November has Arrived. With November so does NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo is the US National Novel Writing Month. This is the month where people spend every day writing 1,667 words per day, so that by the end of the month they have a draft of a novel. I have tried the challenge several times and completed it just once.
The challenge is to write, and ignore the inner censor. It’s the idea of thinking “This is crap” and “this is rubbish” and continuing to write anyway.
More often than not I speak about the desire to do something, rather than the desire not to. Before showeing this morning I was looking at hiking ideas, to find some that would appeal to me and I did. Some friends/people I know want to do the Daubenhorn Via Ferrata on Saturday but I feel little to no desire to do it.
Three Experiences So Far I have done this Via Ferrata three or four times and almost every time I have said “never again”.
Earlier this year I set myself the challenge of reading 30 books this year and I have read 24 books out of 30 so far. In the grand scheme of things reading challenges don’t mean more. They mean you managed to start or at least finish a certain number of books within a given period of time.
I like the reading challenge because it encourages me to read more than I might otherwise but I am slightly frustrated that it doesn’t show the number of pages we have read in total, across various media.
In 2015, I was exploring on a mountain bike when I found a road above La Rippe that was closed to traffic, so I decided to explore it. I managed to cycle a certain distance before I met a rockfall blocking the road, so I had to turn back. I then tried again in 2018 and I got quite close to the top but decided to give up and turn around.
The 298 Km walking and Running Challenge is now ten days old and I’ve managed to run or walk the required distance every day. Yesterday rather than walk I decided to run despite the rain. As a result, a pair of my hiking trousers are now nicely covered in mud. I walked through two puddles near home hoping that most of the mud would wash off the shoes and it seems to have worked.
I’m on the Apple Activities March Walking Challenge this month. The app has decided that I must walk or run 298 kilometres. It’s an average of 9.6 kilometres a day. This is both easy and challenging at the same time. Walking 10 kilometres takes about two hours.
When I had a broken arm I walked more than two hours a day, because I had nothing else I could do. I also walked that much because I couldn’t bike, take the car or drive the scooter.
As an introvert, I have a tendency to listen and daydream rather than talk. It is for this reason that the Nanowrimo challenge is an interesting one. It encourages me to be verbose, to use more words than I would usually use. It also forces me to find 1667 words of inspiration on a daily basis. This is a challenge. When you’re inspired it can take about an hour and a half to two hours depending on typing speed or it can be split into chunks.