Notes to self: Julia Cameron on recognizing crazymakers
People I have known.
- break deals, destroy schedules.
- expect special treatment.
- discount your reality / violate your needs.
- spend your time / money.
- triangulate those they deal with.
- are expert blamers. Nothing that goes wrong is their fault.
- create dramas, but not where the dramas belong.
- hate schedules except their own.
- hate order; chaos serves their purpose.
- deny that they are crazymakers.
p. 49: “As much as you are being exploited by your crazymakers, you, too, are using that person to block your creative flow.”
Also, on energy loss due to external dynamics, this.
Me + Richard Armitage 
I’ve spent far too much of my life living with crazymakers. Finally learning to stay away. Thanks for this.
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it’s amazing how hard it is — so easy to fall in again and again.
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I eventually had to walk away from her book because a particular chapter made me so blindingly angry it completely negated any progress I’d been working toward, but the crazymakers. Yes. That chapter helped open my eyes to what I was putting up with from certain people in my life.
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I’d been subsisting on what I learned in the very first part of the book for several years — I only read past “creative dates” this weekend.
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I sincerely hope you are able to take more from the book than I did.
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morning pages have been totally worth it. But I don’t feel obligated to do the book on her schedule, obviously, if I’ve been just doing the first recommnedation for four years, lol 🙂
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Yes, absolutely. I’ve continued to love and find use in the idea of the morning pages. And, as much as I resisted the idea at first, I’ve also come around on the importance of the Artist Dates. There is good stuff in the book.
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Sociopaths? Not that I’m a doctor to make such diagnosis. Behind initial apparent friendliness lurks a nasty character.
Particularly the unfounded accusation of others is something I really detest. I try to avoid such people.
So what the book’s saying is that if you associate with a crazy maker, you’ll blame that person for your own creative inability – in essence become your own crazy maker? Very interesting, hadn’t thought of that.
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sociopath is probably overstating it.
I think it’s good to ask myself why I care about certain things to the extent of allowing them to occupy emotional space. If I can’t detach and it’s not that important — it’s also about me.
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