The Chalk Pencil…a story about starting small

Hey there! My name’s Olivia. And I have something to confess. I’ve been afraid to start this blog. Afraid to hit 'SUBMIT' on any of my offerings for The Gathering School. Why? Because going public with your work is scary and it’s exposing.

But here's the irony: I realized what I'm trying to teach through The Gathering School is exactly this—reconnecting to our sense of aliveness by taking small, courageous steps toward the life we want. Even when it's messy and imperfect; Even when we're scared.

So, I figured if I'm asking others to practice this, shouldn't I do the same?

A fully lived life doesn't wait for perfection. It begins anyway, with all our messy humanity intact.

So here goes nothing.

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There's a story I keep coming back to.

In a former life I was a sign-artist for Trader Joe's. For the decade before that job, my creativity had felt dormant—like a volcano of ideas with nowhere to go. Childhood trauma and the roles I'd taken on to survive it had forced my experimental artistic self into hibernation. Being bold and creative felt too threatening when my safety depended on perfection and staying small.

So when I started making perpetually impermanent artwork in a quiet warehouse corner with a bunch of goofballs, I felt like I could BREATHE for the first time in years. Every sharpie-lettered shelf tag, every display sign—it would all eventually be erased, painted over, or replaced. That temporary nature became a teacher. There was no room for perfectionism because there was no "forever." If something was bad, I could erase it and start over. But more importantly, we had so much to get done there was no time to worry about perfection.

It was this iterative, low-stakes creative environment where I felt free to create for the first time in a long time, and more importantly, to finally own the title I've always carried: "artist."

One of the tools we used everyday was our white chalk pencil. We'd sketch out a big display sign first, get our layout and composition set, and then fill it in with acrylic paint pens. My prankster of a lead, Graham, decided it would be funny to replace my regular-sized pencil with slightly smaller versions every week until I was left with a little 1/3 inch nub – totally unusable. Little did he know that his ridiculous trick would become a symbol for me of this lesson I was learning: that starting small—sometimes literally—was the only way to move towards the life I wanted.

The chalk pencil sits in a cheap Amazon display case in my studio now, reminding me to just take the first TINY nub of a step.

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So, that's what I want to practice here in this blog: taking my tiny chalk pencil and sketching out the beginnings of this big undertaking—creating an arts and experiential learning company to teach adults how to connect to their sense of aliveness.

I'll share more of the story soon—about how that Trader Joe's job became a turning point, what I learned about transformation through small steps, and how all of it led to The Gathering School. But for now, this is enough.

Join me each week for more musings and we can build this thing together.