100 Days of Art
If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been recently, I just finished a creative journey to create a piece of art for the last 100 days. The experience was insightful, inspiring, and eye-opening in so many ways and I’m grateful I was able to commit and stick through to the end ~
Below, I’d like to share a few of my findings, plus a link to the final gallery.
Passing the Initial Barrier
With many kinds of new goals and habit-forming activities, there can be a barrier of getting them to stick, and that definitely was the case with this one. My first few days of growth and progress were initially inspiring and I found myself putting in 3 or 4 hours each day to explore the space and create high-quality work -- but by day 7, that energy had quickly faded by the busyness of life and I found excuses rising more and more frequently.
The real grind for the challenge happened between week 3 to week 4 for me. I found myself spending late night after late night of creating and wondering if all the sacrifices ( sleep ) and struggling was worth it.
It certainly was.
Once I passed the initial barrier, the habit began to stick and creative ideas for sketches began to appear more and more frequently. By day 30 ( sometimes the norm for art challenges ), I felt like I was cruising and 100 days, while still far away, felt totally achievable.
Riding the Creative Waves
Doing a creative project for so many days in a row showed me just how unpredictable creative energy can be. There were times where I felt totally in flow -- letting the creative process guide me to pieces I had no idea I was capable of creating. But there were also times where I didn’t feel the flow at all and had to force out every shape, color, and idea.
Overall, the process helped me better understand myself as a creative and how to appreciate the moments that were filled with inspiration, while being ok when other moments weren’t. Having safe and familiar spaces ( for me, video games ) to fall back on when the creativity isn’t there was especially helpful for me to get through the uninspired times. Sometimes just creating something helps get the creative energy flowing again, and a seemingly uninspired piece can be the catalyst to a creative outburst ( March 15th --> March 16th is one such example ).
Putting Other Goals into Perspective
Accomplishing this challenge put into perspective how much time is available in 100 days to learn and grow. By day 50, I felt like other challenges I’ve been putting off like learning a language, learning to be a better writer, or posting here on this blog daily were much less daunting than before.
In some ways, committing to one goal is like committing to all the others. The more we learn and grow the skills to accomplish challenges, the easier the next challenge will be to achieve ~
In Summary
The 100 day challenge was an insightful and well-lived experience that I’d recommend everyone do at some point in their lives. For one, it’s a very personal experience that helps us understand our habits and current routines. It challenges our perceptions on how difficult something really is and how long it actually takes us to learn and get good at something.
It pushes us past the initial barriers of wanting to quit -- till we find a creative groove that reveals new talents we were unaware were inside of us. It takes us on a journey that we can look back on when we’re done puts the power of 100 days into perspective.
Best of all, it shows us that with a little dedication and perseverance, perhaps anything is possible ~
The 100 pieces of art can be found at [ art-of-otoshi ]
