Day 50: we're verbs, not nouns 👏

finding motivation through doing

Hey Creatives,

Oscar Wilde said that if you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it. That is your punishment. But if you never know, then you can be anything. There is a truth to that.

We are not nouns, we are verbs.

I am not a thing — an actor, a writer — I am a person who does things — I write, I act — and I never know what I am going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun. — Stephen Fry

Here’s the original inspiration, from Oscar Wilde:

“If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment. If you never know what you want to be, if you live what some might call the dynamic life — but what I will call the artistic life — if each day you are unsure of who you are and what you know you will never become anything, and that is your reward.”

Our theme this week is motivation.

(How’s your’s lately, by the way?)

The way to be it is to do it. I don’t mean it in the toxic hustle never-take-a-break grind grind grind culture kinda way. I enjoy these posts (and hope you do too), but #The100DayProject is your project, not the prompts (unless you’re doing the prompts as your project!).

There’s this great Jemima Kirke meme of sorts making the rounds:

I think you guys might be thinking about yourselves too much.

LOL. Guilty.

Alright then, just a little thinking and then more doing. Hopefully the thinking helps with the doing 😜

• What are some nouns you’ve been identifying with? How are they helping or how are they getting in the way?

• What are some verbs you want to do more of? What will it take to do them? What are you committing to?

We’re halfway there, wherever there is. What are you doing the second half o your project? If you’ve fallen behind or out of love with your project, today is a perfect day to do something to get back to it.

And a big thank you to

Eden Avery

for taking the lead last week on the theme of curiosity. You can follow her newsletter here

girlhood

. We’ve got a few more wonderful contributors coming your way in the second half of the project too, excited to share more soon.

XO,
Lindsay