Failure From Day One - But It’s a Good Thing
March 6, 2025
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Would it be okay for me to admit something a little embarrassing to you? From day 1 of the 100 day project, I failed. And honestly, that makes me feel so much better about continuing to show up imperfectly for the remainder of the challenge.
As much as my perfectionism is screaming at me that it has to be done a certain way in order to be valid… I am choosing to participate in a way that is beneficial to me in the place that I am in right now. And I’ll just take a moment here to give myself a little pat on the back, because even being able to say that shows me how much growth I have achieved since the first time I did the 100 days back in 2022.
I set all of these restrictions on myself because I like things to be orderly.
But it was beyond wanting to be orderly - I realize now how much this desire to know the outcome before I even begin can inhibit me in my life and my art practice. If we aren’t willing to take a chance and let things evolve how they naturally want to evolve, we end up containing ourselves in the tiny box that we can control. When we can control all the factors, we feel more secure.
But… for me it also means that I’m not letting myself be free. It’s like a dog on a leash, constantly being pulled back to the heel position, when all he wants to do is run free and chase the birds.
And this is how my brain works - constantly running off on tangents chasing the birds or whatever catches my attention. Squirrel! Even now as I’m writing this, I’m thinking to myself that I better go back and read the first paragraph to make sure I’m sticking to the point.
side note: I’m actually terrified of birds, but just go with it for the metaphor 😂
Well, I think my point is this, this time I’m doing the 100 day project for me. Yes, I’m taking you along for the ride. But,
⊗ I’m not posting my work because a schedule tells me to.
⊗ I’m not making 100 cohesive items because I like the way they look on my Instagram feed.
⊗ I’m not making one kind of item.
Because my mind wants to chase the birds. And when I force myself back into one area of discipline, my brain tells me I would rather not create at all than force myself to do one thing. That’s what happened the last couple of years (especially last year) when I stuck to one category. My attention span simply cannot last for 100 days. At least right now.
Currently, my schedule consists of 12-14 hour days on the computer. Thankfully, this won’t last through the entire 100 days, but through the next 2 months - it’s not changing. With how busy I am right now, I knew that I would likely dig my feet in and stubbornly not create anything if it felt like I had another thing to check off my list each day.
So, rather, each day I’ve been encouraging myself to try and do something creative. Realistically what this has been looking like for me:
Evaluating my day and seeing if there’s some places I can sneak in creative play (the majority of the year I like to make play a priority in my day, but I wasn’t lying when I said this is literally the worst time of the year for a challenge for me)
Stopping work a little earlier so that I have energy to create (5 minutes on the couch totally counts)
When I hit that mid day slump, asking myself if creating for a couple of minutes would help (sometimes yes, and sometimes no)
But it also means acknowledging at the end of the day that if I’m simply too tired - allowing myself to rest rather than forcing myself to get it “checked off.” And on these days, I think this is just as beneficial because it means giving myself the time to recuperate without guilt. And art is meant to be fun, not stressful.
I guess, just like usual, I had more to say than I originally thought! 😂 I planned for a short intro and all photos for the update of the first 10 days. I suppose this is another prime example of the gold that can appear when we let ourselves go with the flow.
I truly hope this can help you if you are feeling stress towards this project, or about your art practice in general! Your art practice is unique to you, and seasons of life look differently. And that’s okay.
What I worked on in the first ten days →
I’m not keeping track on a day-by-day basis, but my realistic guess is I created 6-7 out of the 10 days.
And yes, on day one, I got a running start on learning how to be okay with imperfection because I didn’t have a chance to create anything.
→ Mainly, I worked on continuing to mend my jacket. Sometimes, that meant longer sessions of stitching. But mostly, it meant taking 5 minutes to add a few stitches here and there.
→ I’m a teacher for Get Messy this month! I got a chance to play during the season-opener hangout. We did some journaling about the theme, which is consistency, and I created a page with repetitive mark making in my tall skinny journal. How serendipitous that one of my words of the year is consistency!
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