100 Day Challenge

Listening to the radio today I heard about this 100 day challenge ...do something mindfully and purposefully...for 100 days. And reflect on how it changes you. Considering my post yesterday about wanting to 'sit and write something soul dimensional'...and how I also signed myself up to do a 2014 km in 2014 and how I...well, I seem to have a lot of things I want to accomplish. But I am either lacking enough determination and focus or I don't have enough drive...or horrors...I don't think my goals and dreams are important enough to give them my time and energy.

I seem to have no problems with registering my children up for activities when they express their interest and desire to try something and usually I end up being their coach. I have signed Alex up for soccer and was the coach (I dragged my oldest son into that with me), we have assorted dance classes going right now...tap and jazz, ballet and mini comp team for Alex as well as kinderdance for Kath. (I have no coaching involvement with this, I know nothing about dance!) Hippotherapy for Kath--an hour drive there, a half hour session, an hour drive home that I gladly make for her benefit. I have co-coached Odyssey of the Mind for the past two years. I was a Daisy leader. I am signing myself up to be a 4H leader with a friend. This year I was asked to be: the advisor for the high school Key Club (didn't even know what Key Club did!); to co-advise A World of Difference (an anti-bullying group that includes training and presenting in various classes); to be an advisor for a new group called Unified Sports that is about having students with disabilities play on a high school team with 'regular' eduction students.

And this week I saw a post from a friend on Facebook who said that her mom used to tell her something along the lines of, "It's okay to say 'yes' until you realize that being a creative person takes time and energy and if you give it all away, you can't expect to still be able to create."

Wham...I, of course, have heard this before...about spreading oneself too thin, about being something to everyone but nothing to yourself, about needing to put the oxygen mask over your own face first (I even wrote a blog about that myself), but somehow it never quite hit me this way before.

So Alex has decided that for her 100 days she is going to make sure she exercises and writes every single day. Kath has decided she wants to play outside, read and exercise and well, she wants to roate through all of her things. Roger even mentioned that maybe he will throw one thing away every day (hey, it's a start! :D). I thought..."Oh, I want to write. Oh, I want to walk my 6000-10,000 steps a day. Oh, I want to read."

But most importantly...for the next 100 days I want to make sure that I start to do the things that are for me. I do think they will also benefit others, but I have to first do them for me. For at least this 100 days.

Are you in?