Celebrating Our 100-Day Project

Tiny Beautiful Creations & Lessons Learned, Part 2

If you missed Part 1 of the 100-day project celebration post, click here.

11. Creativity Is an Act of Service

Katherine Dowling, Saskatchewan, Canada

My best friend sent me books when my sister-in-law died. One of them was the astonishing Between Two Kingdoms. Suleika’s beauty and wisdom, and then the vulnerability and inspiration of the Isolation Journals community, were with me in that dark time—which kept going with my father-in-law’s death from Covid, a difficult diagnosis for my husband, and the continued shutdown of my profession due to the pandemic.

I am a classical pianist, and it has never felt like a creative endeavor—I’m just the channel. I rarely choose the music I’m working on, but in my grief season I started seeking out and playing elegies and other mourning pieces. My 100-day project is to record and share a “piece of a piece” (100 seconds) every day, chosen from these elegies. Suleika and the Isolation Journals community have helped me understand creativity as an act of service first and foremost.

This is from “Pavane pour une infante défunte,” written by Maurice Ravel in 1899. It’s the first piece I played when I lost my precious sister-in-law.

12. The Past Is Never Past

Charmaine Parker, Florida, USA

The 100-day project has motivated me to make the jewelry I had stopped making nine years ago because of life happenings. The glass cabs (which I also make) inspire me with their beauty to make the jewelry piece. Then I totally switched mediums starting Day 84. I started drawing, something I hadn’t done in decades, even though I went to art college and majored in illustration. I would suggest switching art form, perhaps something you always wanted to do or, like me, left behind a long time ago.

13. Notice Life Happening in Real Time

Katherine Moore, Ohio, USA

I was diagnosed with double-hit high grade B-cell lymphoma in October of 2021 at age 34. After finishing chemotherapy in March 2022, I realized that it had been over seven months since I had danced, which, as a professional dancer and teacher, is the longest I had gone without dancing since I was six years old. I wanted to use my 100-day project to return to my dancing self and face my fears about working within my body, so changed by massive surgery and chemotherapy. My process involved five minutes of daily movement improvisations, followed by writing “scores” (instructions for movement)/poems based on my physical experience.

---

---

14. Creating Is a Gift to Yourself

Lyndsey Furry, Indiana, USA

I’ve never been one to draw or paint, but I wanted to make a commitment to trying these skills over the 100 days. What a gift it’s been to come home from a long work day and spend some time focusing on a painting—even if it’s only fifteen minutes. I feel proud to have stuck with the routine and endlessly grateful for the community attached to the project.

15. Creating Is Living

Shelli Truax, Arizona, USA

I had just come from a doctor’s appointment with a new oncologist. He had said to me, “Yes, you have stage 4 ovarian cancer, but you have been stable for a while now. I want you to start acting like you are living instead of dying.” I didn’t know how to do that. I had been fighting for three years so hard, and Covid had put an extra scare into immunocompromised patients—so yeah, I’m always on alert.

When I read the prompt for the project, I was like, “This is what I’ll do. No one else has to see it except me, and well, it’s a start.” It has been such an explosion of gratitude and love! I’m outside more, my eyes are open to texture and things I can sketch, I’ve been to the library and checked out at least a hundred books on different mediums and I have filled my Instagram with artists.

This is a photo of a picture I painted on Day 52. It’s one I’m most proud of, and it was done with a teaspoon. Yep, a teaspoon. And it’s beautiful. I made it. I can’t even draw a straight line or circle, but I did that. Yeah, this is living.

16. We Help Each Other Persevere

Amanda Tamaccio, Louisiana, USA

After beating stage-3 cancer during the pandemic, I was heartbroken when it came to my music. I thought I may never release what I recorded before I was diagnosed and my life changed forever. The 100-day project inspired me to take daily steps towards dusting off the emotional cobwebs, and now I’m a couple weeks away from sharing some of my pre-cancer punk rock music with the world. The project I’m sharing is a music video of my band, Star Chamber—our very first one. I don’t know if I would have had the patience to create and edit it without the perseverance of this community.

17. Creativity Is Contagious

Ashley Walters, Nebraska, USA

I haven’t attempted watercolor since I was a child, but I have loved and admired Suleika’s beautiful paintings and wanted to try one myself. I painted this during the first Hatch I attended.

(Note: The Hatch is our monthly creative hour, where we gather for inspiration, connection, and a bit of accountability too. Our next meeting is this Sunday, July 10, from 1-2pm ET.)

18. Creating Changes How You See

Alison Dawson, Colorado, USA

I have multiple chronic illnesses and limitations. The inspiration behind my work was to help myself see pieces of beauty and calm each day even when I was mostly stuck in bed. I chose painting and photography. Before the project, I had the photo habit, but not the painting habit. Now, I have painted every single day. Through severe mental strife, through severe physical pain, through Covid. Due to hand problems, most of my painting is done with my non-dominant hand. That was a challenge, but I grew to love the calm, reflective painting part of my days and, when I took photos, my time out in nature.

I’m so glad that I had this urge to participate, as I don’t usually do stuff like this. But this was beyond helpful to me for my whole existence.

19. Creating Is an Act of Hope

Antara Chatterjee, Mumbai, India

Here’s hoping that I find my footing in this new maze of a city. Here’s hoping for good days. As I sit, still as a feather waiting for a breeze to stir it, staring at the eight different open tabs on my laptop, the bathroom door gives a loud bang. The round, four-legged table is a bit wobbly, as rented furniture often is. I get up to latch the door properly. There is a storm brewing outside and I feel nothing. I moved to a new city over a month ago, and I am still waiting to stop hating it. I consider myself a well-prepared, always considering the worst-case scenario type of a person, so I could never have imagined that my relocating to Mumbai, the city of dreams, would make me feel so ill-equipped. I might not be prepared for this mammoth of a city with a swarm of superfluous living beings in it. I might have overestimated my still small-town loving heart.

The Isolation Journals kept me sane through the peak of the pandemic. Everyone was either losing someone—or so scared of losing someone—they were losing themselves in the process. I thought it would never end. I remember having nightmares about being chased by a dragon, breathing fire as I tried to outrun its breath. Being in isolation, cooped up inside my home back in my small hometown of Allahabad (now Prayagraj, don’t ask), staying with my family. But there was comfort, a sense of support and belonging.

Comfort. Such a strange word. Even the tongue unrolls like a cushion when we speak it. We say something is comfortable to live with—food, presence, literature. But it’s very subjective and more so, personal. Comfort is derived from familiarity. A house with a broken fan and no bed could be someone’s comfort after a hard day’s work because it’s home. It’s what you know.

As I am writing these phrases, sitting on rented furniture in my cramped apartment that I share with another person, they feel platitudinous. They barely give me hope. But I think I’ve got to try. Give it a go and stick to it for a while until this city is not a maze anymore. Until this city doesn’t scare me anymore. This might very well become my primary window of connection with the world. Maybe I will forge some lasting ones with other lost and hurting souls who are just trying to survive. Trying to look forward. In any case, here’s hoping.

20. It’s Never Too Late

Jenny Kane, Ohio, USA

As a young widow, I have crawled my way back to living and enjoying life while carrying my pain. I’ve always loved music, my husband was musical, but I never attempted to play myself and thought it was too late to begin at 44. Then my aunt started learning piano, and inspired by her and the 100-day project, I have been playing and learning piano every day.