Friday, April 3, 2015

Stop Hiding

Charlie Gilkey, founder of Productive Flourishing, has put forth a challenge for himself: to blog daily for the month of April in a candid, no-hiding way. Read more here. Many people blog because they have something to say and want to share it, but using technology --a screen, really-- makes it easy to hide. To hide our true selves and only put forth the self we want others to see. What kind of living is that? Most of us do that in our actual lives on some level. Usually it's a mode of self-preservation. But there is only so much protection we can create before we start isolating ourselves from the world.

One of my goals for this past year has been to live more authentically, to put my most honest and true self forth. I've been making some good progress with this. For example, this spring semester, I am more candid with my students about my own creative writing processes, shedding that worry of showing a less-than-expert poet-writer and instructor. I think they appreciate it; it helps them let go of the anxiety of writing a perfect poem in the first attempt. That said, I think I want to try to follow Gilkey's example and do my own month of no-hiding by posting to the blog daily with whatever comes my way. He's got a few rules which I intend to follow. We'll see how it goes. I'm also trying to keep up with the 30/30 challenge for National Poetry Month. Time management will be interesting.

Here's to being a little more real!

[Side note: I'm experimenting with my template & layout here, so apologies if there is language that makes no sense. I'm trying to figure out how to edit that!]

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