Thousand words a day - Day 5 - Changes

It’s day five of my thousand words a day challenge, and day five of this blog. If you love to write as much as I do maybe you should try this challenge. It is a great way to get into the habit of writing every day, and to get passed that awkward stage where you stare at the empty page and realize you have no words to put on there. For this challenge you just have to write and it doesn’t matter what comes out of it. Because of the freedom the words seem to come more easily. The rules of the challenge is up to you. It doesn’t have to be a thousand words if that’s too much for you. Any number will do just as long as you get into the habit of writing every day. But it's not just about the habit of writing, the challenge have other effects as well.

Accepting a challenge, making a commitment to do something new or to do something differently and to do that every day, to change something in your life, it can inspire other challenges and changes. It doesn’t really matter what it is you do differently it’s the fact that you do that matters. Changes aren’t always that easy to do or to hold on to, so why not make the change something you love. I love to write so the probability I will keep doing it is greater that if I tried to change something else, like walking a certain distance everyday. I have an extremely bad back that hurt so much I faint if I am on my feet for too long, any kind of walking is a very painful struggle. A commitment to a long, daily walk would end before it started. The thought of a walk, the realization it will be painful, the fear I might faint gives me a panic attack that will keep me safely indoors. The one thing that can make me walk at all is when I’m out hunting things to photograph.I love taking pictures of nature. Writing on the other hand, I can do comfortably seated on my bed.

Writing about making changes and committing to them made me think of “28 days”, a movie where Sandra Bullock goes to rehab. One thing in that movie that had to do with making changes is how they make their way back to life, and how they are instructed to gradually commit to other living things. As a fist step they are told to get a plant and try to keep that alive. When that works they can get a pet and try to keep that alive. Not until they can master this are they ready to commit to other people and relationships.

The gradually increased level of commitment. I know that most of us are committed to a lot of things already and are fully capable of making it all work. But at the same time there’s a lot of us who would like at least somethings to change. In my case there’s a lot I would like to change. My inability to take a walk whenever I want to is one of them. I used to love long walks with my dog, but I can’t. I am working on it though, I have medical help so I will get it back. One reason it is so difficult for me to just get out there and practice my walking until it works again is my fear of failing. That image in my mind I described before, how painful it is, how I might faint, how I get panic attacks is preventing me from even trying. 

If I believe I will fail, most likely I will. By taking on a different challenge, an easier challenge I can prove to myself I don’t always fail. I can do things, I can write one thousand words for five days without giving up (counting the days before I started this blog it’s actually 20, but that’s a different story). If I can change one thing and keeping that change I can find it in me to make other changes. I can walk again!!! Eventually. Start easy and when that works, move on to more difficult challenges.

Challenges leads to changes, as i have mentioned in my previous post. In my case this writing challenge has made me take up blogging again. An earlier attempt at this challenge lead to a completely different change in my life which took me away from writing but made me change on a more personal level.

Changes are made in steps. You start somewhere and that first step lead to another. I began writing a thousand words a day with no other thought than to write and to begin with it was a lot of random words and sentences. I grew into pages of more coercive thoughts that began to make a little bit of sense. I started discussing with myself on paper what I wanted to do with my writing, which lead to this blog and the new challenge of making the words work as content in a blog.

i used to spend my hour writing and feel relieved when i was done. Now I find myself thinking about it while I do other things. I have started writing down notes to remember ideas I get or things I must remember to put in. I have begun to think about my writing and to plan. I have not yet figured it all out when it comes to managing the newly added blog challenge but I am working on it. And I have come to realize that my previous decision not to edit my thousand words might be a possibility when it is a private writing exercise, but when it’s a blog it probably should be edited at least a little bit. Even if I still am of the conviction that what I have to say is of very little interest for other people I still want to do a good job and to get better at it. I want to keep the feeling of the writing challenge still, but also try to be more reader friendly.

My decision it to try to get my writing in the morning, let the words rest for a couple of hours or until the evening. Then edit the words for my blog and eventually publish. My only fear is that I will get too picky with everything, which would lead to me not publishing at all. That is what happened with my previous blog. It was never good enough to publish. In my opinion.

On that note, I have reached and passed the goal of one thousand. So I will end this post here and continue tomorrow.

If you made it this far….

Many thanks and I wish you a wonderful day!!!