I Finished My 30-Day Challenge

Thirty stories later and $96.47 richer, but that’s not the whole picture.

I finally got back on track and finished my 30-day writing challenge.

Like many of us here, I used a well-worn trick to get myself back into the groove of daily writing for Medium.

I had stopped writing daily posts on Medium during the height of the pandemic but continued work on my novel and editing for clients.

So I hadn’t stopped writing, exactly, but I had devoted a lot of time and effort to writing for Medium.

I‘ll write another time about the benefits of publishing daily and specifically the results of my challenge.

This morning, I’m focused on the unanticipated surprise of how this exercise enriched my life.

And like walking through the mountains, you can’t see the forest for the trees. It was only after completion, trying an old trick of my sister’s to improve long-time problem with my balance, that I had an insight to the challenge.

I’ve struggled with balance since a surgery three years ago. This morning I took a trick from Rita’s book on modeling and walked around my apartment with a book on my head.

Pretending I was Rita in her days as a fashion model, I realized the value of my challenge.

For months and months and months, I’ve been wailing that I needed to finish something.

Writing a book comes with its own set of devils. One of them is that it takes a bloody long time. So does knitting a sweater. And purging your home of possessions you’ve accumulated over a lifetime.

It seemed I was drowning in unfinished tasks and mired in the same old routines.

I wasn’t bored. I wasn’t lonely. I crossed things off my to-do list and met my clients’ deadlines, but something was missing. And I was eating too much sugar.

Sound familiar? Welcome to the pandemic doldrums.

Then the war began, and I had the idea to support Ukrainian knitters. That led to writing about them on Medium, and like that, my challenge was born.

Now I’m walking around my apartment with a book on my head. Colm Tóibín’s story of the Irish Famine. Another war on a defenseless country, another challenge of mine–to write about it. Another project to finish.

Change in oneself happens when you’re not looking. As Alan Watts said, you only see it after the fact, like watching the wash from the back of a boat.

Writing my 30 articles revived something in me that had gone stale. A part of me had was stuck in the back of the bread drawer during the lockdown. It had grown a bilious green and moldy. Hence my wails about not finishing, not feeling inspired.

That wasn’t pre-pandemic me.

During my 30-day article-athon, I didn’t publish every day. Yet, to meet my deadline, sometimes wrote twice a day because I determined not to fail, to disappoint myself. I wasn’t writing for readers or stats or money. I wrote to prove I still had my old determination and perseverance.

Some of those pieces were hacked out just to fill a slot on the calendar. I faced resistance. I wasn’t used to the drill anymore. It frustrated me that I’d already trained myself to write, proof, publish and market an article before I began my other work at 9 am. And I had to do it again.

Now, I wanted to quit when my imagination stalled. I had to relearn the art of writing non-fiction, of just keep going. Of digging deeper for meaning. Of doing it with my eye on the clock. It wasn’t my only gig.

But as I got closer to my goal, and read other writers, old friends and writers new to me, I took the writing part of my pieces more seriously. The connections renewed me. How could I have let them go?

I’m going to continue daily writing, but not just crank out pieces every day for stats. I’m going to continue with another challenge. Maybe more. But just for me. They will be about quality and meaning. Writing what’s in my heart and not just in my head.

Most of all, I’m going to keep writing every day because I love to know I’ve finished something every day. Also, it heartens me to connect with readers and writers.

I’ve discovered the beauty of Medium is in the connections with a world I wouldn’t know if not for writing. And for keeping the connection to a part of me that makes me feel alive.

Somehow, at the end of my challenge, I felt my old self sitting in my chair, curious, eager for new things, happy just to be.

For example, last night, I read a piece in the New York Times before bed. Japanese woodcuts have never been my thing. I like bold colors and could never get into the subtleties of the form. But this piece had me riveted to my chair. Granted, you can’t beat writing from NYT or an acknowledged Japanese master.

I took in every word, every image, my mouth hanging open. I sailed off to sleep on the winds swirling around Mt. Fuji. I woke up and tried a new way to fix my disordered balance, mindlessly grabbing a book about the Irish Famine.

I tottered around my apartment and realized something had changed. I was back.

I’d finished my challenge. I’d done my part. The challenge had done its.

Thanks for reading.

Before you go.

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