Hello everyone! Today I’m sharing my first update on my journey to have a different monthly challenge this year! I’m saying goodbye to January’s yoga challenge, and hello to February’s short story challenge!

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The basic idea of these goals is to make sure I always have something to work on, and become better at the things I love to do. At the end of 2021 I saw articles and videos that featured people doing month long challenges to meet their goals, which highly inspired me. Plus, my 2022 goal is “again, but better” which I think connects beautifully to this idea that practice makes perfect. So that’s what I’m doing!

So for this post, I’m sharing how my monthly challenge went last month (intro post to this idea linked there!), and why I picked my next one. Here’s the update!

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Goodbye Yoga

For January, I completed Yoga with Adriene’s 30 day yoga challenge! I know, I know, January has 31 days, but the challenge is only 30! Well, Adriene does an intro video every January that is more meditation based and doesn’t technically count as part of her challenge. But I decided to the do the monthly challenges after the first of the year, so I’m counting the intro video as part of the challenge anyway.

I have to say, this was harder than I expected! I typically was trying to do the practice before starting the work day, so it was always annoying to try to get it done beforehand. It wasn’t the showing up part that was hard, it was the not getting bored and ending the video early! A lot of times I felt like there was a lot of down time during the videos, and it was so tempting to try to fast forward the video a bit.

Even with that though, I did notice the videos were shorter than usual, and I really appreciated that! I remember the videos in the past were typically 30-45 minutes per day, but this time it was closer to 20 minutes! That was very nice and I loved the shorter practices. I also noticed it was less focused on breathing exercises from what I remember, and less about meditation. Instead it was more active, which I enjoyed. I do think the practices were less adventurous than before, likely due to the shorter practice lengths, but it was still challenging.

Overall, I did enjoy this challenge. I did get a few light injuries though, which I think were a combination of the yoga and my ballet and tai chi classes. Even so, I didn’t have a problem completing the challenges each day. I will admit, some of them I changed up as I got bored with some. One day in particular was the “strength” day where it was the same exercise over and over and over with only slight changes. I got so bored I started doing my own thing half way through! Most days were much more engaging and challenging, so that was pretty nice.

By the end of the month, I did feel a lot more flexible, active, and enjoyed that time to focus on me! I also, once again, had to admit that I just do not have enough patience for yoga, but I did still like it!

Hello Short Stories

My next challenge will be writing a short story every day in February! For a long time now, I’ve had a list of ideas for short stories that I have never bothered to actually write. Then, I realized a local library is hosting a short story contest this year, with submissions due in March. I am hoping to be able to write a short story that I feel is good enough to submit by the end of the month! Also, I’m hoping that the fact that it’s the shortest month will also help me complete what might be the hardest challenge of the year! Now, I had originally set myself a goal of writing one short story every month, but I think I’m going to completely replace that goal with this one instead!

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So wish me luck in my February challenge and feel free to leave ideas for March’s challenge!

Thanks for reading!

Pamela

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