10: Everyday Art

When I first began communicating with people online beyond email, I joined an online group of women who were all expecting babies at the same time as I was expecting my first.  It was weird to try to explain to friends and family what it was. I found comfort in other women going through the same process that I was for the first time. I couldn’t believe when I read that it was totally normal for me to be completely exhausted at only 5 weeks pregnant. I found comfort in online community and as time passed, I found that it was a great way to find people with the same interests and form bonds over those things. I don’t have friends in real life who fix up houses with their spouse. I felt very alone on remodeling road until I found the world of house blogs.

One day a few years ago, after many wonderful friendships and bonds were formed with wonderful women over the common thread of us all having babies in the same month of the same year, I lost my ability to share of myself completely without worrying what others thought. I shared ridiculous embarrassing things about myself, scary things, hard things, sad things, funny things. Pictures. You name it, I shared it and I shared it openly and without fear. The first time someone I had never met criticized me online, that all changed. Not because I was so affected by one person’s opinion but because for the first time I realized from my tiny little sheltered corner of the internet that people are not always nice. Sometimes they will hide behind fake names and say that who you are and what you’ve done is ugly. Or they won’t hide and will just say something mean because they think it’s the truth and needs to be said. It has to be my non-confrontational, get shaky when someone is mad at me, don’t say anything if you can’t say something nice self, but something about the realization that not everyone has that same filter shut me down.

I started to think too much about the words I used, stressing about if what I meant came out right. The written word can be tricky. I stopped sharing myself freely. I reached out to the people I knew were really my friends and talked to them privately instead of putting all my stuff out there for everyone. I found that it was easier to share myself when I knew the few people I shared with were in my corner, to be supportive, and not to say the brutal truth if it would do no good.

Then I started a blog.

A blog that publishes to the world wide web for anyone who comes across it to read. A blog that is a creative outlet for me to use my words and pictures and ideas. Over the 3 1/2 years of this blog, my comfort level with that has shifted many times. I love it, I hate it. And every time I hit publish I worry about the invisible – the person somewhere who might not like it, who might not say something nice. And it changes what I share, or if I even share at all.

I started this “A Photo a Day in May” in hopes of gathering up my courage and getting over that. Making myself publish something, anything every day for a month whether it is boring or dumb or whatever. Just doing it.

There is art in me in many forms and it needs a way out. The biggest barrier to expressing that for me is fear. What if it’s not important? What if they don’t like it?

The greatest encourager I’ve found in this wonderful online world in the expressing of art is Emily. When she writes things like The Grace of Art and how to make time for art when there’s no time for art, I can take a deep breath and allow myself to express myself with the art that lives inside me even if some days the art comes in the form of stacked laundry piles, dirty bathroom floors and sweaty running clothes. Or a picnic at the park. It’s all art. Everyday art. Beautiful art that is important and necessary and big. When I read her words, it feels less silly sharing the boring, mundane of a day.