I didn’t think that I could be afraid of my own vulnerability. I put *nearly* my whole heart out on display time and time again.
But, that’s what these challenges are for. Challenging my comfort zone and asking where else I can expand.
These two weeks have been more challenging than any art challenge I’ve ever done. At least with my art, I can hide behind the craft. I can hide my own meaning behind the paint. But the more we write, the more we uncover ourselves. The more I am seen.
I could just write fiction and focus on my writing ability. But, for this challenge, I wanted to understand what drew me to writing. I wanted to clear the channel of writing and see how I might show up differently like I did with painting.
So far, I’ve felt raw and anxious. I will start a day and find myself resisting what I truly want to say.
But, we are here, and even if I write a little each day, then that is enough. Here are some of my favorites.
Day 7: Perspective – A belief you once held that has changed over time.
I used to believe to be a great writer, was to open yourself up to the greatest heartbreak and bleed it onto the page.
I thought to be a great artist meant you had to enter that dark room alone and bring back what others are too afraid to witness.
I believed only through solitude, could you find your expression, your art, and truly face yourself.
You hear that writing at its best is a lonely life.
Some of the best works by painters come from states of solitude. Philosophy is built on the idea of contemplating in isolation to bring out the most poignant thought.
For a long time I kept my self, for myself. I explored my artistic expression with the door closed and the connection to others dimmed.
One day I was in that room, trying to think of the next painting that could finally get me noticed by a phantom I attached my validation to. I was struggling to find the colors to use, so I went to the window hoping to find some inspiration.
Trapped between the glass and the window screen hung a spider. One with a round abdomen and large enough that I wasn’t going to open the window anytime soon.
What began as fear turned into uneasy curiosity.
I would watch her each morning, wrapping her prey or basking in the sun with me. I began journaling about this spider and what kind of wisdom she might hold for me. I even started to look forward to the days that I saw her between our safe barrier.
My daily pause with the spider, often while I was upside down on the bed, helped inspire a painting with two perspectives in one landscape.
Ever since I began painting, I have had run-ins with spiders. They usually show up right before I start a creative project. Each and every time I get scared and want to run away. But, it was in that moment with this spider that I realized you are not in isolation to find your expression. You are truly in a relationship with yourself and your creativity.
To be a great writer is not to be in loneliness and heartbreak, it is to be in deep conversation with your love. To be a great artist is not to be in solitude, but to be in devotion to the perspectives around you.
Nature is always flowing into one another, so how could art possibly be the one thing we must remove in order for it to flourish?
Day 10: Devotion – Write about an act of love, big or small.
My idea of romance was ruined for me on my 17th birthday.
I think most first real relationships are filled with those loud gestures of love that get written into young adult novels.
We would write each other letters. Get each other’s favorite books, filling the pages with highlighted quotes and notes about what reminds us of our love. We would choose “our song,” Yellow by Coldplay, and slow dance in the kitchen to it while dreaming of our futures. When you’re young you get to be free and embarrassing with your love. Writing reasons why you love someone on every single card in a deck embarrassing.
And on the morning of my birthday, I get a text from my boyfriend, telling me to meet him at this side road a few streets over from his house.
When I pulled up to the only car on the street, he was standing outside waiting for me.
“I wanted to make sure this would just be for us,” he apologized, walking me over to a sidewalk I was sure had never been walked on. He put his hands over my eyes and led me down the center.
When he lifted his hands, I looked down to see a plate of chocolate chip pancakes.
His mom’s pancakes were legendary apparently so I often told him I wished I could have them.
Random place to eat pancakes, but I was down.
And then I saw the next gift — a disposable camera. I was saving up to buy myself a camera to get into photography.
The next gift was a map of Australia. I had wanted to go since I was five.
This continued for seventeen gifts. Each gift leading to another. Each gift a reminder that I was seen by someone.
That day helped shape how I see love and devotion today. It wasn’t the gifts necessarily, but having someone confidently show you seventeen times, “I see you.”
Now, I take care to collect tokens of people in my life. I like keeping notes on my friends’ likes and dislikes, how they take their coffee or tea, who they wanted to be when they grew up, what lights them up.
To be seen.
That feels like love to me.
Day 11: Distance – The effect of time or space on a relationship.
We no longer accept space into our experiences. There is no breathing room, no slow-burn, no time to yearn and wonder.
We have our questions quickly answered through our search engines, eat two minute meals thrown into microwaves, receive instant validation on our dating apps, and consume fantasy books filled with the immediate, passionate lust of star-bound lovers.
Instead of tending to the plants we do have, we can just go out and buy a new one once the old is dead. We no longer have to consider what it means to tend to the soil, know how much sun the plant is asking for, wait for the season for it to bloom.
There are very few places now asking for our patience. Few places we pause to take a breath.
I traveled to the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness during my cross country road trip and spent the day hiking and learning about the lands. The rolling lands are covered in other worldly rock formations, sandstone, shale, clay. I got to experience a sandstorm during the trek at the top of one of the formations. The world turned to dust and I looked up to see that the whole sky opened up around us as if you could make out the bend. At the end, I asked my guide Kialo how to thank the land, and he went and picked me a leaf. We cupped it in our hands and he told me we think of the day, thank the land, and blow into our hand. To give breath to something is to give our intention, our energy, and our love.
For a long time after, I would catch myself holding my breath throughout the rest of my life. When I was making food, when I was working, when I was deep in thought. It was as if my instant lifestyle took away my capacity to breathe life into my space.
We’ve been trained to see space as negative, as if space takes away meaning. We value outcomes, above all else, mistaking instant responses as the clarity we so desperately seek.
Yet, love is a way of being, not an answer we can find. Love is a mountain asking us for our breath.
If love is a mountainous trek, longing is the pause in our step, as we face the discomfort of our own impermanence.
There is a deep knowing that a moment, any moment, will be the last between us.
The further we move up the mountain, the deeper the knowing becomes that the only way back down is to fall.
The more we open ourselves up to devotion, the further that fall will be.
And yet, we choose to climb anyway.
The fall is long, perilous, painful.
And yet, we choose to love anyway.
I will collect pieces of you along my path. These will keep me warm on my descent. And when I reach the point I am about to fall, I will take all of these pieces into my hands, and breathe into them. I will breathe the memories we’ve shared, the moments we stopped to watch the view. I will breathe into the seeds we planted and the ways we’ve grown. And I will breathe my gratitude for the mountain and the space we gave it. And as I release these pieces on my fall, I know the breath will carry me safely to the ground, to love is to hold faith that these pieces we carry will lessen the impact.
Day 13: Unfinished – A relationship or story that never had closure.
Is it safer for the ego to cradle hope or carry anger To whisper prayers to a false future, or cling to the ruins and fragments of the words we never said. I walk through the bones of roses, Over the bleeding ash. My eye drawn To the door that never quite shut, As if it’s holding its breath. I will become a memory of myself. Echoes of us pacing this room. Our shadows dancing along the walls. And I will lie down in the darkness, until I am only ash among the overgrowth, until I am the ghost of all the things I could not let go.
We are already on week three. I hope you will join me:
Day 16: Detour – When life didn’t go as planned, but it led somewhere meaningful.
Day 17: Lessons – What failure taught you.
Day 18: Momentum – A moment when you felt unstoppable.
Day 19: Sacrifice – A choice that cost you something but taught you more.
Day 20: Epiphany – A realization that shifted your path.
Day 21: Release – Something you let go of that changed you for the better.