More than 2 years ago I started my 365 ideas project. I made a brave decision to create one collage every day for a year (I know!).
I wanted to commit to doing creative work regularly again. I had been attending afternoon art classes since I was kid until the age of 20 – expressing myself visually has always been part of me. After finishing art classes, I had bursts of creativity, but with time they almost vanished. 365 ideas project was a way to defeat my growing fear of starting something new. The rules were simple – create one collage every day, don’t spend too much time on it, publish it.
Even though creating the first few images was painful, 365 ideas became a habit. During my days I collected and sketched ideas I could use in the evenings. This went well for around three months, then I started to feel exhausted and had to slow down a bit. Having a day job as a front-end developer and doing this in the evenings, I had a lot on my mind and schedule.
With summer 2010 approaching I started to notice my stomach doesn’t feel right and examination in the hospital revealed I am very close to developing stomach ulcers. It was clear that 365 ideas was too big to continue with. But I am a tough person, I still wanted to carry on with it, so again I lowered the frequency of creating my collages.
I was gradually getting further and further from a daily project. Also my aproach to the images started to feel different – I was already thinking about smaller series and didn’t even feel the need to create them that often.
At the moment I create approx. one image per month and I am already doing something different than what I (vaguely) defined in the beginning.
It’s time to stop.
I feel like I need to go on with different approach and 365 ideas starts to feel like a burden.
I’ve learned a lot by doing this: I have my own creative process, I collect my ideas, I know that personal projects are worth it.
The mistakes are also clear: I wasn’t specific enough about what I want to do in 365 ideas project, I should have defined more rules and think about my time more carefully – I might write a separate blog post about this later.
There were a lot of mistakes in 365 ideas project, but it was a much needed kick and it was the best badly planned project I’ve ever made.
365 ideas project: #029 – taa taa
