An open house to the 200 Days spreadsheets
And to my inner organization freak.
In my previous life I was a science/math nerd who was on track for a career in the sciences. I love data and numbers and organization. Organic Chemistry is my favorite subject of all time.
I see this academic part of me come out when I plan a project like 200 Days. I go hard on spreadsheets, budgets, running comparative sets of numbers, etc. So here’s a little open house to that side of the project, and the spreadsheets that became my almost-seven months in Europe.
To even wrap my mind around the length of the trip, I created the above sheet first. Each row is one day to physically represent all 200. Then I parsed out chunks to cities, and as I booked apartments this is where I documented all the details—especially the number of nights, dates, and how it all connected. Below is further down the sheet during the Italy leg when I moved around every week for a month.
And then money. Moneyyy. It’s the thing I am most curious about when I see other people do big things. The below is the budget sheet for housing. Does redacting the numbers make this view pointless? Probably. (But I don’t want to invite in reactions to the real numbers.)
**BUT I love to talk about money. I self-fund all of this stuff and I’ve figured out how to make money work for me, especially as a single lady who has to pay for all the bills all the time. If you wanna chat about the real numbers, reply to this email. I’d love to talk about it.
This trip was possible because I worked a remote tech design job for 2 years (aka endured a masculine workplace that was taxing at best). I saved and saved and saved. At the end of each month I sat down with the below paper, did the math for the month’s savings and colored in my progress. This was a very important ritual that I looked forward to every month. It connected me in a real way to this amorphous, future idea. I raised money like a telethon. A 13-month-long-telethon.
And then the post-trip spreadsheet of all 200 drawings. When I did my 365 drawings back in 2017 I did not catalog every single one like this and I have paid for it over and over again since. This time around I catalogued them all with descriptions and details, and color coding!
A few spreadsheets, money and a plane ticket.
It’s thrilling to fling oneself into an unknown and it’s also incredible to come home.
thank you!
To all of you who came to the 200 Days Art Show, thank you! It was a wonderful turnout, full of friends, and I got to send a lot of artwork home with y’all. I think I hugged 80+ people. I was knocked over with love.
And…
Soon I am re-opening my online shop with 200 Days originals and a few other fun things that didn’t make it to the show (sticker sheets!! trucks posters!!). I’ll send out an email when it opens with a discount code just for my substack folks.
I took a big break from this newsletter while I was on the trip, but now I’m back.
See you next month
Happy spooky day y’all!
