No Consequences
This week, you have a couple of options! Choose one, choose both, it's up to you.
These prompts are inspired by this week’s blog post, which you can find here:
www.ellenmay.com.au/blog/the-room-of-no-consequences
Use this prompt however you wish - think about it, write about it, make art inspired by it. There are no right answers and there's no way to get this wrong.
If you're doing this as an art journal prompt, you'll need something to draw on and something to draw with. Gather your supplies and when you're ready, start as usual by taking a moment to get comfortable and settle in. Perhaps take a breath or two, or let your body move or stretch if you've been sitting a while.
Option 1: Room of No Consequences
If you liked the idea of having your own Room of No Consequences, take some time to build yourself one. Imagine how big it might be, what shape it is, how thick the walls are. Does it have windows? What do you have in the room with you? Is it located anywhere in particular? Does it morph into something new each time you visit, or is it comfortably constant? Is it a magic room? What kind of magic?
Here's what my room would be like right now: It's shaped like a bread roll with curved padded walls lined with purple velvet. It's got a huge pile of cushions and for some reason a potted fern. It's in a totally separate dimension that only belongs to me, insulated from everyone and everything so it's completely private. Sometimes it has a window that looks out onto a landscape that feels very spacious. Sometimes it has no windows.
Once you've created your room, take some time to look at it. If you like, perhaps you could draw yourself inside it. How does it feel, your Room of No Consequence? How do you feel, imagining a place where everything you feel, every impulse you have, is permitted?
This is your place - you can visit whenever you want, and do whatever you need to while you're there.
Option 2: Create with no consequences
Get yourself a page you don't care about. The back of a scrap of paper, a piece of cardboard from the side of a box, a paper bag that used to hold mushrooms, a page in your journal if you're not precious about it. Give yourself permission to do whatever you want to this page, with no consequences.
If it's hard to start, close your eyes and scribble, then open them and keep going. Follow your impulses. Tear, scrunch, throw the page across the room if you feel like it. (Safely) set it on fire. Write words that you struggle to say out loud. Scribble over them. Make it ugly, make a mess. Keep going, following each impulse - it might be angry or engergised or calm or ordered… no rules. No consequences. Freedom to do what feels right, moment to moment, until you feel done. Sometimes that means destroying the page or throwing it out, sometimes it doesn't. Do what feels right to you.
Take some time to reflect on your experience. What was it like, following each impulse freely? Was it easy, was it challenging? Did it feel good, uncomfortable, irritating, kind of neutral? All of this is great information to think about in the context of the rest of your life. Where do you allow yourself freedom to follow your impulses, and where is that not a safe or possible thing for you to do? Anything you might like to start doing differently, having experimented with a page?