Be Messy Challenge

I have asked myself time and time again: how is it that I can create a journal that I expect other people to interact with but never plunge into the process myself? How could I live with myself? Aletheia has done some of the pages, what is my problem? I freely admit that I have been attempting this very act for weeks. I would tell myself every Sunday, “Heather you need to do a page of the Be Messy Journal. It is winter. Do the snowflake page. It will only take you like 10 minutes.”

Finally, I found the perfect opportunity to kickstart my Be Messy Journal jaunt. With time and friends on my side, I pulled a journal from a box in my car and asked the Messerly sisters to join me in one of the activities. The task: Start a design or picture. Ask a friend to add to it (or two friends in my case). Continue trading until it is complete.

I pulled out my pencil and drew a swirl. Then I passed it to Ellen who added a star to the swirl. Leave it to Laura Messerly to pull out the crayons, markers, and colored pencils. She just had to add color.

The journal hadn’t even made it back to me yet and something inside me had already been triggered, and not in a bad way. I was completely aware of how I was reacting to each new idea being added by both of them. At the beginning I was curious to see how it would all play out, admittedly caring little about the end result and more interested in the process (how fitting that this activity is in the Process section). I found myself wanting to be challenged. At the beginning, each was adding to the things that I drew. Finally, Ellen took the plunge and added a back-and-forth “scribble” line to a large amount of white space with a pencil. This was a bold move, and caused some concern internally as the picture was already taking shape.

Funny, as I think back on it I could have just picked up an eraser.  I see now that I entered the activity with the mindset of whatever was added stayed. So I took one of those colored pencils and started filling in some of the negative spaces, trying to see past the line to the shapes the lines created.

Hours passed. Ellen did have to leave halfway through, but Laura and I pressed on. 

In the end, the activity did what I was hoping. I found myself flipping through the journal to see what I would work on next. By the end of the day I had created a picture with friends (complete with venturing to the questions on the Spur Trail), interacted with glue and my snow flake scraps, played an intense game of extreme tic-tac-toe, stuck a fresh piece of gum to a page, and had 4 jewels and 3 coins added to my treasure chest.

And so, through the sharing of this experience, the Be Messy Challenge was born. Laura and I made a pact. By the end of 2015, every activity in our Be Messy Journals needed to be complete. I am thrilled to see what will surface during this process. I know that some of the activities will be very challenging, asking me to venture into the less visited places within myself. But that is also the beauty of its design as I have the opportunity to focus inward on one page and then reach out and continue to invite others to play and create with me on the next.

May I take every suggestion on the instructions page to heart as I dive deeper into my creative juices and embrace the messiness in my life.