congé

So today is day 101, properly referred to as "no longer part of the project". The big 100th day celebration was last night, and a load of the 100 day participants brought photos and papers documenting their exploits for the Museum of 100 Days exhibition.

The museum was in a dimly lit Dalston warehouse with rough walls, odd corners and low ceilings, but the combination of the London Word Festival team's decorations and the magic of the exhibits themselves meant the end result was like walking into someone's obsessive, half-crazed collection of curios and novelties: a true hobbyists' curiosity shop in all its glorious weirdness.

Seeing all the projects together was powerful because it made me appreciate the immense range of what had been happening: people making things out of Lego every day, people singing a song to themselves every day, people talking to strangers every day, people going for a walk every day (sponsored, for charity, I might add), people drawing, photographing, writing and creating things every day. Marking the end of the project by bringing together all these disparate, private activities was a wonderful thing. No gimmicks, no spin, just: things we made and did.

There was some great music and standup from Josie Long, Isy Suttie, Sara Pascoe and The Pictish Trail, all connected to their own experiences with the project. The standup was great in all kinds of ways: entertaining, funny, of course, but also inspiring and intelligent (Josie also dealt admirably with some fantastic heckling from a nine-year-old girl). I think the overwhelming message of the night was best summed up by comedian Sara Pascoe. I'm paraphrasing slightly, but it was something along the lines of: no one ever tells you that you're good enough to do something, no one ever tells you that what you're doing is right - you just have to shut up and get on with doing it.

I hope I won't seem ungrateful for saying though that the best bit of the night for me was browsing through the museum, opening a window into everyone's private routines for the last 100 days. Although we were all doing things with the idea that it would "make us better people", I think the main feeling of satisfaction has been generated not by the daily activities themselves, but from having had an end point, marking out a period of sustained achievement. It's a paradox though - it's only in looking back from the finishing point that I can say "wow, look - I did that", when the achievement is simply the accumulation of 100 small, simple acts. If only I could get the same satisfaction from each individual act every time, because that's where the real achievement lies I think.

I do feel a sense of satisfaction in having got through the project. I'm also mildly surprised to look back on quite how much I actually managed to do. I was learning a new word a day, but I don't think it really would have mattered what my activity was (unless it was something bad like "Punch a person every day.") What matters, I think, is that all of us actually did something, every day. If only everything in life was as simple as saying "I want to try and do this" to yourself and then going off and doing it - oh wait a minute: it is.

Another highlight from last night was meeting the couple who exhibited 100 love letters, written from one partner to the other, although I'm a little embarrassed to say I've forgotten their names. The recipient partner wrote something to introduce the exhibit along the lines of "I don't know if it made him a better person, but it made me a happier woman, which I think has probably meant he's been made happier too." Their presentation letter-box was overflowing, as was the wall behind it, and there was something admirably earnest and honest about that project - something really human - that I liked a lot. Of course, my second thought about the love letters was "my boyfriend and I are going to have words about this", but let's not spoil the moment.

I thought about continuing the project beyond the 100 days. It's been genuinely fun uncovering words I didn't know, words like roquelaure, jingbang and paxwax. Imagine if I continued at that rate for the next 100, 1000, 10000 days? Why - I'd be the best scrabble player alive. But inevitably something would interfere with it, or it would quietly trail off and die in a forgotten corner of the internet. That would be a sad ending to the current feeling of resolution I have about the project. As I said above anyway, I don't think the actual words or the specific activities were the important thing. It was about doing something every day just because you said you would; something you didn't always feel like doing; something you sometimes considered to be pointless; but, ultimately, something that was part of a wider project that you decided to be part of for no better reason than because it sounded like a good idea. A bad idea, by contrast, is the suggestion that we now restore the karmic imbalance by doing something for each of the next 100 days to make ourselves worse people (back to the punching people plan). But it illustrates a point: whatever we decide to do every day affects us. We affect other people, so what we do affects them. Small things accumulate into big things. This means that small things matter. What do you want to do today? Can you make time to do something small, or will you do nothing?

If I'm taking anything from this project, it's that good ideas are all around us all the time, as are creative people who are willing to dive in and play around with them. People are awesome, often, as this project has shown, in private, quiet, understated ways. It was nice to talk to people last night who hadn't been keeping blogs or showing off on the internet - they'd just been getting on with it, not looking anywhere else for validation. There's a lesson there.

I'm going to finish up with a few words from a Roisin Tierney poem that feel relevant, and that hopefully go some way towards explaining what I think the 100 days project offered us and what I think about small acts of kindness and creativity:

     and I picked up my pen and found true north,
     and formed an intention as solid as any:

     to write what can be said,
     do what can be done.

Thanks to Josie Long and the London Word Festival team for thinking up the whole thing in the first place, and here's my final, hundredth word. So long, and thanks for all the nouns:

congé n formal or authoritative permission to depart; an abrupt dismissal; a leave-taking; a formal bow.

penultimate post

FYI there will be a word chosen today, the final day, but all 100dayers are going to be doing their thing at the same time at the party tonight. I'll update the blog with the final entry and a tidy downloadable list of all the words (if anyone wants one) tomorrow. Until then...

dalmahoy

Well, well, well - day 99 of the 100 days project. How strange to be coming to the end of it. As such, I've tried to pick a word that I felt had some weight to it, something with great universal meaning that could be absorbed into our emotional makeup and give a new insight into our characters. Handpicked from the dictionary just for you, here's the 99th offering:

dalmahoy n a bushy bob-wig worn in the 18c. [Said to be named from a wearer.] Chambers, 1998

Whose life isn't a little richer for knowing that the word "dalmahoy" exists, eh?

For anyone interested, end of project celebrations and an exhibition are being held tomorrow night:

100 Days To Make Me A Better Person with Josie Long
Weds 10th March 2010
7pm £12 on the door

Work Dalston
Stamford Works
Gillett Street
Dalston
London N16 8JH

apocope

Aha! So this is what that's called!

apocope n loss or omission of the last letter, syllable, or part of a word.

This dictionary's got me hangin' on every word. Ever' word. Ever' wo.

slummock

Brilliant. A nice one to pair with dratchell, I think:

slummock vi to move slowly and awkwardly. - n (dialect or colloq) a slovenly person, esp a woman, a slut. Chambers, 1998

Yes, because that's the one thing you always notice about really scantily dressed promiscuous women or sex workers - their slow, awkward movements.

It also follows on quite nicely from yesterday's lurdan, too. Presumably you could have a slummocking lurdan then. Or a slummocking dratchell. In fact, a slummocking just-about-anything sounds good to me. Slummock away, people, slummock away.

lurdan

This word feels a bit like I do this morning, as I may have slightly pushed the boundaries of social drinking last night:

lurdan, lurdane or lurden (archaic) n a dull, heavy, stupid or sluggish person. Also adj. [Origin from Old French lourdin dull, from lourd heavy] Chambers, 1998

foughty

This word caught my eye despite being fairly unassuming, but the way we store our perishable goods in this house, I'm pretty sure I'll be able to put it to good use.

foughty (dialect) adj musty; mouldy; tainted. [Origin from Old English fuht moist] Chambers, 1998

Mormops

Mormops n a genus of repulsive looking American leaf-nosed bats. [Origin from Greek mormo a bugbear, and ops face] Chambers, 1998

I love the etymology: "let's take the word for bloody annoying and put it together with your face".

Anyone wanting a little visual reference, here is a mormops, otherwise known as a ghost-faced bat.

limicolous

Mm, splendidly oozy, this:

limicolous adj living in mud. - adj limous (archaic) muddy; slimy. [Origin from Latin limus mud and colere to dwell] Chambers, 1998

Can't believe there's only a week left of the 100 days project (this is already day 93). It's gone so quickly. I'd better pick some good words to go out on.

desipient

Going through words starting with "de-" in the dictionary is depressing. They're all about losing or leaving: deforestation, defloration, deflation, deformation - that is until you find defenestration, which is still one of my favourite words (the act of flinging someone out of a window). Oh, er - and delight too I suppose. Yes, that's not a sad word. Anyway, here's a word that was new to me for today's choice:

desipient adj playing the fool; trifling - n desipience. [Origin from Latin desipiens, -entis, pr p of desipere, from de- (negative) and sapere to be wise] Chambers, 1998

I think I like it because it's such a formal word to use for something so bumbling. Suggested usage: Who is this desipient joskin?

FYI I almost picked datolite, which I misread as "a hydrated silicate of bacon and calcium". (It was boron.)

fremescent

I'm sure I've sat next to this guy on the bus before:

fremescent (rare) adj growling or muttering. - n fremescence. [Origin from the Latin fremere to growl] Chambers, 1998