One Cat A Day
About a year ago, I hit a wall.
I was a few months into officially launching the studio, and on paper, things were moving forward. But in reality? I had a huge to-do list, a mountain of technical details to figure out, and absolutely zero inspiration to create.
I kept waiting for the creative spark to dawn on me, but it just wouldn’t show up. Out of frustration, I’d completely ditch the creative side of business and throw myself into administrative tasks. When I did force myself to sit down and try to create something, I’d get disappointed by the result almost immediately. I’d drop the project, walk away, and go right back to my technical tasks where it felt safer.
Then, during an ordinary break of scrolling on Instagram, I stumbled across a post that stopped me in my tracks (I wish I had saved the link to give credit, but it’s long gone). It basically said:
Stop waiting for inspiration or creativity to dawn on you. Start with the physical act of creating, and inspiration will meet you there.
It completely flipped my perspective.
Around that time I had sketched a couple of cats inspired by my brother’s sneaky cat, Mitz. I looked at them and thought, Okay. Let’s expand this collection, one cat a day.
I set up a two-week ritual with strict, low-pressure rules:
One cat, in a box.
Done every single morning with my coffee.
Keep going for two weeks.
Against all odds, I actually stuck to it.
I’m not going to tell you that they were all masterpieces. Some of the cats came out lovely. Others were just plain boring, or felt a little awkward. But that was totally okay. I had given myself permission to create without expectations—without needing the final result to be pretty or useful.
What really mattered was that I started each day by showing up for myself creatively. I stopped obsessing over the fact that I “couldn’t make anything” because, well, I was making something.
By the end of those two weeks, I had a whole collection of cats. I eventually started turning them into stamps, and to this day, they are easily the most popular designs in my printing workshops, People love them.
Looking back, I’d love to tell you that this challenge cured me forever and that I now create every single day. But that’s not reality. I still get creative blocks. I’ve had several since then, and I know I’ll have them again in the future. It’s a completely normal part of the process, and I’ve stopped expecting it to disappear,
But that two-weeks experiment was the first time I realised I didn’t have to sit around passively waiting for inspiration to come back. Sometimes, you just have to pick up the pen, brew the coffee, and draw a boring cat to get things moving again.
