Tag Archives: meeting a challenge

The Challenge of Meeting Challenges

A couple of weeks ago, I signed up for Connie Ragen Green’s new blogging challenge — and then, after posting a bunch of posts, promptly forgot all about it.

Well, not really forgot about it so much but becoming preoccuppied with other deadlines — work for clients, papers to grade, etc., that seemed more important.

So what to do? Well… a bit perspective is in order.

It reminds me of Roger Mellott’s “Nose on the Screen” image — when we get too wrapped up in our stuff, we are like flies that sit on the TV screen — unable to see the big picture, just running from one dot to the next etc.

And that’s how I realized a few things…

1) Doing a few things for my own blog and other stuff is important.
2) It doesn’t take away all that much time, actually.
3) That’s where perspective comes in… just how long DOES it take me to write a blog post?
(I’m not going to say, but depending on what I’m writing about, it’s not terribly long).

Now this gets me to another challenge… the Ezinearticles.com HAHD challenge. Writing a hundred articles in 100 days!

I made it to the end of the last one — kind of. A few articles ended up not being quite long enough, but I made it to 100. The short ones? The previous challenge, which overlapped with this one, didn’t require the articles to be more than 400 words, and so I skimped a bit for the last few that I turned in for THAT challenge — and those were also part of this set of 100.

But I learned a few cool things about myself and my writing ability — boy can I write fast if I’m under deadline pressure and I’m not trying to please anyone than myself, other than making sure that the articles meet the length requirements. That and pass muster with Ezinearticles’ editorial team, which they usually do anyway since my articles are generally good ones 😉

Anyway, challenge number 5 is coming up, starting on May 1, and THIS time, I’m going to approach it more the way it was supposed to be done — writing an article or two every day or two, so I keep building up my count week after week and won’t be forced into a mad wrist-pain inducing dash during hte last few days.

My counter is ready to go, sitting in my author’s area. Only 7 days till the starting date…

So what’s the leson about the challenge of meeting challenges?

1) Don’t underestimate what you can do.
2) Don’t forget to take care of yourself too.
3) Slow and steady gets you there. But sometimes, when needed, so will a mad dash!

What do you think?

Let me know! Just post a comment. I’ll incorporate the best comments in a follow-up post! And there will be one or several since I have to post a whole lotta posts to meet Connie’s challenge!

Happy Weekend!