I AM - My JourneyTo A Creative Life (ePub)

Ever dreamed of quitting your job to pursue a more creative or entrepreneurial life? After surviving 5 cardiac arrests in one night following a minor accident, the author vows to ditch her career and live the rest of her one and only precious life writing fiction, making photographs, and creating art.

Wanting to make sense of her decades-long frustrating quest for an artistic life and to discover how creative work became her salvation form the rationale behind this intimate memoir. Digging deep into her memory cache and sifting through five decades of journals brings to light the author's Sisyphean attempts to break free and follow her bliss.

On this perilous journey of self-discovery, she learns how her relentless pursuit of career success and making money, of doing and achieving, repeatedly eclipsed her cherished creative dreams. Along the way, she explores the source of her ambition, her chronic anxieties, and her habitual coping mechanisms.

In a collage of styles (journal entries, emails, poems, lists, and postcards interspersed with narrative passages), the author takes the reader through the rollercoaster highs and lows, the joys and fears, the successes and failures that represent her life as a passionate, restless, constantly re-evaluating artist. As befitting an artist's memoir, the narrative is punctuated with images of her art.

Synopsis: After setting out her state of mind and the events leading up to the great catastrophe of her life, Linda begins time travelling.

"My Beginnings 1950-1967" presents disquieting memories about growing up in Hamilton in the 1950s and 1960s. She relates how a culturally deprived child of immigrants, growing up in the north end of Hamilton developed an outsider's mindset and became a keen observer with a relentless urge to write and make art.

"Filling The Well 1968-1975" sketches out her first experiences at university and at her first job as an advertising copywriter in Toronto.

"Travelling 1976" documents 10 months of travel abroad. The trip begins on a freighter that takes her and her husband to Morocco and ends with selling their car to the Greek government. Highlights include attending the Cannes Film Festival and living in a camper caravan for 2 weeks near Loch Ness without ever spotting the legendary monster.

"Searching 1977-1991" includes details on writing her first novel and short stories, being appointed film columnist for Hamilton magazine and Canadian correspondent for Horizon magazine and becoming a mother. This flurry of creativity ends, and Linda's dependence on alcohol grows, when she sells out her dream life for a 9-to-5 job.

Two miscarriages and a toxic work environment send Linda spiralling downwards in "Breaking Out 1992-2005". A dream, inspiring books and teachers coalesce and Linda crawls out of her depressive state to embrace her creativity. Making image transfers becomes her initial passion. She enrolls in Humber College's Correspondence Course in Creative Writing. Her mentor, Paul Quarrington, praises her short stories. As a 50th birthday present to herself, she registers for an Alternative Media Techniques course at the Ontario College of Art and Design. This leads her to painting workshops with Canadian painter Harold Klunder as her mentor.

"Creativity Coaching 2006" uses Linda's year-long correspondence with a creativity coach to depict the rollercoaster process of making art.

Attending a 2-week painting residency starts off this creatively fertile period of Linda's life in "On My Way 2007-2010". She enjoys several solo exhibitions, moves back to Hamilton after 35 years in Toronto, and gets an Ontario Arts Council grant to attend a month-long creative residency in Vermont. Then as 2010 draws to a close, feeling as if she's finally living her dream life, she nearly dies.

The "After Notes" section details how making art helps Linda recover from...