Challenge Accepted

On May 25, 2023, I felt like I was walking in a dream. I was launching my “Look At What’s Inside” book, this beautiful downtown Bend local bookstore, in a town that I absolutely love living in. To set the stage you enter through a “barn” door, you know the one where the top can open while the bottom remains shut. I set up my book display right next to this wonderfully old typewriter that is on display.

First, a little backstory of how I got to the book launch. In September 2022, while attending a 10x Catalyst Group and praying over our next month’s goals, I felt a deep call to “write an outline for a book.” Over the next 30 days, serendipity showed up, and a book that had been sitting on my shelf for well over 7 years, “The 90-minute book” by Dean Jackson. What the book talked about helped me to write out and complete an impact filter that helped me to spend the month “articulating” what a successful book project would look like. If you want to read the impact filter that started out the book, you can read it here.

After I got feedback from several different people on what that outline set out to do, I began sculpting the book outline and then chapter by chapter, the book came together in a way that I never anticipated and “wrote itself.”

I took one sentence, one paragraph, one page, and one chapter at a time. Over the next few months, the book was nearly completed and reached out to an editor friend of mine to see if she could take on the project. After sharing it with her she gave me a timeline and I submitted the final revisions to her in January 2023. For comparison’s sake, I started writing another book in 2013 (though on a completely different topic) and even hired a ghostwriter to help me write it. After months of meetings and rewrites to get the story done, I realized in the third edit that the book’s story was not lining up so I decided to shelve it, never see the light of day, despite the thousands of dollars invested.

After writing the book, I set out to paint the cover on November 10, 2022, and you can read the story about how the painting “Look At What’s Inside” came to be here.

In January 2023, I reached out to my designer to help me with the graphical help to turn the “Look At What’s Inside” painting into the cover of my book and also the interior of the book to get the formatting to the publisher. I reached out to Dudley’s, a local bookstore in downtown Bend to share what I was working on. They gave me some feedback on whom to submit it to and I was taking care of tying up all the other look ends.

All the while, I kept figuring out the next steps. When I had the first version of my book in hand on April 6, 2023 posted on Instagram the “unboxing” of one of them. 😀 I went to Dudley’s and showed Amy the book and we discussed having the book launch combined with a paint night.

Ok, and we’re back to the start of this canvas.

As I opened the new contribution canvas to the first contributions to be added, I shared the prompt “Challenge Accepted” and shared the huge celebration I was having to celebrate the challenge of writing and launching my first book and wanted those in attendance to celebrate a challenge they all accepted as well so we could celebrate together.

Over the next few months, I would take this canvas to Patagonia Bend, on Aug 4 and Central Oregon Business Forum (now Excellerate) on Sept 27, 2023. A friend shared, after attending a First Friday event with his whole family, that he loved hearing his Dad (who was visiting from out of town) talk over dinner about what contributing and sharing the “challenge he accepted” meant to him. THAT IS WHY I LOVE doing these events! Each person we meet in life is taking on challenges in life that may be different from our own though NO different in what the challenge may mean to them. It’s what unites us together, as humans.

After all the contributions were captured, I noticed that some of the Sharpies could “bleed” a bit when I started painting so I decided to put on a coating BEFORE I added any color. On May 27th, 2024 I decided I was going to begin painting.

I like reading over the words and/or drawings that the community made before painting. This was the first canvas where contributions were added to the side so I captured the side of the canvas as well. As I reflected on the many happy conversations where people shared their stories and celebrated their accomplishments,

I felt like a happy yellow was a great place to start and a favorite color of a friend of mine who happened to be at the book launch. As you watch the time-lapse of the video, you can see some of the Sharpie markers are still running when I added color. I enjoy navigating through those situations and responding in unique ways. I added orange and then a green all the while reflecting on what we are all capable of doing in life when we set our minds to do something.

As I was painting I was discovering how the paint was connecting and bonding, while still not drying. As I was going back and forth and adjusting the colors that were blending, I saw brightness and hope coming through the words, thoughts, emotions, and stories of people I connected with. In life, we are always able to adjust and move. There is much discussion around the neuroplasticity of the brain THROUGHOUT our lives, not just as little kids. I added blue up top and then added yellow on the bottom. What I love is the contributions that peak through in the golden amber part of the painting.

Thank you to all those who contributed and stepped into various “challenges” that they “accepted” and to those reading this…who may not have directly contributed to the canvas… you celebrate a “challenge you accepted” and view this work through that lens.

Enjoy “Challenge Accepted.”