Force of Habit

This month, as I did last year, I've taken on the Inktober challenge, which consists of making a drawing every day of the month following a prompt each.

I've also been writing one post per month on this blog (a fact that, if you're reading this, you can probably already tell) for the whole year.

What do these two things have in common? And most importantly, why do I do them?

I've already written on habits and will on Power of Will, but I want to talk more about it. The main reason I'm doing these two “challenges” (one popular, one self-designed) is to make my will stronger. You see, I've always enjoyed both drawing and writing. But I've been telling myself the same lies for too long: “I'll draw when I have free time”, “before beginning to write, I wanna have a clear idea”, etc. But actually, among the many factors why I don't practise these skills more often, the main one is lacking will. Who hasn't heard someone say “well, if you have an idea for a book, just go and write it”. If it were that easy, everybody would be a published author; everyone would be an artist. The hard thing (for me) in doing art is not finding inspiration, but finding the inside energy to pull it off till the end.

That's why these “one-at-a-time” challenges come in so handy for me. I take 20 minutes a day, or a couple hours a month, to make something simple, beginning to end; no getting stuck, no writer's block. Of course, this is not only a medium, it is also a goal per se: for some time I've been trying to find healthy and comfortable ways to express my thoughts and feelings. I find that sitting and writing them down, and then reading them again to myself, really helps me cope with them.

So, if you, like me, are looking for ways to actually do the things you want to do, I would really like to encourage you to try and take on a challenge like this, or even make your own (like I did). You get to have fun doing what you really like, you produce content (which is most of the time a confidence booster), and most importantly, it works.