Day 1/100: The 100 Days Project

Habits are hard for me – things that people do regularly without thinking about, for me, require repeated effort to do routinely. Frequently, all it takes is one missed day and any habit I’ve seemingly developed *poof* disappears. Teaching effectively camouflaged this for me – built-in structures with 25+ accountability partners in the form of students. Running my own business, however, has revealed some of the cracks in the facade. I think that this is one of the major reasons I have been intrigued by the 100 Days Project.

The 100 Days Project, brainchild of Lindsay Jean Thompson, is a free, global project that encourages people to show up and get creative every day for 100 days. It can be one project, 100 projects, any format or medium – just show up every day to create. The beauty of this concept is that there is gentle accountability. There’s an online community of people doing the same thing and rooting for each other.

I racked my brain to figure out what I wanted to commit to doing for 100 days. I knew I needed some kind of structure to reduce the barrier to entry. Too loose, and the decision-making would become a problem. Too rigid, and my ADHD brain would rebel. So – I decided to pick a subject but leave the medium open to whatever felt appealing at the time. The subject I settled on is cats – a dear friend and I have been talking about writing and illustrating a children’s book featuring cats as characters, so spending this time building my comfort with drawing cats in different poses, styles, and media just made sense.

And all of that is to say – today was the first day of this year’s 100 Days Project, and I have started by drawing a little tribute to my sister’s one-eyed cat, Leela.

If you’ve got a cat you’d like to see featured during this project, feel free to send a photo my way. I’ll be sharing my experience throughout these 100 days here and over in my Instagram stories as well. I hope you’ll join me for this adventure – whether by following along or by participating yourself.