Day 8: staying inspired throughout our creative journeys 🤩

embracing the element of surprise: finding answers in the unknown and letting go

Hello, friends! Congratulations on your first week of #The100DayProject 🎉

I have been so inspired and delighted to see your work. Have you taken some time to look around at the hashtag (or tagged photos) on Instagram, here on Substack, or in the Facebook group? Individually and collectively you are making a difference – you are making these online spaces more beautiful, more expressive, more loving. Yes, YOU! I love to see it.

Let’s take a moment to reflect on your first week:

• How many days did you do the project?

• What are you learning?

• How are you feeling?

• Do you want to make any adjustments to your project parameters?

Remember: the rules are made up. Make up something that works for you – you get to decide what counts. Not everything works, that’s ok. Give your creativity permission to experiment and play!

→ Our first Instagram Reel comes out in two days. Would you like to be featured? Submit your art here.

I’m excited to introduce you to our first guest contributor,

Olivia Lin | Atiliay

! You might remember that Olivia was also on the podcast recently (listen here!). As a long-time project participant, Olivia has a lot of wisdom about showing up daily and bringing joy to the process.

Our theme this week is finding inspiration.

Here’s how it works: our guest contributors select their themes and I organize them in a way that I think makes sense as the project progresses. While every journey is personal and unique, I’ve observed some common cycles over the years (the 30ish day slump, the halfway sudden spurt of energy, the Day 80ish home stretch). As I was working on the calendar for the next few weeks I doubted my scheduling choice for a moment – is inspiration the right theme this early in the project? Enthusiasm is usually still pretty high this early on, maybe this would be better suited for a few weeks from now? But then I remembered: it’s better to be prepared than wait until you’re struggling. Olivia will be here all week guiding us through different ways to find and create inspiration for ourselves – let’s stay ready for swings in motivation, ideas, and enthusiasm 💪

XO,
Lindsay

P.S. I’ll also be posting a weekly Note here on Substack for you to share a favorite Week 1 image. Follow me

Lindsay Jean Thomson

to see that later today.

Here’s Olivia:

Dear Creatives,

Each time we embark on a creative endeavor, it’s natural and common to experience dips in motivation, get blocked and stuck, feel unsure, or lose interest. When we find ourselves in these phases, I think the answer is to seek out inspiration – to reignite our excitement, find wonder and awe, and rediscover our interests and passion for our practice! This week, we'll explore some different ways to spark and maintain inspiration as we work through our 100 Day Projects and beyond.

“People tend to play in their comfort zone, so the best things are achieved in a state of surprise, actually.” - Brian Eno

One of the many things I love about creating is the magic of seeing how something turns out – I feel like a kid again, wide-eyed and curious, hopeful and excited, filled with anticipation!

When this happens, it’s like we’re collaborating with our materials and supplies –setting things in motion but leaving it to do its own thing. It’s a great way to practice embracing the unknown and letting go of control (which can be very hard to do at times! 😅) There is a freedom, beauty, and joy in this release and trusting of the process!

When a creative block forms and we don’t know what to do, sometimes that’s the best thing we can do: to be still, to sit in that moment, to allow something else to take over our process, to give ourselves a chance to be the audience and to be surprised.

In my experience, doing this always feels so serendipitous. The results catch me off guard every single time – it never comes out the way I think it will! But somehow, whatever happens always ends up feeling like it was supposed to unfold the way it did, that it was exactly what I needed and what my piece needed. Have you felt this way before?

Here are some different techniques to try and sites to visit when you need to let go and leave things up to chance:

• Paint with snow (pictured above). Watch the process and see the finished piece here. If you don’t have any snow handy, ice or shaved ice works too!

• Throw / flick / toss / pop something covered in paint at your paper / canvas (this can get messy but it’s really fun!) Here’s an example of using a rubber band and using a balloon.

• Close your eyes and/or use your less dominant hand.

• Use this color palette generator to pick the colors you’ll be using.

• Pick a prompt using this random word generator. You can choose to generate a verb, noun, phrase, and even color! There are lots of options here.

• Create your own generator using this wheel of names. Add different prompts, tools, materials, colors, etc. and give it a spin when you have decision fatigue.

Here’s to embracing surprises and letting go,

Olivia Lin | Atiliay