2014.... ready or not ..... here I come!!
I love a new year.
Clean slate. Fresh start. Hope. Expectation. Dreams. Goals. Mile long to-do lists.
My mind is abubble with thoughts rampantly racing through my brain, trying to catch a glimpse of what the year may have in store.
This year is no different..... Yet, I feel this year is different.
Maybe it’s my (yet again) naïve self living in the dreamworld of my imagination that this year will really be the year that will be the milestone marker of life. The year that I look back and say, “Wow, that 2014 sure was amazing!” The year that I conquer struggles and achieve daring deeds and emerge victorious all happy and grinning and shaking my fist in the air, screaming, “I DID IT!!!”
A reality check in the form of a cynical and snide little voice whispers in my ear, “Sure, you say this every year, and look where you end up -- a year of wasted time, opportunities passed by, and you didn’t risk much did you?”
But I really and truly (at this moment) want this year to be different. It feels like a “poop or get off the pot” year. I can no longer just say, “Hey, I want to do X, Y & Z.”
I’ve got to do it...... THIS year.
So as this year is settling in (at the end of the day on January 1st), I have found myself, perhaps, already biting off a bit more than I may be able chew. But, then again, for people who know me, this is typical. But I’m excited. I have just this month in view. A sprint of sorts. Surely I can concentrate on a couple of goals for just 31 days, right? (Check in with me around the 11th or 14th of this month... and if I have fallen away on these goals, please encourage the heck out of me to get back with it and help drive away that cynical voice that may be beating me up at that point.)
I have signed up for 2 challenges -- one for this month, and one for the year. Of course I have a little side challenge I want to work on as well. The main purposes of the challenges are to instill disciplines that will create the habits that I want my life to have.
Writing.
Reading.
Photography.
That is not the actual order of importance for me, but more the order of urgency of the particular challenges I have chosen. Let’s break them down.
Writing
I am about to finish reading the book You Are a Writer by Jeff Goins. Thinking of myself as a writer is difficult and I feel a bit fraudulent in declaring such a statement. A little while back, I heard Jeff in an interview where he encourages those who write to declare themselves writers. (“I am a writer!”) And only after declaring oneself such, will that person actually start believing it, thus acting like it and pursuing the craft with more diligence. The book goes into this concept in more detail.
Needless to say, I was a little giddy when I received Jeff’s email newsletter introducing his challenge for January -- write 500 words every day for the month of January.
500 words doesn’t sound outlandish, but certainly an amount of discipline is needed -- especially for the every single day for 31 days part. (Even at this point, I am about to knock on the door of 600 words already.)
What attracted me was the commitment of writing every day. Writers write. To be a writer, I have to write. And though I love the idea of writing every day, it is way too easy for me to get distracted, then tired, and come up with 12 excuses of why I’ll sit and write tomorrow. I am also aware that within the 31 days, I will likely hit a slump, wonder what in the world I should write, etc., etc. I realize I need to hit those times and work through them anyway. Through the challenge, Jeff has already promised writing prompts to help with the flow.
But more than anything, at the end of this month, I want to look back and say, “I did it. I wrote every day for an entire month and logged more than 15,500 words.” I don’t plan to have every day’s writing published, but I imagine a fair share of it will show up here on my blog. Leave me a comment and let me know you’re out there!
If you enjoy writing, or would like to take a stab at the challenge, visit www.goinswriter.com/my500words . There is a great community forming already. Already at the time of this writing, there are almost 700 in the Facebook Group that Jeff set up, and over 400 blogs are linking up.
Reading
If you know me, you know I love to read. You know there are few circumstances in life in which I wouldn’t rather be reading. Day of wintry weather? Stay in, snuggle up and read. Beautiful sunny day? Sit on the porch with a delicious cup of yumminess and read. If given a few extra hours in the day, I would surely say, “I’ll use the time to read!”
And no one knows more than my husband how many bins of books are residing in our attic, while I insist that I will get through them all before I leave this earth. (He has threatened -- quite convincingly, I might add -- that if I die before him, the first thing he’ll do is drag the books down and throw them in the street or have a magnificent bonfire in the backyard. Yeah, he’s not much of a reader... but don’t hold it against him. He squishes bugs and other important things that allow me to forgive him this little insufficiency.)
Another writer/blogger/speaker I have been following in recent times is Jon Acuff. The day after Christmas, I discovered Jon’s post from Christmas Eve -- http://acuff.me/2013/12/empty-shelf-challenge/
The Empty Shelf Challenge is about clearing a bookshelf and adding books that are read this year. This excites me on several levels -- keeping track of the books I’ve read, but also being a part of the community that is doing #EmptyShelf, I’ll discover great books, as well as fellow readers and even other bloggers. Jon has a board on Pinterest for readers to add photos or screenshots of their empty shelves (and this includes Goodreads and e-reader apps as well as physical bookshelves) and shots as they add books to their shelves. I’m currently reading two books I hope to finish soon so I can add the books to my #EmptyShelf.
(If you are on Goodreads, but we’re not friends yet, please leave a comment or follow me on twitter at @saranades -- I’d love to connect!)
Photography
This is where my heart lies. In my youth, I was a musician. I couldn’t think of anything coming close to making me feel the way music did. Though I miss my music days (you’ll still find me singing in the car and banging my hand on the steering wheel), photography, a close second, evokes emotions and thoughts that many times I cannot even express. I absolutely love being struck with such awe at a photograph that someone has taken, as well as that moment when I snap the shutter and know I have captured a moment unique in time.
I have fiddle-farted around with my photography for 10 years. But this year. This is the year I want to really sink into it and see what happens.
I have ideas, goals and dreams for this year in this area, but what I’m willing to share is that I want to grow and learn. I still have so much to learn -- technical knowledge that will allow me to understand my tool and my surroundings a bit better. But most importantly, I want to be still.... and listen..... and engage my surroundings with my eyes wide open. And find that moment, that angle, that bit of wonder in the ordinary to capture and then share with the world.
So it may seem a little anti-climactic, or confusing, to say that my challenge on the side is an Instagram challenge. I’m not hoping to capture a shot of a lifetime with my iPhone on Instagram. But the challenge does test me in consistency, discipline and looking around for a shot that will correspond to that day’s assignment. For that reason, I look forward to this challenge, and it will carry forth into grander ideas with my trusty DSLR.
If you are on Instagram, connect with me! My user name is saranades.
This post, aka Day 1 of My 500 Words, exceeded my thoughts and expectations. This is quite lengthy and I certainly did not plan on that, but it gives a good background of what I’m up to this month. If you are still reading, thanks for hanging in there. (And look at that! Exceeded 1500 words! Yes, I’m known to be an overachiever of sorts.... ) I’ll shoot for brevity another day...
