100 Haikus / Lessons learned from the writing / Nothing is easy
What I Learned Over 100 Days, Writing 100 Haikus, for My #The100DayProject
One hundred days. Doing anything for that many days in a row creates the opportunity for it to become habit forming, or at least for characteristics of the activity to become habitual. To be honest, I didn’t realize this at the start of my 100 Day Project — writing 100 haikus over 100 days, with a subject matter focusing on my emotions and feelings.
The story of my life is tangled up in the stories of the lives around me. Your feelings affect my feelings, which in turn affect your feelings. And so on. The haikus were sometimes a message for myself, and sometimes they became a response from me to you. An audience of one in an audience of many, tangled up in a haiku.
Sometimes they were throwaway—over 100 days, there were times when I felt I was just putting words on paper and counting the syllables. But I did it. And occasionally, through those days, there were words, phrases, and thoughts that exceeded my expectations. Hopefully, they sometimes even exceeded yours.
Ultimately, they were a gateway for me to explore desires and fears, opportunities taken and opportunities lost, certainties and doubts, anticipation and anxiousness, joy and suffering. Through all of these opposites I had a forum to share what I was feeling. My heart was on my sleeve, even when the heart and the sleeve may have been a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside a haiku.
It reminded me that writing helps. It has shown me that I should express what I’m thinking and feeling, even if it is only for me, because often there’s someone else who is experiencing the same feeling in their own circumstances, and maybe it will help them, too. It shined a light on where my passions are and what drains me. It created strict parameters in which to create, but infinite possibilities within these constraints. It reminded me to be concise (unlike this essay!).
All of this happened over time, different pivot points when I moved from “have to” to “want to” to “a-ha!” That’s the point of 100 days, right?
I am still thinking in syllables, counting out the ideas in 5/7/5. One hundred days taught me to put the pen to paper and do.
Some of my personal favorites, in no particular order…
Haikus for those considering doing their own 100 Day Project…
Committing to jump
The mind is convinced it can
For the jump itself
…and…
Always excuses
Not Believing them is key
Doing the doing
