If you’ve been following me for a while now you know that I participated in all of Kaila Walker’s Monthly Challenges as a part of her Monthly Membership group last year. This year I’ve decided to continue to challenge myself by making up my own monthly challenges. Some I expect to achieve really easily, and others are WAY out of my comfort zone, but the point it to challenge myself.
For my first challenge, in February, I decided to start off with an easy one. I knew that I wanted to write 15k for my WIP, and I wanted to start the year off with some wins. The initial goal was to read 20 pages a day- which I was floating around as an average anyway, so I couldn’t really lose, could I?
So how did it go?
Have you read one of these posts before? You know, the ones where I laugh hysterically before telling you how badly I failed.
Hahahahahahahahaha.
Ok. So, it goes like this…
Firstly, the book I picked up to read in February was Cress, by Marissa Meyer.
Some background: I plan to read 2 books per month this year (or 24 books in total). The goal is to motivate me to get into a habit of reading more regularly, which will help me with my writing, as well as creating some down time for myself- which I struggle with.
Let’s do some math. February = 28 days. ½ February = 14 days. Cress = 550 pages. To read Cress in 14 days = 39.2857142857 pages per day. Or, if you’re not insane, 40 pages per day.
40 pages. Double the initial target.
Suddenly the slam dunk that was this first challenge began to look more like the reality of me trying to make a simple basket- if you’ve ever seen me try to get a ball in a hoop, or ANY kind of sporty action, you’re now laughing at the screen hysterically. Don’t worry, I am too- see above.
It took me two days to get behind a little, another week to get behind a lot, and by day 14 I was at page 275 and WAY behind schedule. For the record, as I’m writing this, weeks later and I’m still at page 322- that was as far as I got in February.
Let me point out that, while I obviously didn’t read 40 pages per day throughout February- and I haven’t yet finished Cress- with a little math you will notice that 275 pages (when I stopped CHALLENGING myself) across 14 days = 19.6428571429. Or, if you do rounding, like most sensible people do, 20 pages per day- you know, for the first half of the month anyway.
What’s the lesson here?
Well the first thing you need to understand when learning any lesson is “where it came from”. Remember in school when the math teacher said, “this equals this” and her response to your confused “why” was a flat “because it does”? It’s hard to learn things, like, really learn them, if you don’t understand them.
For me, this month it was a matter of outside influences. I began the month with two goals in mind. Read, and write. (And I assure you, my writing schedule was as spotty and inconsistent as my reading. A plus: I managed half of my original word count goal.) With those two goals alone, I would have had very little reason not to achieve both with a big fat smile on my face.
But, you know, life happens. I got more shifts at work, I came up with some ideas on how to improve my platform and began working on some changes there, and I became a little unwell. While each thing wasn’t a big life changing thing, they piled on top of one another- and on top of those two little goals.
You know how people make these amazing sandcastles that stand tall and strong, with all this fine detail, and when you put the last bucket on top of yours the bottom falls out from underneath? Yeah, that’s what happened to me in February.
Is it that I can’t read 20 pages per day? Obviously not. Is reading my priority? Well, as much as I want to make it one, I have to admit that when I’m rundown and overwhelmed, my health is more important.
SO, this month’s biggest takeaway for everyone: Remember that priorities come in all shapes and sizes. Just because the challenge for this month was what I thought was going to be an easy one, and an easy one to prioritize, doesn’t mean that there weren’t other things that needed to come first. Sometimes the hardest things are the things we knock out of the park, and the easy things are that that we struggle with. And it all comes down to circumstance and your personal ability to handle that particular thing in that time. Not to mention that you need to reprioritize your list as new things are added to it- and your top three may not look the same when you do.
So, challenge yourself, but remember to check in with yourself as you do. And if you hit a road block, decide if it is directly related to the challenge (and push through) or if the issue comes from somewhere else (and may need some reassessment).
In March, I will be challenging myself to plan and prepare my blog posts and corresponding social media posts for the remainder of the year (or at least the next six months.) I invite you to try this kind of batching with some of your own content. Maybe you have a blog or vlog that is taking up time and you’d like to plan ahead to give you a bit more time to work with each week.
For those of you who were wondering what happened to part 2 of the Bali Babes Collab (meant to go up February 25th), I’m so sorry! As I mentioned, I haven’t been well, have fallen behind, and I just couldn’t get it out in time. I made the big decision to miss a blog post for the first time since starting my blog, in order to put my health first. I have really loved working with these ladies on these collaborations, and I wanted to do them justice- i.e. I didn’t want to rush them just to make a deadline. This collab has been postponed to March 25th.
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