Day 15: sharing your work 😍
+ meet our guest contributor, Sarah Baca
Hello, friends! Congratulations on completing two weeks of the project and a big thank you to our guest contributor Olivia Lin for sharing so many wonderful ways to create inspiration for ourselves. You can follow her project on Instagram, here on Substack
, and sign up for her newsletter to get the Creative Spark Challenge for more inspiration.Let’s do a quick recap.
Regular check-ins will help you acknowledge your progress and make adjustments as needed. Remember that the rules are made up.
How many days did you do the project this week?
What are you learning?
How are you feeling?
Do you want to make any changes to your project?
H/t to
for this wonderful drawing:
And did you see our Day 10 Reel?
→ Our next Instagram Reel comes out on Day 20. Would you like to be featured? Submit your art here.
Our theme this week is sharing your work.
When I was a junior in high school, I packed up and moved 3000 miles away from my small town (“Welcome to the horse capital of the world!”) to Washington, D.C. Along with 70 kids from all around the country, I was there to spend my school year as a Congressional Page. We went to class in the attic of the Library of Congress, worked on the House floor, and lived together in a dorm that was really just an office building a block from the Capitol. It was an incredibly rare and formative experience for so many reasons – we got to go to the State of the Union (Strom Thurmond fell asleep! We had to wait for someone to come and get him!) and had more access to the Capitol than most staffers. Most of what I remember from that year is the freedom and delight of exploring the city – the art museums, the architecture, the food. The politics didn’t stay with me, but the culture did. And the people too. Looking back at my life in art, this was a pivotal moment.
One of my roommates that year was a girl named Sarah, also from a world away – Wyoming to my Southern California. Sarah and I stayed in touch loosely over the years, keeping up mostly through social media. Then a few years ago, she sent me a message. Here’s part of it:
“Hey Lindsay! I just wanted to say thank you for hosting the 100 day project. This is the second time I’ve attempted it and the first time I made it…Honestly the behavioral and creative momentum that I gained from it, has been amazing. I write more, play the piano more, I am restoring furniture and sprucing things up in a creative and unique way. It has flowed into almost every aspect of my life and it all started with writing every. single. day. Making time for myself and my creativity has allowed me to share it more and more. I love the motivation it has given me and I love that now I have, at the very least 100 pages of memories, thoughts, ideas and inspiration.”
Our last direct message before that was 12 years earlier. I had no idea the project had been on Sarah’s radar, or for how long. I tell you this part because I know that as some of you are starting to post your creative work for the first time, or the first time in a long while, it might feel like no one is noticing. They are. They’re seeing you show up, every day, committing to something to gives you joy, sharing your self-expression with the world. They admire your effort. They might even wonder if they could do something like that.
What I’m getting at: it matters. You matter. You have no idea who is seeing and appreciating you and your work. It might be years before they reach out to tell you. Keep going.
This week I’m passing the baton to my friend of 25+ years, Sarah Baca. She’s guiding us through the emotional and tactical steps of sharing our work. Remember this project has three parts: doing, documenting, and sharing. If you haven’t started documenting and sharing yet, any day is a great day.
Here’s Sarah:
Hi creatives!
My name is Sarah Baca, and I am a writer, musician, outdoor enthusiast, partner, and mother of three who loves #The100DayProject. My first foray into the project started out well then tapered off. I was hesitant to share my work with others and I was worried about their judgment and opinions. While I like to believe I don’t care about what other people think, these hesitations reveal that maybe I care more than I like to admit.
Sharing your work can be a vulnerable place, but in those awkward and difficult spaces is where we find growth. I’ve been writing my entire life, but sharing the depths of my thoughts with others felt like reading my journal to them. I would write a lot, but only share with my partner, or my closest family and friends. Then one day I found a writers’ workshop in our local parks and recreation guide. The class met once a week at the Adult Activity center. I paid my fee and took a leap into the uncomfortable.
The first day I realized that I was the youngest person in class. Most of the participants were retired folks, ready to share their lives in memoir form. I sat at a table of elders, and they welcomed me into their midst.
Each class we wrote warm-up exercises and brought 500 words from home to share and receive feedback. I listened to their stories in awe of the beauty, wisdom, and strength found in their words. They wove stories of perseverance and a way of life that many of us will never experience. After losing my own grandparents over a decade ago, I came to cherish the connection we developed through sharing our lives in class.
This week I will be taking over your inboxes and giving you insight and inspiration to share your art with others. This is your project, but you should let us see it.
Today I encourage you to share something you’ve created with someone you care about. Here are a few ideas:
Send a picture of something inspiring you’ve seen.
Find a local group where you can meet people in your community to share what you love to do. Whether it’s painting, writing, potting, or gardening, find others to share your creativity with.
Paint a card for a loved one rather than buying one.
Here’s a picture of a Christmas card I painted during one of the projects I’ve attempted. It’s simple, but it felt more thoughtful than any of the ones I’ve purchased.
This week I want to give you inspiration to share your work, no matter how big or small, share it all.
Sending all of the creative light your way,
Sarah
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Thank you for the encouragement. As for me, I do document. In fact, I shared my work for years on my blog, parts of my life. It was a huge part of my life for years. I am overthinking like many and just need to create a simple workflow I can repeat everyday: Create, Document, Share, Like a basic content plan. Maybe a post about that would help people with sharing. My tips will be: Decide on which platform(s) you want to post, Which camera you want to use, how you want to edit your photo's,video's (photoshop or other), hastags you want to use for each post etc. WRITE THEM DOWN. You have your title, description, your hastags ready (keep it simple), you only have to change your photo and your title and desription for each day. Done.
Thank you for the above post.. the 100 day project has been brilliant and the fact that everyday I show up and get to do something creative makes me look forward to the day.. I have been sharing my daily practice as required by the project and had fun doing it. Thank you Lindsay and Sarah.. just has been wonderful so thank you