100 days 2025

As of today, we are 2.5 weeks into The 100 Day Project. I’ve completed it successfully in 2020, 2023 and 2024 – crochet, mini paintings, and photos respectively. The first is quite famously the project that broke my brain and convinced me that finishing projects was a good thing. The last was a joy to capture the every day and reconnect with my love of photography, something I’d missed since burning out and closing my business in 2019. Both huge, wonderful shifts in my creative process, ones that I am thankful for, but also…shifts that make me feel the pressure to make every other attempt at this project Mean Something.

I had considered, briefly, not doing the 100 Days. No real options were jumping out at me, none that were exciting me enough to commit to 100 straight days of doing the thing. Add in the pressure to Make It Meaningful, and it just felt all too much. But that also didn’t sit right with me – everyone else was doing it, talking about it, sharing it, DOING IT. Doing the thing I wasn’t doing. The FOMO was STRONG, friends.

I think it’s a sign of growth, that I could see it was the FOMO that was driving me, more than a genuine desire for a specific project. Once, I would feel the FOMO and dive in, regardless of the suitability of the project I couldn’t bear to miss out on. In hindsight, it’s probably a big reason I was a perpetual project abandoner. I was jumping in just to be included, not because I was actually interested.

Then 2020 happened and the pandemic + tiny house life broke me, and I finished all those things. Then 2021 happened and I started a podcast with my crafty bestie, and every week I was deep diving into my creative process and the why of the things I do. Those two years combined have taught me to look at the underlying reasons, and only then, make a choice. So when this year came up and no projects were jumping out, I came to realise I wasn’t necessarily pushed to do 100 Days, I just didn’t want to miss out, I didn’t want to be the odd craft blogger out, I didn’t want to expose myself to the judgement that maybe I’m not that creative after all, if I can’t come up with something to do for just 100 days. How hard could it be, and I couldn’t even manage that.

Add in the weird rut I got into that had me thinking the only kind of project worth doing had to be Important And Meaningful, and there was a whole lot of negative self talk going on.

I sat with all those thoughts, and then realised – they were just in my head and literally not a single person would be thinking any of those things. It was a me thing, and nothing more. And so, I accepted that this was a year I would sit out. I’d rather sit out, than start something for the sake of starting something, and then failing. 

Of course, in the way of things, once that pressure was off, when I wasn’t brainstorming constantly and standing in my craft room wondering what the heck I was going to do, and castigating myself in between it all; it was then the idea came to me. Two of them, actually. Funny how that works.

I went back and forth, and even considered doing both, and in the end, I settled on the first one. For 100 Days, I am actively working towards getting a couple of series of art pieces out of my head and into the world. I even started a new sketchbook solely for this project. There’s actually two series I want to build out during this project, so I’ve got one in the front and one in the back.

As always, making begets making and as well as those two, I’ve also dreamt up a third standalone art piece so I’ve popped it in the middle of the book. While it isn’t technically part of the series I was dedicating the project to, it’s making and creating so I’m going to call that close enough.

Throughout the project, I will also be sharing some behind the scenes stories and progress photos over on my Substack; over there I share free weekly essays on the creative process and making and life, and every second week I include the more personal side of art making for my paying subscribers. There will of course be snippets popping up here and insta, but subscribers on my Stack will be getting some more in-depth stuff (I also share a sometimes-podcast for those subscribers!).

17 days down. 83 to go. A whole lot of opportunities to make some art and kick some negative self talk to the kerb. Win win!