Four Down

From the last Momentum Update:

So my April goal: Clean the house from top to bottom so anyone who comes and sees it by the end of the month, and probably a two-week window following the party, would be fooled into thinking it always looks like nice before it all goes wrong again. 

 I have a day of April left, but as far as that goal goes, it's fair to say I crushed it. The whole reason I made housecleaning a goal was to get ready for a big family party, and now that the party is over and went well and the house was all sparkly and clean, it's time to move on. After soliciting some ideas and coming up with a few of my own, I've decided I probably have enough topics to try pulling off a Summer Vacation post every day for a month. May 1st is Wednesday, so that will be the first one, with thirty others following every day.

A few warnings for any of the three people who read this:
1 -- Some posts are probably going to be much shorter than usual. Maybe that isn't a bad thing.
2 -- There are going to be more typos this month, because I'm thinking one post a day is going to mean less time for the proofreading and revision I usually allow myself.
3 -- There are probably going to be some unusually introspective (even for me) posts. My birthday is in May you see, and even though I usually don't pay a lot of attention to it, it feels more significant to me this year, because of the number and some other reasons I'll probably elaborate on later.
4 -- There's another big birthday that happens in May. There will be less than happy thoughts that surround it. There always are.

Outside of those points my only real goals are to keep up with the daily pace and do what I can to make each post different from the others, and interesting to read. And as the odyssey begins, if you're reading this and something in a post or life in general gives you a writing idea to share, I hope you'll post it. And I know most people shy away from this kind of thing, but if anyone is ever interested in trying a day of guest-blogging, get in touch with me and we'll work something out. The way I see it for this month, no suggestions are off-limits. In fact, I'm hoping someone comes along at some point and gives me that challenging thing to think and write about that I'd never think to do myself.

I have high hopes for this turning out kind of interesting. Let's see what happens.

Thirty-One

This winter I saw a TV show where one of the characters performed a personal challenge of working out at the local gym for thirty days in a row, even after one of the instructors at his gym was hospitalized after coming in contact with flesh-eating bacteria. Over the past month a friend of mine made it a goal to go for a bike ride every day for thirty days, even though we had some surprising mid-spring snowfall totals that meant she couldn't ride much further than the end of the shoveled path on her driveway. In just the past week I read that another friend of mine who also keeps a blog was making it a goal to write every day to process his daily thoughts.

All of this came together in my head right at the end of April as I was starting to wonder if I would even bother keeping the Momentum project going with another personal goal for May. So at the risk of being called out as a copy cat, I'm going to make it a point to come up with some kind of Summer Vacation post for every day throughout the month of May. As it happens I've pulled back from writing in the past few weeks, for a number of reasons. But recently I had a writing project that I absolutely had to finish and even with a deadline, and once I got started it really took off and became something more than I'd originally intended -- not to mention I had a lot of fun with it. Since I'm planning and getting back into a serious writing routine over the summer, keeping up with daily posts seems like a good workout in preparation for that.

So here's my problem: May is thirty-one days long. I'm confident I don't have enough thoughts worth processing online to sustain thirty-one consecutive daily posts, and even if I did there are precious few people who would care enough to bother reading them. So I'm not planning on getting too introspective with this goal, although I'm sure it will happen to a degree anyway; after all, May does include both my birthday -- which is sort of a big one this year -- and my least favorite week of the year. Pretty sure I'll have some thoughts about both of those things.

Instead I want my May posts to be more divergent, and even somewhat challenging. Stuff that will keep my thinking, force the writer brain to turn on and keep me on my toes. So in that spirit, I'm tossing this idea out to the Internet -- does anyone have suggestions on what I should write about? I know I've asked this on Facebook before in the midst of creative dry spells, but this time around I'm trying to put together a significant list instead of just a topic or two. I'm not saying I'd write about everything that might be suggested; some ideas might be dismissed for any number of legitimate reasons but some might inspire other directions I wouldn't have considered on my own. So any ideas people might toss my way would be welcomed, seriously considered, and appreciated. Lists that might be interesting, daily patterns to explore, stories to tell, questions to answer I would never think to ask myself. I'm even open to the idea of someone guest-blogging if anyone were interested. Whatever will help fill the calendar.

So help me out here, people. What have you got? Post a comment, e-mail me, text me, send a Facebook message -- whatever way you have of reaching me with any ideas you have. Go for it. Push me as hard as you'd like if you're curious to see what I'd come up with from it.