Write 100

For the life of me, I cannot consistently maintain any kind of habit tracker/countdown.

I've started multiple times in my life: I've made charts to break habits, make habits, record progress on a goal - you name it, I've done it. When I was 13 I decided to journal every day for a year. It went ok, though there were several weeks where each entry consisted only of the sentence "I'm going to bed now." About halfway through the year I lost the journal, and that was that.

The most recent flop was a countdown until March 28th. I have friends coming to visit then, so a few months ago I made a countdown to get pumped that they're coming. I am most certainly pumped, but if you were to get your information from my countdown you would think that their visit was months rather than weeks away.

There are ways that I can motivate myself to do things, but tracking progress is not one of them.

So when a close friend of mine from college announced that she was launching a project called Write 100 - a challenge to write at least 15 minutes a day for 100 days straight - I applauded her, but had zero intention of taking part.

In addition to the aforementioned inability to follow through on those sorts of trackers, I tend to think of writing challenges like that as being for long form writers, and I so do not write long form.

To sum up: I consistently fail to follow through on any sort of long-term progress-tracking project, and I don't have a long form writing project.

Obviously Write 100 was not for me.

But over the past week I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.

True, I don't write long form content, but I do write - journal entries, blog posts, handwritten letters. I have far more things I want to write than I ever commit to paper (or word processor).

And while habit trackers haven't worked for me before, I think part of that is due to the lack of outside accountability.

So when an acquaintance in Munich said she'd do the challenge with me, I decided to go for it.

Here's the deal: starting now, I'm committing to write for 15-30 minutes every day for 100 days. That writing could be in the form of blogging, journaling, or letter-writing. It could be on a scrap of paper while I'm commuting, in my journal, or in the computer lab between classes. It may NOT be in the form of catching up on emails, writing lesson plans, or editing things I've already written.

I'm kinda sorta really excited. I've had all sorts of ideas swirling around in my head that I want to write about, and now I finally have the structure to do it. It was almost overwhelming sitting down to write today: I didn't know where to start!

So I'm starting with this post.

Hopefully one result of this challenge will be that I post more frequently. But even if that doesn't happen, it helps me that y'all know that I'm attempting this. Every little bit of incentive and accountability helps!

Also, if you're interested in joining the challenge, check it out here! There's a whole community of writers setting out on this thing together, so why not join in? Print out the calendar, set a timer every day, and write. You don't even have to start today - there are two calendars on the website: one that's date-specific for the spring challenge, and another that you can start any time you want.

And with that - 1 day down, 99 to go!