Well, here we are. It seems like it was just yesterday I was starting this year’s Blogtober challenge, and now, it’s the end of the month. This year, I had set some goals for myself, partially because isn’t that what one does before a challenge? And partially because I felt like I needed some after my previous attempts.
I’m really proud this time around because I actually did it—I posted every day for the month of October. It wasn’t always smooth sailing, but it was a really great experience.
What I learned this month
1. I can do it.
This was probably the biggest lesson this month, and it’s nice to know that I can in fact conquer my goal of doing my best. I won’t lie, it wasn’t easy—right around the three-week mark, just like my previous runs, I very nearly fell into my normal, fatal pattern of thinking well, I can just do it later.
We all know “later” never comes.
I was really lucky this time around that Shane also knows my patterns and helped push me through the two days where it almost fell apart. He was right—I can do it!
2. I can make writing fun again.
Throughout this month, I found myself gravitating toward my writing, even on days where I wasn’t really feeling it. I had lots of ideas, and I just needed to get them down on paper.
3. I still need to work on showing myself grace.
I’m not totally convinced that I mastered the art of showing myself grace, because there were definitely times this month where I felt underwhelmed by what I was doing and had to pull myself out of my perfectionist loop.
What’s next?
I know exactly what I want to work on the next time I do a challenge like this.
Instead of getting through what at times felt like a somewhat disjointed collection of ideas, I want to tackle coming up with something more cohesive. I don’t know what that looks like yet, but I’m sure it’ll evolve between now and next October into a doable idea!
I also want to make sure I hold onto the feeling of success. It’s a neat feeling to have fully completed something I set out to do, even if there were times I wasn’t totally happy with it, and it’s given me both a burst of creativity and the confidence to conquer the feeling that my ideas are lame.
Because I do struggle with that, and there were a few this month that almost didn’t make it for that exact reason. They did, though, and I feel good about them in hindsight, so that’s a good lesson.
Thank you for being here for this year’s Blogtober challenge, and for reading all the random ideas from my brain!
YOUR TURN
