Daily Practice

I am 48 days into a daily art practice.  While I have been creating art for a long time, this is the longest streak that I have had with doing something every day.  Credit to the "Sketch a Day" app which gamifies the daily art practice with prompts, streaks, rewards and shares.  Having someone "like" my art does add a bit to my motivation, it helps me feel seen and validated.  It's also kind of fun.  Some days are small, a quick sketch and some days I am creating a full peice of art.  None are masterpeices, whatever that means. 

What I have found is that there is a gift in having only one day, today, to make today's art.  Putting the parameters around it makes it somehow easier.  Whatever ugly or failed peice of art I create today, tomorrow I will be on to the next work.  

Needing to keep up with my streak helps me let go of perfectionism.  If I waited until a peice was perfect before posting it, I would probably never follow through.  But there's that 24-hour window, so I have to become more accepting of "good enough".

I think that this process is a lot like other kinds of change.  We so often want to wait until we're "ready".  We think that the stars need to align, our stress needs to be zero, we have to feel like it... and only then can we begin to take the Herculean steps needed to change.  

But what if... instead of being ready, we just start?  We just take that first step, blindly, hopefully, tentatively?  And then the next one, and the next one, until we are now walking instead of sitting still.  The next time I think about changing something, I hope I can take this lesson.  Start.  Start small, start and fail, stop and restart, just start.