At the beginning of 2020, Steve Pavlina announced on his Facebook account he will do a 365 days blogging challenge. He also asked if other people will join. At that time, I felt comfortable to only leave a small comment saying I will follow his efforts and show a bit of support every time I’ll see his posts in my feed. Didn’t want to commit to such a long challenge. Also had different priorities at the beginning of the year, priorities which, obviously, were blown away by the pandemic which turned the entire planet upside down.
I met Steve a long time ago. First time it was in Las Vegas in 2009, when I participated at his first ever workshop. Then he visited Romania and we had the opportunity to do a couple of projects together. He came to one of the events I was organizing at that time, Open Connect, and we planned and organized an event in a slightly bigger team. In only 9 days that event was sold out. Those were good times.
I made this introduction to let you know that I’m accustomed to this “in the moment” energy, to ridiculously big goals and to long, consistent writing challenges. I made quite a few 30 days writing challenges in another platform where I’ve been fairly active during the last 3 years, Hive. I’m also accustomed to writing consistently for books – which is somehow different than blogging. There are at least two books I wrote from scratch using this “write daily” approach, Running For My Life (a story of my physical and emotional transformation through running) and The World, Dripping (my first attempt at writing fiction, specifically, science fiction).
But this would be by far the longest writing challenge I ever did. I don’t think I’m yet prepared for a 365 days writing challenge, but a 230 days (that’s how much is left form this year at the moment of writing), well, I am.
Why Committing To Such A Long Challenge?
30 days challenges – and, by extrapolation, longer, more consistent challenges – helped me a lot. I was able to implement new habits, like changing my diet or starting to run, I improved my productivity in many ways and gained a lot of clarity. These are some of the outcomes that I’m expecting this time as well. I don’t have any specific habit that I’m trying to implement, nor do I want to improve my productivity. I simply want to commit to writing every day on my blog until the end of the year, knowing that at the end of it something new – and better – will emerge out of it.
Also, things have changed a lot after this pandemic. I know I’m not the only one who experienced drastic changes. I guess each and every person on the planet felt this shift in a very profound way. In my case, there is a very clear tendency to get back to the things I was doing when this blog was my only source of income, like 4-5 years ago. As some of you know, I’m making a living these days as a programmer (mobile app developer, precisely). It’s going quite well for me, to be honest. Being employed gave me with a certain predictability, which was very much needed when I decided to go that route. I’m happy with the feedback I get from my work and I’m fortunate enough to work remotely (even before the pandemic) which also gives me a lot of flexibility.
But I feel the need to expand a little. I do not plan to go back to being a full time blogger (yet), but I want this option on the table, somehow. And what better way to prepare for this than embarking in a ridiculously long and consistent writing challenge?
So, be prepared to hear from me a lot until the end of this year. And, maybe, just like Steve motivated me to get into this challenge, you will get some inspiration, or at least a gentle nudge, to stretch your limits a bit.
Stretching is good for your health.
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
