I did it! My first-ever “100 Days” project. I was inspired by someone else’s 100 days of haiku and decided to give it a try. I set a few guidelines for myself:

• Write about something that happened that day
• Post every day, no skipping days

I’m pretty happy with how I did. There was only one day that I missed on accident. I’m surprised it didn’t happen more often. During the first week, I was so worried that I wouldn’t think of anything to write about, I got over excited and posted more than one per day! Then I fell into a pattern of waiting until the end of the day to write the haiku, so that I could review the day and pick a topic. This often slid into, “Boy I’m tired, time for bed, oh wait…. Aaack, the haiku!”

For a creative medium, I’m glad I picked haiku. It was different from the drawing and painting I’d been immersed in previously. I can’t imagine doing one whole Zentangle per day, it would take me too long. A haiku can be completed in just a few minutes. Using the Notegraphy and Font Studio apps for styles, background art, and photo overlays was fun. And I mostly enjoyed the challenge of trying to fit a thought into the 5-7-5 syllable pattern. It’s similar to trying to fit into 140 characters on Twitter.

I definitely hit a laggy period, especially around the 80-day mark. I don’t remember why. Was it that life was uneventful? Or had I gotten tired of the practice?

It was fun to share! Knowing that I would post these publicly, I worked to anonymize some situations. A few haikus that got the most response seemed to be inspired when I had a bee in my bonnet, haha!

As day 100 approached, I wondered if I’d miss writing a haiku every day. I can’t say that I miss it. It felt interruptive and stilted at times when I noticed an experience I wanted to share, and I had to stop and mentally save it to see how I could massage it into the 5-7-5 pattern. I prefer to just let the expression flow. But it’s still fun to create haikus. Here’s an experience I had the other day, a funny photo and riff on a song title. I realized a few minutes later, it was a haiku that wrote itself!

If you’d like to visit my 100 Days of Haiku, plus a few extras, you can see them all here.