Welcome to week eleven. This is the week in which you work toward finalizing all of your projects – particularly the self-awareness project. Hopefully you can take a breath, refocus, and get ready for the final push.
Overall, the goal for this week is twofold: to get the self-awareness project mostly done, and to make sure that you’ve also completed the other two projects (the reading project and the writing project). All of these projects are due at the end of next week. That’s a firm deadline. Unlike the other deadlines, which have been provisional and flexible to accommodate your particular needs as a creative person, the final deadline is final. So, make sure that you work on whatever projects you need to get done. If you’ve previously completed the reading project and the writing project, then your only task for this week is the self-awareness project. Work on that.
If you get stuck, let me know.
You need time to work on the self-awareness project (and potentially finalize other projects as well). So, during this week, you don’t have a creative activity – but wait! If you have time, and if you want to try, and if you are able to enter into it with a spirit of creative play – then yes, indeed, there is a creative activity: juggling. I’ve saved it until the point in the semester when you might need a fun break. It’s completely up to you. If doing this activity might stress you out more, then don’t do it. But if it sounds fun to you, and if it might take your mind off the crush of the late semester, then by all means give it a try. (I must say that of all the creative activities we do, juggling can perhaps teach us the most. No pressure.)
If you’d like to do a deep dive into some of the related ideas from this week, here’s a short list of further resources:
Further Readings for Week 11: On Health and Wellness
Stress and the Social Self
Forests and Rivers are the Most Potent Tonic Around
A Monument for the Anxious and Hopeful
Barking up the Wrong Tree: How to be Awesome at Life
The 2,000-year-old Origins of EQ and How it Became a Crucial Job Skill
The Wisdom of Trees: Walt Whitman on Our Silent Friends
The Japanese practice of 'forest bathing'
This is Your Brain on Exercise
How Walking in the Woods Prevents Depression