Happiness Project Day 61: Artist's Way Artist Date at The Bookies

Shelf label says "Enduring Books" Glad to see they've endured.

In the Artist Way program, one of the things that we're supposed to do every week is to go on an artist's date. No, this is not a date that with another artist. This is me taking my artist out on a date. The idea is to look at my creative self as a separate person. And this person needs to be wooed. She needs color and fun and imagery in order to be her best creative self. Artist dates shoud be something one wouldn't normally do, and they are to be without a third party involved; just a person and her or his artist.

Having been through The Artist's Way with several groups, I can tell you that the artist date is the one task that people have the most trouble with - myself included. We get busy, and the temptation is to call something that is in our normal routine an artist date. Or to call something that had already been planned with a friend, an artist date. We don't seem to want to go out of our way to do something that is not only good for us, but fun! Crazy, I know.

We are in Week One of The Artist's Way, and I decided to start out right and get the artist date out of the way immediately. And of course it was so nice to carve out some time, and go out of my way to do something new that I wondered why I don't do it all the time.

This week's artist date - and my happy thing for today - was at a little place in Glendale called The Bookies. I've driven past it a thousand times, and have always wanted to go in. I thought it was a used book store, but no, there were no used books. It was more of an independent book store that's got mostly kids books and fun toys and educational toys and stuff for teachers. It was a very good place for an artist date!

Just one of the many book covers that made me smile.

Fish eye mirror selfie.

Who doesn't need Yoda earbuds?