Sandra Bullock and Jay's Quiz

Come the 1st of April, every year, creatives around the world make a commitment to something called the “100 day project”. It’s 100 days of doing whatever curious or creative thing you want…I think technically they’re ideally consecutive days… cause it does take some of the momentum out of it if you spread 100 days over an entire year as I did once…! But the point is to choose something creative that you want to explore and keep going at it. The first time I did it, I chose 100 days of ‘pen on paper’ – reviving my love of exploring line drawing with a biro and a fresh notebook page each day. 

I was surprised at how much resistance I felt after the first week. “what’s the point, I’m not an artist, everything I do looks childish, I’m bored…” I pushed through that fog of lethargy and discovered on the other side, the most fun and freeing journey that filled me with life. My drawing improved exponentially…I was shocked, but I shouldn’t have been…it was the power of practice. This year I’m doing 100 days of songs. Predictably, after day three I wanted to give up and thought the whole thing was stupid, and especially where social media is involved, attention seeking. But I’m still at it. For me the beauty of it is in committing to a practice, however free flowing. I know I have to put that five or ten minutes aside to learn or practice a song. It might even become half an hour, as it did the other day. 

Of course it’s motivating knowing other people are also burrowing into their 100 day projects too. It’s harder with things like my daily spiritual practise that I’ve been doing for the last 14 years. Sometimes the inspiration is as stale as an old cracker and the struggle is real… But if it’s a choice between practise or not…I know I’d rather spend hours of my life that way, not scrolling on a screen, or numbing my mind in some other way. I want to practice, practice, practice – I think that is becoming my word of the year, and maybe of life. For me, practice is meditation, practice is prayer, practice is an expression of love. To practise is to be alive!