A New Experiment ...

Another 100 Day Challenge draws to an end … and what are my thoughts now?  Have I experienced success?  Yes … in some concrete ways and in some concept ways … but I’m not content with the results.  I’m not sure how I’m feeling right now, I am not feeling particularly successful but I know that this has made me aware of things.  I know that I have change … heck, took on a life-long medical problem, lost my job and got a new one since Day 1 of Round 2  And yet, I I don’t feel like I’ve gotten much further than at the end of the last 100 days.  


Yes, I know that I’ve come through a very difficult year, and it’s not over yet, an yet ….  I’ve had a lot of verbal support from friends and I know people are concerned, but I miss human touch.  I just read an article called “22 Habits of Unhappy People” and it concerned me the number of habits, according to this article, I have (both known to others and known to myself).  I don’t think of myself as unhappy but I know that I often am.  Maybe, these 22 habits I can work at turning around?  I don’t know … think about and address …

So, I bring this 100 Day Challenge to an end.  Between now and December 31 are exactly 50 days.  One area of concern I have noticed is a difficulty in focusing on the item consistently every day.  With work taking up 13 hours of my day, and 3-4 hours until going to bed to do it again, I am having difficulty.  I know teaching was worse, and I can’t fathom how I managed that.  I want to still accomplish something and I don’t know how to do it in 3-4 hours a day and I just don't know how I'm going to do it.

So, I have come up with an idea.   

For the next 50 days, I’m going to try something different.  All the items I’ve been doing, I’m going to take a break from them.  For 50 days, I resolve to focus on one thing – yes, I will do other things, but for this Challenge, my focus will be one thing only:  to write every day. 

Here are the parameters I’m going to follow:

• I’m not going to miss a day.  Each item will be written on each consecutive day, so there will be 50 entries written on 50 different days.
• I have a book called A Writer’s Book of Days which I will use – it gives a prompt for every day of the year and so I will use that prompt for that day to write. 
• I will set my timer for 20 min, shut off all distractions and focus on writing for that time. The only option I have is to write an additional 10 min if needed.  It’s not about finishing a story, it’s about doing something consecutively every day.
• What will I write?  Something creative – the beginning of a story, the end of a story, something from my own life, something created, something I heard.  A poem, a piece of prose.  It will not be a report nor an essay, but something akin to a story.  I will not say the source, so if it is written in “I” (first person), it may or may not be “my” story.  The main character might be a male, it might be a child, it might be an old woman, it might be an animal.  The only limitation I’m putting on it is that it will not be x-rated.  No sex-tales or vivid violence here. 
• After writing for 50 days, with the last writing on December 31, I will determine the next 100 Day Challenge.  It is my hope that if the momentum of focus on one thing and a 50-day daily tending to this focus solely, I can transfer this to something else.

It’s worth a try anyway.

Do … or do not.  There is no try. 

Let's see where this one takes me.