Each month of the year, I'm challenging myself to make or break a habit. January was shopping, February was exercise, in March I gave up all social media, in April I attemped to Utter Nothing Negative, in May I forced myself to get more sleep, in June I started to write 30 letters, in August I ate at home, and in September I practiced being on time.
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My theme for the year is Do the Work. I made it as a vow to myself. In January, I was holding my breath with hope. In September, I let it out. I set my goal to Do the Work on the most surface of levels - my monthly discipline challenges, for example - and in a more permanent way. Dig deep in therapy, bury myself in the parenting post-baby-years, and the thing that really hovered there the most: write.
So here we are in October and I've put in the hours and effort in a lot of those things. I exercise and eat more at home and try to watch my online spending. I've faithfully gone to therapy and prayed and meditated my way through some tough emotional stuff that is shifting my soul even though it's uncomfortable. What I haven't done - what I've really been avoiding - has been working on the few writing projects I want to pursue outside of this blog.
So welcome, October, you are sure to be the hardest monthly discipline challenge yet. My goal is to write 30,000 words in October on a side project. 30,000 words - roughly 1,000 a day - outside of this blog. And in conjuction with The Nester's #write31days challenge, I'll also be freewriting on the blog. Not every single day, and I'll still have some regular content like Friday Links, but more freewriting than I've ever done here. And in the interest of keeping myself open and unguarded, I'm closing comments on those posts.
That's a lot of words. That's a lot of writing.
But outside of relationship, reading and writing have always been my great passions. Now I'm going to live that out, or at least try. I want to carve my day around my writing, instead of carving out a bit of time for it.
Things might look a little weird around the blog for the next four weeks. But a year of Doing the Work through monthly challenges will do that to you. Thanks for taking this ride with me.
