Taking on a Challenge

Following on from yesterdays post about “A Year Of Doing Good” by Judith O’Reilly, I’ve decided to write about the challenges which I have set myself. They’re not New Year resolutions because I prefer short challenges that I’m more likely to commit to. For instance; I now do 15 minutes everyday on the exercise bike. It’s not much, but it’s what I’m most likely to achieve. I do 5 mins on a hard gear, then reward myself with 5 mins on the easiest gear, then I finish with 5 mins on a middle type gear and it’s all done. I use the time to plan what I’m going to do with my next 15 mins, easy!

Next I set myself a goal to write a minimum of 1200 words a day for my next book. I plan to have the first one ready for edit by the end of January and then I have committed to do the same for my other book which although started, has sat on the back burner for a couple of months (or is it 3 or 4 months?) So far I’ve kept up with the goal for the last 5 days. I like to start new challenges on odd days, not a Monday. A Monday doesn’t work for so many reasons, I think there is a mental hangup about a Monday mixed with the traditional working week. So I started my writing challenge on a Friday, it was great to keep it up over the weekend and by Monday I felt good about what I was achieving.

My next Challenge is no hardship to me as I love reading. If you are a follower of Mumsnet, join the challenge too. I joined goodreads.com last summer and set myself a challenge to read 40 books by Christmas and ended up raising the challenge. So this year I’ve set the bar to 100! I love the way books open my mind and fill it with wonderful new information and experiences. I mix it up and try books from several genres. I’ll go to the library and choose a letter of the alphabet and pick books by Authors with that letter, or I’ll go to the non-fiction section and select certain shelves to choose a book from. A few years ago I was in the library not getting very far with some family tree research, when I felt a need to go to the psychology section. I chose a book called “The Other Side and Back” by Silvia Browne and a whole new world opened up for me, it has brought so much comfort and joy to myself and my friends whom I shared it with.

Well that’s my next 15 mins up, I’ll tell you more another time.

Rosie