It’s the start of a new month so that means it’s the end of one monthly challenge and the beginning of another. And this time, it’s the last monthly challenge of the year for me! But before I share that challenge, I’ll recap my November challenge.
I had the challenge to work on mindfulness again. It’s a challenge I’ve struggled with several times in the past, but I really want to keep on working on it. So I decided to work on taking notes on the books that I’ve been reading that are about mindfulness. I figured taking notes and having more action steps instead of just ideas would be helpful.
I did take notes on one book, but then when I started another book I found that there were printable things that I could download and use. That was very helpful! There are checklists and guidelines to use and I’ve started to work on them. I think that the more I work with them the better I’ll get at using those skills. And hopefully the better I get at those skills the more I will be working toward recovery.
I’m feeling really hopeful about this now and I think that this was the right way to look at working on mindfulness. I can’t guarantee that this will work this time as it’s been a struggle every other time. But I feel much better than I have in the past and I feel like there are ways that I can keep working on these skills beyond the month which is nice.
So for my last challenge of the year, I was thinking about something fun that I wanted to work on. There were a couple of ideas, but I ended up settling on one that I’ve been thinking about doing for a while. I’ve decided that I want to challenge myself to improve my handwriting.
I use my computer (or phone or tablet) a lot, but I do handwrite things from time to time. I handwrite thank you notes, birthday cards, and things in my Volt Planner. And my handwriting is pretty horrible. It’s always been bad. I blame being raised by a doctor and a nurse (so I have doctor handwriting). My writing wasn’t total chicken scratch, but it’s not that nice. So working on my handwriting would be a good challenge for me.
I’ve mixed the idea of working on my handwriting and learning some basic calligraphy skills. I’ve found some things about brush calligraphy which doesn’t require a calligraphy pen (which I’ve tried using before and never liked). And there are lots of free worksheets I’ve downloaded to start working on handwriting and calligraphy. I don’t know what the plan is as far as how much I want to do every day, but the goal is to do a little bit every day.
Even if I totally fail at calligraphy, I think working on handwriting and taking my time working on this will help make my normal handwriting nicer looking. I’ve always wanted to be someone who had pretty handwriting because it always seems like such a nice touch when I do send cards to people. And I would like it if I knew when I send cards that I don’t have to worry about people being able to read them.
This is a pretty good month to work on this skill because soon I’ll sending out holiday cards to my friends. I won’t have to do a ton of writing on them, but I do like to personalize them a bit and I want them to look as nice as possible. So hopefully by the time that I start working on them (which is going to be pretty soon) I’ll have some skills I can use to make them look better than it would have looked if I hadn’t worked on my handwriting.
This should be a fun monthly challenge to end the year on, but I’m already thinking about next year. I already ordered my planner for 2018 and I’ve been thinking about my big goals for the year and what challenges I want to take on. Hopefully I figure out some good ones and I can make next year’s challenges just as good or even better than this year’s!
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