2016: The Year of Challenges

Each year is different.
I shouldn't feel the need to "top" myself, but only to improve.
I wrote almost 2000 pages of material this year, not including blog posts and journal entries for the projects I'm working on.
Yet, I want to create new challenges for myself for the purpose of personal growth.
So looking at the productivity I've had over the past few years, I decided I needed to challenge myself with a whole year of Challenges.

I do these Challenges with my playwrights group every year. We do a new play Challenge in February and a new pilot challenge in October. I decided to do a pilot rewrite challenge in November because I needed the motivation. So I thought…what if I have a new challenge every month. I sent the idea to a bunch of friends because I needed to be held accountable and I thought I'd offer that as a structure for working in the new year. The idea is to have the intention to challenge oneself every month with something new. I'm going to try to do something every month, but my friends can just use it how they need to use if, if they need to use it.

January: Rewrite something you started last year.
February: Rewrite the play I started at the end of last year.
March: Run once a day.
April: Write a new screenplay.
May: Write a new pilot.
June: Meditation.
July: Rewrite the play again.
August: Rewrite the screenplay. Also rewrite the pilot.
September: Be grateful for one thing every day.
October: Pilot Challenge.
November: Pilot Rewrite Challenge.
December: Something physical.

I'll probably adjust things here and there based on how my year turns out. The things I'll stick to are all of the non-physical challenges and the January and February challenges. Everything else is up for grabs, depending on the needs of my life. I know I have a play reading in April, so maybe March will be run and work on the rewrite. If I get some new reps, maybe I'll be writing another pilot earlier in the year. Maybe I'll get tired. Who knows? But it's a way, not to up the pages I wrote last year, but to give me more structure and variety. It's kind of what I've already been doing. But this is one challenge a month and one thing to focus on versus trying to generally get a certain amount of work done. It's a good thing.

I am grateful for challenges.
I am grateful for physical activity.
I am grateful for friendships.
I am grateful for quiet and stillness.
I am grateful for the lessons I've learned in life.
I am grateful for the generosity of friends.