If something continues to show its self to me I pay attention. When the same topic, or book, or name pops up in different conversation or events I take notice. This past week that is exactly what happened with the book The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.
I vaguely recall hearing about it before but it was never anything really memorable, but that’s why when I saw the name again it was somewhat familiar. The first instance was a couple of days ago, I was looking up some information on writing and was wondering about fonts so I typed my query into Google and proceeded from there. One of the answers I came across mentioned The Artist’s Way and one of the writing exercises that he still did to this day. It intrigues me but not enough to actually do anything about it.
Later that same day while I was on a site about scrapbooking I followed a link to another site which lead to a link to yet another site (and that’s how some afternoons just seem to get away from me) where I found a site that was inspired by another exercise from The Artist’s Way. I thought that was pretty cool, to have two randomly different searches both bring me to the same book, and yet, still I did nothing about it and basically left it at that.
But, this book was not to be forgotten or pushed aside so easily. The very next day I received an email and in that email was a link to articles to help build my business. One of the articles listed something like the 10 must read books and if you haven’t guessed it already The Artist’s Way was on that list. Since I don’t believe in coincidences I decided that I needed to look into this book and my first stop was the online search for my local library.
Now, I live in a very small town, a hamlet really, and I wouldn’t be exaggerating too much to say that my personal library is probably larger then the one in town. The nice thing is that in the past year and a half they have connected with several libraries in the area, in both large and small communities, to have an inter-library loan and anyone with a library account can look up books and have them delivered to their local library. This is something I really took advantage of when I lived in California and I still utilize today. No matter if no one else in town knows who I am, I am always on a first name basis with every librarian I have ever encountered, usually because I check out so many books (seriously, since I was five and got my first library card I have checked out a minimum of ten books a month). Since I live in this hamlet, they typically don’t have the exact book I want on hand at that moment. Generally I go online to their network, place a book on hold and frequently have to wait about a week or so, sometimes it’s just a couple of days.
That’s exactly what I thought would happen with this book. I logged in and did a quick search for The Artist’s Way, it came up with multiple listings and that is always a good thing. I clicked on it and noticed that the first few selections were checked out and not due until January, this was not looking good. As I scrolled down I saw that the last few listings read the same but right there, near the bottom, was one little library that had the words ON SHELF listed under the library name, and that little library was right next door to my work. Rather than put the book on hold and wait for a librarian to grab it for me and call me when it was ready I decided that it was time to take a break and sauntered next door.
It was quick to find and now I have another book to read over my winter break. It will be a good thing to begin the New Year.
