbed a hole into the middle of my heart and then just left the hole wide open. 

“Great,” I thought. “Now I get to figure out what freaking hole social media was filling in my life. Thanks a lot Julia for the problems!!!” 

A week of media deprivation began and soon followed the depression that comes with the final stages of grief. 

Did I make it to the final stage of grief, acceptance? Find out in part two. 

In case you missed it:

1. I removed the paywall from all of the private blog entries that were once connected to the Intuitive Confidential Membership.
2. After hitting more rock bottoms than I can count this year I realized The Truth About Rock Bottoms is vary contrary to the advice most people give.
3. I discovered you can’t trust your favorite idols on the internet because Everyone Is Just Lying About Who They Are.
4. I Cheated on my “media deprivation” week but I promise I had a really good reason!

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