The 100 Day Project

#the100dayproject 74/100

How can something like The 100 Day Project help you be better? Whatever it is you do, whatever it is you want to be, a commitment like this can improve your work habits and the skills of your craft, as well as connecting with other creatives on the same journey and with your own creative practice.  

This is what I'm learning:

• I like to dabble in a bit of this and that, but they fall into natural mini-projects if I just follow my whims
• aiming for perfection is counter-productive
• if you fall behind, pick yourself up where you are and carry on
• don't wait until you have time to catch up,  you never will
• if you carry on and do a bit extra you might just catch up
• catching up isn't the point; doing your thing most days is the point
• accountability is the key to success
• accountability can be kind of annoying! 
• it's easy to show practice pieces if everyone knows they're only practice
• it's easy to show finished pieces
• its really hard to show works in progress
• sometimes I like to keep projects under wraps until a later stage

#the100dayproject 72/100 and 73/100

Want a fresh start?

Do you want a fresh start? You can have one. 

I don't know about you, but I'm a sucker for a fresh start. My big three on the calendar are my birthday, the new year and September. Back-to-school season will always have power for me after years of teaching and study following on my own school days.

That glorious feeling of limitless potential that can be found in a new notebook, a clean house, a new address book is hard to resist. There's a shadow side of course: the lure of starting the diet on Monday, of giving up drinking next month, of trying again in the new year.  The wise and funny Sas Petherick sends out a monthly love note (get yours). In June, she wrote about replacing the defeatist phrases "I never" and "I always" with "up until this point, I…" It was such a gentle way to bless a new start and really inspired me to see fresh starts in every day.

Starting the day with some combination of the following helps me to start each day in the best possible frame of mind: tea, candles, soft music, fresh air, tarot or oracle cards, my journal. How do you start your day with a clean slate?

September was a funny month. For me, it held grief and worry, anxiety and ambition, alongside some joy and lots of friendship. I decided not to be tied to the back-to-school tradition.

I am declaring a October a fresh start. I am digging into my sketchbooks and fall cleaning. I am looking forward to an exciting trip. I am pushing forward to finish this year's classes and projects.

Here is your fresh start. What are you going to do with it?

Are you working or pre-working?

Are you doing the work? Or are you stuck in the pre-work? Lately I've been thinking about what it means to show up and do the work. I was inspired in part by this article by Aimee Bender, about showing up at her desk, day after day. I thought she was the one who mentioned 'pre-work' but she doesn't seem to be, so apologies to whoever it was. If I remember, I'll share. Anyway, aside from being a made-up kind of word, 'pre-work' can be necessary preparation, left unattended however and it can turn into sticky pools of avoidance, denial and procrastination. 

Say you want to start doing yoga.* Are you going to find a local class or choose a video and begin? Or are you going to spend weeks researching the perfect class or video, reading yoga magazines, finding your ideal pair of yoga pants (you know, the ones that give you the tone and grace you were planning to acquire through yoga?) and internet shopping for gorgeous yoga accessories? It's your high-school study timetable all over again, with the bubble-writing title and meticulously colour-coded study blocks, three of which had already passed by the time you finished colouring the border.

I know I'm not alone in complaining that I have no time for my creative stuff, that I'm stuck, that I haven't done anything lately. So I try and get inspired, by reading blogs, buying 'unleash your creativity' books, planning marvellous sessions when I have more time, or sorting out my studio space. The trap is that all of those activities are useful in their time. The trick is knowing when the time has come to just get to work. 

For me, that time is now, in a few areas. I have a few weeks off, so I am going to show up and do the work. I'll share a bit about what that means for me over the weeks to come. What does it mean for you, these days?

*And if you do, in fact, want to start doing yoga or bring more yoga into your life, you could do worse than check out Marianne Elliott's 30 Days of Yoga.