It’s day 5 of this 30 day challenge and I’ve already gotten so much out of it.
While completing this challenge, I’m also posting two articles a week to my own site, teaching and coaching full time, and this week I had to finish my final project in my graduate class.
This led to me finding small amounts of time at work and home and using them to write a few lines for articles. I find this more beneficial than mindlessly surfing Facebook or Instagram. Typing 5 mins at a time, a few times day means that I have an article waiting to be edited when I get home instead of an article waiting to be typed.
Some days I wasn’t quite so proactive. Other days I used the time for grading or working on other things. This led to me sitting in front of a computer screen at 9pm with a post to write and edit if I was going to keep the challenge alive.
On those nights, it was generally 11 before I made it to bed. I expected the next day to be hell. I’m a huge fan of sleep and generally go to bed around 9–9:30. To my surprise, I was fine. I was a little groggy in the morning but after a cup of coffee there was no real difference. So I learned I can operate on less sleep occasionally when the need arises.
Lastly, this has taught me to sit down and get something on paper. A couple of times this week, I had no idea what I was going to write about. Once it was for my own site and once it was for the challenge. I wasted time kicking around ideas in my head. Ultimately, I just picked up a pen and wrote the first thing I thought. With my personal site, I got a few paragraphs in and decided to shelve the idea for later. Luckily, I had some previous ideas on paper and was able to use one of those.
For my Day 4 writing challenge, I just wrote about something that was on my mind. It flowed out and I felt like I had something good. Sometimes thinking is the enemy of doing. So now I will just put ink to paper and figure the rest out when I have thoughts on the page.
I’m excited to see where the next 25 days takes me. I will encounter obstacles. I will lose sleep. I will write a lot of mediocre articles.
But hopefully the daily writing and editing will build a habit and make me a better writer. I know it can only be beneficial to me and where I go from here.