Five Other Lives: Who Would You Be?

In The Artists' Way, by Julia Cameron, she gives us an exercise to complete that I have ALWAYS loved doing... It's called Five Imaginary Lives:

Five Imaginary Lives If you had five other lives to lead, what would you do in each of them? I would be a pilot, cowhand, a physicist, a writer, a psychic, a monk. You might be a scuba diver, a cop, a writer of children’s books, a football player, a belly dancer, a painter, a performance artist, a history teacher, a healer, a coach, a scientist, a doctor, a Peace Corps worker, a psychologist, a fisherman, a minister, an auto mechanic, a carpenter, a sculptor, a lawyer, a painter, a computer hacker, a soap-opera star, a country singer, a rock-and-roll drummer. Whatever occurs to you, jot it down. Do not overthink this. The point of these lives is to have fun in them – more fun than you might be having in this one.

Quick... If you get a wild hair-- go jot yours down. On a post-it note by your desk if you have to. Follow her advice and DON'T overthink it. Just jot it down. Who would you be if you could have another imaginary life? If money/new training/having kids already weren't obstacles... Who would you love to be in your other life?

There's no need to stress about it, or wonder if your five lives are telling you that THIS life sucks. That's not the point. The point is to allow for some daydreaming, some fun imaginings, and maybe.... just maybe.... to then find ONE LITTLE WAY you can implement a piece of one of those dreams back into your NOW life.

My five imaginary lives? The collage I put together above gives you some hints...

In fact, maybe I'll let you all guess a little while... Offer a prize to someone who gets the most right...Hm. My mind is a-stewing! Okay. If ya wanna guess, I'll let you comment in the next 24 hours from now. If more than one person gets the same amount of correct guesses,I'll draw the winner randomly from that group. Leave a comment... And the prize will be a $20 gift card to your choice of Target or HomeGoods. Yay! A spontaneous contest!

In the meantime, go stew on YOUR five lives. List them. Then if you get adventurous, Google-image search them and make a collage or list of images of your lives. And then,..... ponder them a bit. Flesh them out. Blog them.

And if this REALLY gets you yearning or excited, find ONE way to make that imaginary life REAL, for a moment. If one of your lives is to be a writer in Paris, then go indulge yourself in a croissant at a local bakery and bring your journal along. See? Magic!

Back tomorrow to tell you mine.... And name a winner.

Whee!!!

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Some credits for the images:
Banjo photo. Music poster.The button crafty HERE. Pink bedroom. Treehouse.
Other images: Clip art/stock photo stuff...