The End.

Day 365 (29th August)

This is it — the last post of my 365-day challenge. I feel an overwhelming surge of pride because of how far I have come, but I also feel a kind of loss — for so long, I had uploaded one post a day, and now that's over.

As a final goodbye, I want to share my learnings from this journey. At the end of this challenge, I recognise three things:

1) As cliché as it sounds, it's possible to do anything as long as you put your mind to it. Sure, I did have to come up with creative ways to complete this challenge, and sometimes my other work suffered because of it, but I still appreciate that it taught me determination.

2) That improvement is hard to see on a daily basis. A lot of times I thought this challenge was futile and that I didn't improve because I couldn't see that improvement every single day. It taught me that improvement comes in small bouts, but as long as you are consistent, it will come.

3) Experts fail. I failed multiple times towards the end of the challenge. Honestly, that made me feel worthless. Imagine spending 300 straight days trying to perfect your skills and then failing — how embarrassing is that? But failing does not mean that you don't have the skills. It could just mean that you had a bad day or weren't paying attention. Baking is a science, and sometimes, you fail on the 100th try even after succeeding on the 99th.

Also, before I end this, the 365th-day post is that of a croissant. I spent a long time thinking of what would be the perfect end and finally landed on a croissant simply because I wanted to show off. Don't worry; I haven't grown that much.