This article was written January 15, 2024
Hello everyone,
I’ve now completed a week of drawing daily. As promised, it’s time to evaluate whether this challenge makes sense for me or not.
As you may have noticed, I haven’t posted a lot of content this past week (as of writing this, only the first day has been published). Does this mean the habit didn’t stick? Not quite, I have been drawing every day. I’m actually really happy with the progress I’ve made and what I’ve been able to accomplish. It’s nothing out of this world, but I’ve still managed results that are better than I would have expected.
Unfortunately, while drawing has been going well, I haven’t been able to keep up with the blog posts. There are a few factors behind this:
- I tend to review my posts at a later time (usually the next day), which means more work, and an extra task left incomplete for an extended period of time (a mental “loose end”). And I do catch a lot of mistakes in that review step (I’m also sure there are plenty left afterwards)
- Since I’m drawing on the tablet, but writing my posts on a computer, I need to export and transfer the files (a recording and my drawings), adding extra friction. Moreover, the software I’m using has a few kinks with its export feature.
- Things have been really exhausting and stressful for me lately, and I’ve been getting further and further behind, adding to my stress
So, based on this, what’s the verdict? I think I’m going to pause this challenge for a bit to get my life back on track. I’ve been struggling a bit with my language classes lately, and I also have to go through an alien resident application (which I find stressful). Therefore, I want to spend one or two weeks handling these. Afterwards, I plan to focus on catching up with the posts I haven’t completed yet. Since it’s my impressions that the content is much better if I can write it while the drawing experience is still fresh in my mind, I’d rather get up-to-date first and have a fresh start, instead of trying to catch up to this constantly moving goal post. Once I’m back on track, I plan to re-attempt this challenge, starting once again with a one week trial period.
So, would I say this experiment was a failure? Not exactly, I’d just say it was poorly timed. If this habit had already been formed, I don’t think I’d be struggling so much (after all, my daily reading doesn’t really feel like an issue here). For anyone that’s following me, I’m sorry about this set back, but unfortunately I had to re-prioritize things. I’d like to use this opportunity to remind everyone of the important of taking care of your mental health!
Thank you everyone who has been following me, and I hope to be back soon re-invigorated and re-energized, even better equipped to tackle this challenge. Have a nice one!