# The 100 Days Project - Analog Thoughts

I can’t say I’m much of a joiner.

I’m not sure if it’s an under-current of not wanting to just follow the crowd, or a fear that the crowd will reject me for being the prickly outlier that I often am. And regardless of how much I don’t want to be pushed into a group mold, being pushed out of one stings like hot sauce in a paper cut. So I prickle more and avoid more, building a defensive shell of protection.

Which is EXHAUSTING, because we’re already carrying heavy defensive shells to handle the (gestures out the window) hellscape out there.

So I’ve been thinking about joining in on the 100 Days Project. Every year it intrigues me, then I get caught up in a hundred other things and then it passes me by. I tell myself if I can’t start on the first day then the window is GONE. That if I don’t do it EVERY day perfectly, then I’m a failure.

Then I look at where those stories come from (Perfectionist parents? Patriarchy? Puritanically founded society?) and ya know, I’m exhausted with that TOO.

So screw that.

I’m gonna do it. Starting NOW (despite the official start date of 2026 being February 22). Who cares if I’m a bit late? Who cares if I miss a day? Certainly no one whose opinion I value more than my own with regard to my day-to-day capabilities!

I used to think such projects were about getting to 100 pieces of something in a programmed time frame. Perhaps the shortest timeframe. Or maybe an efficient one, especially if squeezed into a busy life. Ah, the sour smell of capitalism strikes again.

But I’ve been thinking about it differently this week. For me, it’s about creating a SPACE for something. That idea that you don’t FIND time as much as you have to MAKE it.

As to the what to make? Well, I’ve been pondering how to have more analog activity in my life. Stuff where my hands and eyes and brain are getting it together, but none of them are close to a screen. And that using my hands and eyes and brain together in a consistent-ish way for a few months will BUILD the muscle memory for doing even more with them.

I also think about the potential for happy accidents that could lead down exciting paths, like the ones my friends Mel Beach and Sarah Goer have shared with me.

The more I’ve been thinking about it, the more I wonder if the physical things I might output could be rather inconsequential when compared to the observation, the noticing, the slowing down, and the habit building that matter more.

So I’m going to mash up a couple of things I’m currently enjoying:

I recently bought a couple of vintage typewriters, and have been having a blast typing actual letters on them, trying to regain a very atrophied skill I used to enjoy immensely. Composing a letter is such a different form of communication from the short texts I send out daily. And the effort of pushing down the keys in a typewriter that’s as old as me is a workout compared to my super-light digital keyboards.

I’ve also been a decades-long fan of message-making artists like Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger. Yes, normally fabric would be my medium, but my MFA is in Fiber, and paper is fiber, so paper* it is.

Jenny Holzer made amazing work out of her Truisms series - statements that she felt were true. So I’m going to start there.

Follow here if you’re interested in seeing where it goes…

AND PLEASE JOIN ME if you’d like to - no matter how late or imperfect you might be. It’s about what YOU need from the project, not what you may think the group expectations might be asking for 🙃

*Hmmm. I wonder how fabric might go through my typewriter…