I've been slacking in the blog world. I've been slacking in the creative world in general for a while, part of me blames my laziness from winter but we've been having some beautiful sunshiny days lately and I've been just as lethargic and uncreative as the coldest, snowiest days this winter so I can't really use that as an excuse.
However, I was forced to clean my office/craft room because we hosted Easter this year and for me the easiest way to start cleaning something is by rearranging it. Rearranging or redecorating energizes me, working with a new space feels fresh and fuels my desire to make it clean and beautiful. Thus I had a clean, organized space to follow up on emails, organize contracts and vendor lists for my event planning business and also get up to date on some baby shower things for Kristi.
I was working on a few craft activities for the kids at the local shelter where I now volunteer twice a week and I wanted to listen to a new podcast as I'm up to date on all the previous ones. I started listening to Raise Your Hand Say Yes with Tiffany Han and her latest episode was "10 success secrets of the highly-creative" which seemed like it was made precisely for me in that moment.
She listed 10 great things that successful creative people do that creative people who aren't successful don't do and one of the great ideas that she mentioned almost jokingly was "paint 100 shitty paintings" and her advice was that if you sit down and force yourself to paint 100 paintings, if they are all shitty, the 101st will be pretty good.
I think having a challenge like this, where you can do something over and over with no expectation of it being perfect is exactly the type of motivator I've been needing. So I literally dropped what I was doing (don't worry I finished it but I wanted to show you how dramatic and serious I was) and grabbed my water color pad, watercolors and a few paintbrushes that were nearby and painted the first pretty thing I saw.
I had bought some pink roses and green hydrangeas for Easter dinner and brought the vase upstairs to add some freshness and color to the craft room while I replied to vendor quotes and sifted through months worth of emails to confirm details which you can see below.
You can also see a portion of my office reorganized.
I knew that this painting was going to be horrible and I know that the one crippling fear I have always had is putting out subpar work and attaching my name to it. I am very critical of myself as is so anything I would do that seems amateur would normally be immediately disposed of so I don't have to admit that it is horrible. However, As is the entire purpose of this series of posts, here is my horrible, terrible shameful 1st picture of the series "100 shitty paintings" 1/100
I know it looks like a 1st grader painted it (although that may be offensive to some of you child savants out there) but it's my 1st of 100. It's the 1st of 100 shitty paintings that I will post even though I try my hardest to keep this blog pretty and aesthetically pleasing. I'm excited for this challenge. I haven't set a time limit on it, I've decided I'll paint whenever I sit down at the desk and follow through to the finish. Sometimes I may paint 2 or 3 and sometimes I anticipate it will take me several hours to finish one but I refuse to leave the room until I've finished it and listed it. I'm already feeling creatively inspired to do more things with my bakery business, etsy shop and event planning business. All of the miserable grunt work that has to be done is much simpler when you have a burst of motivation!
Also, to help you recover from that horrific image, here is a picture of Bear on my new Homegoods rug. Clearly I bought it for him to nap on while I work.
