A while ago I watched a TED video on Thirty Day Challenges (http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_cutts_try_something_new_for_30_days.html), and I have been doing them since. I, originally, cut off of sugar and meat as a thirty day challenge, though it has persisted far longer than a month. Last month I took two on at once: Never lie (If one slips out, correct it immediately) and never use sarcasm. It was a tough month for me, you may be surprised how much you tend to lie in a day )especially if you happen to be a high school student that has to explain why you don't have your homework done).
This month however I have started a new challenge for myself: Make everyday a story for tomorrow.
What that means is that by tomorrow of everyday to come I have to have a story (a worthwhile one, mind you) about the previous day. By the end of the month I should have a collection of thirty stories/adventures each different from the last. Today was a good day. I went for a hike alone in the woods, stumbled across a baby bobcat to whom I bowed upon meeting and wished him a good, healthy life, discovered a collection of four portraits hung on trees in the middle of no where (art displayed for nature and only those lucky enough to stumble across them), and I ran two miles down hill, which at one point happened to be through a group of (at the time of my passing) annoyed wild turkeys. (I apologize for that huge run-on sentence)
I was wondering if any of you do something similar to challenge yourselves?
I like to bet. For those of you who have read the story about how I was a professional gambler, this is obvious. What I don't like to do is exercise. At one point in my life, these two activities joined to provide an interesting story.
I have a friend named Hayden. He likes to bet me. For a while we had a running string of bets, and I was down overall because I failed to get 10x his score in a Tony Hawk competition. At one point I was one of the top 10 Tony Hawk players in the world. That lasted for about 5 minutes until someone from Japan beat my score.
Hayden and I sat across from my kitchen table.
Genre: science fiction
My name is Shaun McDaniels. I used to be a proud lieutenant in the US military, back when we had one. Now I am just one more prisoner in a concentration camp looking into the night, waiting for my last sunrise.
I am about to be executed for my participation in the greatest social crime ever committed in the US. Greater than slavery, greater than the mostly accidental genocide of the Native Americans, an atrocity perpetrated with malice and considerable forethought.
Sitting in my cell for the past year, I might even consider the entire event to have been psychologically created with this as the end result. As a prisoner I have a lot of time on my hands, conspiracy theories abound.