This week on my Artist's Way journey, we’re exploring Week 9: Recovering a Sense of Compassion. For any writer or creative feeling stuck, this is for you. I’m sharing my personal diary on embracing "creative U-turns" as growth, healing the inner child through the radical act of fun, and finding creative fuel in nature (from the seaside to the botanical gardens) and in our community. Let's learn to be kinder to our creative selves.

It’s NotesOnDawn, and this week's Artist's Way challenge was the one I dreaded most: a total media purge. No TV, no social media... and no books. As a book lover, I was terrified [02:16]. But my biggest struggle wasn't what I expected. It was "horrible... thinking about just having to eat dinner and like do nothing" [07:17]. This is the story of my "iPad kid" [08:26] confession and the surprising spiritual breakthrough I found in the silence [10:25].