365 Days Writing Challenge – Checkpoint Eleven

It was quite a journey so far. This is the eleventh checkpoint in my 365 days challenge, which means eleven months have passed, and there’s only one left. This is by far the longest, and most consistent challenge I’ve done in my entire life. I’ve had year long challenges before, but they were more loose, with a monthly approach, not forcing me to do something every single day. Yet, here we are, 334 days after I started it, still writing.

November was a strange month. If anything, it was the strangest month of the entire year – and it wasn’t a simple year to begin with. Many things happened in 2021, most of them fueled by the biggest change of all: moving to a new country. As you can imagine, I’ve been through quite a lot. Yet November somehow managed to overwhelm all the previous months, in terms of depth and unpredictability.

Something was bound to happen in the first third of the month, something that had the potential to change my life even more than moving to a new country. And I was very convinced this will happen, until hours before it was scheduled.

It didn’t happen.

Well, something did happen, which changed my life quite consistently, but not in the direction I wanted to. Instead of creating more freedom and space, it created more (forced) bonding and strain.

As you would imagine, my daily writing was affected by this failed event. I wrote shorter articles, and the topics were somehow floating around. My focus was somewhere else, trying to cope with the new context, and didn’t have the energy to maintain the grip. I did manage to write every day, but not very consistently. Most of the time I wrote short articles, between 400-600 words, which is half of what I usually write.

All in all, I’m happy this month is over, and I’m happy I could manage to write, as sloppy and as inconsistent as I was. The chore was done.

Now there are only 30 days left from this year.

Onwards and upwards!