Write 100 | Conclusion

99 days ago I posted about jumping on board with my friend Rebecca's Write 100 project - a crazy challenge to write every day for 100 days in a row.

It was a leap way out of my comfort zone, between my not writing long form and being horrible at any kind of do-something-x-number-of-days-in-a-row endeavor.

For those of you who are curious about how it actually went, here's a report.

I haven't looked at the handy dandy calendar for the challenge in weeks. Since day 67, to be precise. As of day 67, I had missed two days. I'm guessing that out of the last 99 days, I wrote on 94 of them. Which puts me at a 95% success rate, assuming I write tomorrow.

But that's just a guess, due to the many different places I write and my record-keeping failures. It's good for the perfectionist in me to know that I didn't reach my goal and that's ok.

The point never really was to be able to pat myself on the back and say that I successfully checked off one more box.

The point was to write.

And boy, have I written a lot.

During a conference that involved lots of fun things but not nearly enough sleep, I propped my eyelids open each night to journal about the experience.

I wrote pages and pages of letters to pen pals scattered throughout the world.

I wrote twelve blog posts - more than I've written some years.

I even wrote a poem. Well, a poem and a half. Considering that I have not voluntarily written a poem since middle school, that is quite an accomplishment.

In the last 99 days I've had some big decisions to make, some challenging news to process, and so many experiences that come with the territory of living in Germany. Having the specific accountability of the Write 100 challenge in the midst of the crazy has helped me incorporate writing into my life in a way that I've always wanted to.

Now, instead of thinking, "I should write about that sometime," I am much more likely to pick up a pen and actually write. And for that, I'm grateful.

So Rebecca and the Write 100 team, if you ever end up seeing this, thanks for the challenge - it's been a blast. And the writing adventure will most surely continue.