HiveBloPoMo April 2022 — Looks Like I Actually MADE It!

It is "the last of April" today, and that also means the final day of the HiveBloPoMo 30-day Blogging Challenge.

Maybe even a little to my own surprise, it looks like I actually managed to complete the challenge... for the first time in quite a few attempts!

Today's formal "Challenge prompt" is "Share your HiveBloPoMo experience to end the month," so I thought I would do that.

Just for the uninitiated, "HiveBloPoMo" is an acronym for "Hive Blog Posting Month," and borrows loosely from the original "NaNoWriMo" Challenge for writers, which takes place every November. The idea is to use a 30-day challenge to build discipline, by working on your project — a novel, a vlog, a podcast, a blog, art — for 30 consecutive days.

I have tried NaNoWriMo (which started in 1999) as well as its non-fiction variant a number of times and never completed the challenge. I've also tried HiveBloPoMo several times — including its predecessor on the "old" chain — and never finished.

Not entirely sure what made the difference this time.

Regulars to these pages might find it puzzling that I seem to be a "prolific blogger," and yet have struggled with this... but the truth is that I might be prolific but my creative flow is not very structured. My normal MO is that I might write three posts one day and then skip a couple of days... depending on my mood.

I Almost Lost It!

A couple of times, at least... because HiveBloPoMo uses UTC time as its cutoff and metric. And midnight UTC is 5:00pm where I live, and I am almost never anywhere near the keyboard in mid-afternoon. In fact, right now I am foregoing much needed yardwork to finish this post, and then I will go mow the lawn...

So what did I learn from this process — if anything?

Well, whereas I definitely feel accomplished for having actually finished this gig... it really served as a reminder of how lousy I actually am with discipline and schedules. That, in turn, serves as solid confirmation of why I am self-employed and working from home.

Schedules and I don't get along very well!

Ironically, I really like regularity and routines. I like knowing what I need to get done every day, and I like my days to be predictable, as to content... but I need my freedom to do all my work between 7am and 3pm... OR 10:00pm and 5:00am. I know... that sounds a bit weird and flaky.

Part of it has to do with my very cyclical and unreliable attention span — aka "ADHD" — which typically means I have the concentration ability of a flea.

But Enough About That!

I finished it, and that's pretty cool!

Will I "stay in the habit?" Unlikely... in fact, I have been longing for this thing to be over, so it wouldn't hang over my head like the figurative Sword of Damocles.

Regardless, a quick shoutout and thanks to @traciyork for putting on another edition of HiveBloPoMo!

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend! We shall return to our regularly scheduled programming shortly!

How about YOU? Did you do the HiveBloPoMo challenge? Did you complete it? If not, have you every tried? Would you want to? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

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Created at 20220430 13:29 PDT
0566/1812