◆ MAKING THINGS · 2026-10-05

The 100 Day Journey

I have attempted the 100 Days of Art challenge three times over roughly the past five years. I say "attempted" on purpose, because honesty matters here more than a tidy story. The first round was the one that changed things. That is where I want to start.

Where It Started

I was depressed and anxious. I was not functioning the way I wanted to, and the people around me could feel it. My wife Rebecca looked at me one day and said something simple: "Why don't you make art for 100 days and see if you feel better?" So I did.

I got up early every morning and went to my studio. Some sessions were 15 minutes. Some stretched to two or three hours. The medium was mixed media on canvas, which is what I always come back to: collage, paint, ink, and whatever else felt right that day. The work was ongoing, meaning I had multiple canvases going at once, problems to solve, decisions to make the next morning before I even sat down.

And something shifted. I started thinking about art instead of worrying. That is not a small thing. Anxiety fills every available space in your head if you let it, and creative problem-solving is one of the few things I have found that genuinely takes up that space in a useful way. I was not just distracting myself. I was building something. Each morning I had a real question to answer: what does this painting need next? That question replaced a lot of darker ones.

Rebecca noticed. People around me noticed. I was better when I was making art. Not fixed, not cured, just more like myself. If you are struggling with your mental health alongside any of this, please do talk to a doctor or someone you trust. Creative practice is real and it matters, and it works best when it is part of a bigger picture of taking care of yourself.

I also made live YouTube videos throughout the challenge. On day 100, instead of just posting a painting, I made a full video presented as an art show of everything I had made. It was the final project of the whole 100 days, and honestly it was one of the most satisfying things I have done as an artist. You can find my channel at youtube.com/@davezak if you want to see what that looked like.

The Second and Third Times

I started the challenge again twice after that, including during COVID. Both times I stopped before the end.

I want to be plain about this rather than glossy. Both times I quit, it was because my anxiety spiked and life felt like it was falling apart in ways I was not managing well. When everything is on fire, a daily creative commitment can start to feel like one more thing you are failing at. So I set it down.

I do not think that was the wrong call in the moment. And I also do not think it erases what I did. The first 100 days still happened. The work still exists. Stopping is not the same as failing, and starting again is always available. If you make the work anyway even on the hard days, great. And if you put it down for a while, that is human. You can pick it up again.

What I have come to understand is that the challenge works because it builds momentum, and momentum is exactly what anxiety wants to destroy. There is something in the nervous system that responds to creative routine in a specific way. I wrote a bit more about that in another piece on nervous system regulation and creativity if you want to go deeper on the why behind all of this.

What I Actually Recommend

If you want to do your own 100 days, here is what I would tell you from experience. Make it a project for yourself, not for an audience. Set up your space so it is ready to go. Get supplies you genuinely love to use. That last one sounds minor but it is not. If you dread opening your paint box, you will find reasons not to open it. If you love what is in there, getting started is easy.

Keep the bar low enough to actually show up. Fifteen minutes counts. A small canvas counts. Showing up and touching the work counts even if nothing remarkable happens that day. The goal is the streak, the habit, the ongoing conversation with your own creative brain. The good work comes out of that conversation, not the other way around.

An Artist Needs to Make Art

I believe this completely: an artist needs to make art to be fully alive and fully themselves. When I am not making things, nothing feels quite right. Work feels hollow. Time feels wasted. Something is off and I cannot name it until I get back to the studio and realize, oh, this is what was missing.

If you feel that way too, you are not being dramatic. That pull is real and it is telling you something true about who you are. Listen to it.

I turned my experience of the 100 Days of Art challenge into a workbook so other people could run their own version of it with some structure and support. You can find it at davidzak.com/100days or pick up the paperback on Amazon at the 100 Days of Art Workbook. And if you want to see more of my work, client projects, and what I am up to now, come find me at davidzak.com.

Go make something. See how you feel after 100 days.

Follow along: davidzak.com · YouTube · Instagram · Facebook · 100 Days of Art Workbook on Amazon

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