My Misogi Challenge
— Going Public, Getting Vulnerable
I’ve spent the last couple of decades championing the work of others. I’ve read countless drafts of people’s novels, memoirs, poems, and screenplays. I’ve celebrated book contracts, agent signings, books published, gallery openings, and much more. I’ve posted reviews and shouted the praise of authors from the rafters. All the while, writing and writing and writing and holding my own work very close. Sharing very little publicly.
I recently stumbled upon the concept of Misogi, while reading a post on the Global Viewpoint travel blog. Misogi is a Japanese word that loosely translated means, “taking on something so difficult, so far beyond what you think you can do, that it forces you to dig deep and find a new level of strength and resilience.”
I’ve been through a lot in the last 10 years. I’ve faced death, love, pain, and everything in between. I’m pretty strong and amazingly resilient. I sat with this for a few days, thinking “Huh, what would make me feel that way? That vulnerable?”
There is one thing that makes me super uncomfortable — sharing my work. While I’m good at talking about other people’s work, I am extremely reticent to post my creativity publically.
Misogi is powerful because it pushes you to the point of being uncomfortable. It challenges you to go beyond your limits.
With that in mind, I decided to spend the next year posting something from my own work, every Sunday. I hope by the time the calendar comes back around, 52 weeks from now on my 65th birthday, I will find that this Misogi challenge has given me a newfound sense of confidence and courage that spills over into other areas of my life.
My challenge — Once a week, I will post a poem, an excerpt, a piece of art, or something from my quietly curated creative life. It feels very vulnerable. Very public. Both putting the work out and making this commitment. Before posting my first poem on Instagram I felt queasy and almost backed out.
I’ve set some guidelines. I will not be attached to likes or comments. If people like the post great. If they don’t that is okay too. This isn’t about getting likes or external approval. It is about getting over the fear of being so attached to perfection and the worry about what other people might think about my work that has blocked me from sharing anything creative.
I know where the fear comes from. In the second grade, a teacher gave me a D in Drawing and Coloring because I didn’t stay in the lines. My parents told her and me that they thought I was showing creativity, but that D stuck with me. It whispered over the years, “You can’t be an artist. Don’t be too creative.” Yikes! What a thing to put on a child.
During my freshman year in college, I took a beginning design class and for whatever reason, I could not get the hang of how vanishing points worked. The teacher in that class was so frustrated, he threw a pencil at me. And so ended my brilliant career as an interior designer. Something, I think I would have truly excelled at. I’m a Sun/Moon Cancer in the 10th house. If that doesn’t say interior designer I don’t know what does!
In grad school, I took a writing class with a well-known novelist and wrote short stories about the people I’d encountered around the South. After sharing one of the stories one of the minimalists dressed in all black, sporting a new pair of Doc Martin’s scoffed “People don’t actually talk that way. Your sentences are so . . . wordy!” The class didn’t stop my writing, but it did stop me from sharing my work.
I gained a lot from those experiences. Fear yes, but I also learned how not to respond to people’s creativity. I’ve learned that honesty doesn’t need to be harsh or mean. That offering suggestions for how to improve someone’s work is far more helpful than simply shutting someone down. And there are many voices in the world beyond my own and they all deserve a chance to be heard. I’ve nurtured the creativity in others and that has been an incredibly rewarding experience.
Over the years, I’ve examined the fear of putting my own work into the work. I’ve worked on releasing it. Trying to cut the chord with the fear of rejection, criticism, and vulnerability. I hope this challenge is a big push toward finally letting it go.
Here’s to 52 weeks of creativity and being visible!!!