Blogtober Challenge

Blogtober 7th

| Suzi Tench

28

Its the 7th of October which means it is the seventh day of Blogtober!  Today I am answering my questions based on 6th October.

  • What made me feel enthusiastic today?

There are 2 things that made me feel enthusiastic today

  1. Getting all the little things done in the house, like washing up and putting things away.  it’s true what they say about a clean space being better for your mood.
  2. Converting some of my Inktober sketches to digital format.  It has been really good to see my sketches take on another life in a digital format.  I have gained a lot of inspiration to continue sketching before committing my ideas to digital format.

  • What drained me of energy?

The ongoing pain in my shoulder has really drained me of energy.  I have been having to really think about what I am doing and what I can do in order to minimise any strain or pain in my shoulder and its starting to get really exhausting having to think so much about what I am wanting to do before doing it.

  • What did I learn about myself today?

I’d never really given it much thought before, but having a tidy home and workspace can do wonders for my mind.  I feel like my headspace has increased and feel so much more productive and inspired just by cleaning the kitchen and doing the washing up!

Blogtober 6th

| Suzi Tench

24

Its the 6th of October which means it is the fifth day of Blogtober!  Today I am answering my questions based on 5th October.

  • What made me feel enthusiastic today?

This is going to sound a bit weird after yesterday’s Blogtober post where I said that not having a structure and having nothing to do drained me of energy but that was in a work situation.  Today I woke to feel enthusiastic that the day was all mine and that I had no plans other than to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted to do them!

  • What drained me of energy?

The weather has been dark and gloomy all day with a drizzle that has turned to rain on and off all day and I have found that the dullness of the day has drained me of energy.

  • What did I learn about myself today?

I’m usually busy doing something, whether it is reading, blogging or doing art stuff or any manner of other things and I find that I don’t tend to just sit and not do anything much.  Today I learned that giving myself a break, and just allowing myself to sit and do nothing is just as beneficial as racking through my to-do list and getting everything done.

Blogtober 5th

| Suzi Tench

20

Its the 5th of October which means it is the fifth day of Blogtober!  Today I am answering my questions based on 4th October.

  • What made me feel enthusiastic today?

Realising it was Friday and that it was dress down day in work made me feel enthusiastic!  Friday in work means we can wear jeans and T-shirts, hoodies and trainers or whatever we want.  I love Friday as I can chuck on whatever I want and not have to think too much about what I should be wearing!  (In case you are interested, I wore a pair of acid wash skinny jeans, a long-sleeved shirt and a tea-coloured knitted hoodie which had bright yellow edging, DC trainers and my camo army jacket.)

  • What drained me of energy?

There were two things that drained me of energy today,

  1. Not getting up when my alarm went off and deciding to have “another 10 minutes” in bed.
  2. Lack of structure in work.  As it is the end of payment we have got little bits of work to do but nothing major.  I like to know what I am doing day to day, and when we are processing payment I know exactly what I need to do but days like today don’t really have the structure that I like as there are lots of little things to do rather than anything time-consuming.

  • What did I learn about myself today?

I learned that routine and structure help me loads in my day to day activities.  I like to have a plan and know what I need to do otherwise I get a bit lost along the way.

Blogtober 4th

| Suzi Tench

16

Its the 4th of October which means it is the fourth day of Blogtober!  Today I am answering my questions based on 3rd October.

  • What made me feel enthusiastic today?

The thought of being able to come home at the end of the day has made me feel enthusiastic today!  I got to spend some time with my friend after work and have a lovely catch up.

  • What drained me of energy?

The thing that drained me of energy today was spending too much time playing games on my phone.  I felt a little glued to it which was fun at the time but has made me feel pretty low on energy.

  • What did I learn about myself today?

Sometimes, what can be fun at the time can also be detrimental to me in the long run.  I need to learn a bit of self-control when it comes to some things.

Blogtober 3rd

| Suzi Tench

11

Yesterday I started my questions for Blogtober, today’s answers will be based on my day yesterday (the 2nd October).

  • What made me feel enthusiastic today?

Starting Inktober has got me feeling enthusiastic.  I am working with the Inktober prompts but instead of using ink I am making several small scale sketches each day with the idea of them being logos.  Yesterday’s prompt was really easy but today was a bit harder and I loved getting back into thinking visually and playing around with ideas.

  • What drained me of energy?

Not having much to do in work today really drained my energy levels.  We have come to the end of the payment cycle where everything has been processed for payment and there isn’t much for us to do for a few days aside from filing and odd bits and pieces which don’t take very long.  I always feel that I should be seen to be doing something though which is hard work.

  • What did I learn about myself today?

I learned that I can have several different takes on an idea, especially when it comes to drawing and it is fun to sit and sketch out ideas as they form in my head.  Sometimes the first idea is a bit pants but if you give yourself thinking time, permission to make mistakes and space to play around with concepts, usually something good can come from it.

Blogtober 2nd

| Suzi Tench

6

Today I start my questions for Blogtober that I spoke about yesterday.  I will be answering these questions based on the day before, so today’s answers will be based on my day yesterday (1st October).

  • What made me feel enthusiastic today?

There were two things that made me feel enthusiastic today…

  1. I got a call from the Communications Manager asking if I would be able to take some photos at a corporate event that would be happening in November.
  2. The start of October also being the start of Inktober.  I am going to try and get some sketches done each day for the Inktober Challenge but try to put a logo spin on them.

  • What drained me of energy?

I’ve felt generally tired all day with a headache.  The headache is caused by the weather as it is not what I class as a proper headache, its sort of a dull ache that painkillers don’t seem to be able to shift.  The tiredness, I think, is a combination of not sleeping properly on Sunday night and not going to sleep early enough last night.

  • What did I learn about myself today?

I learned that if I put my mind to something I can get a lot of things done in a small amount of time.  I managed to process 368 forms for payment within 2.5 hours today and have also managed to clear my desk of paperwork and all outstanding items ready for the pay run to go ahead.

 

Blogtober Participants?

| Suzi Tench

are you taking part_

Are you taking part in Blogtober?  Would you like to have more people read your Blogtober posts?

If you can answer yes to the above questions please leave a link to your blog in the comments, at the end of each week I will be sharing a blog post listing blogs that are taking part!

Blogtober 1st

| Suzi Tench

1

It’s the first day of Blogtober today and I can hear you all asking “What is Blogtober?” so today I will be sharing the answer with you, why I am taking part and what I am going to be doing for Blogtober.

Blogtober is a blog challenge that a lot of bloggers will be taking part in.  It is essentially a challenge to write a blog post a day for the whole of October, some bloggers theme their posts while others just up their posting schedule to get a post in each day.

I wanted to take part last year but was still figuring out my schedule and the sort of posts I wanted to write for this blog and didn’t want to jump into anything too suddenly without giving it much thought.

The first blog challenge I took part in was the Blogging From A-Z April Challenge which I had prepared for, thought about and really enjoyed.  Since that challenge, I have tried to post every day and have pretty much succeeded (I think I have missed 3 posts since April).

Despite blogging pretty much daily I have decided to take up the Blogtober Challenge alongside my usual posts as I want to push myself a little bit and see if I can complete this.  I have also decided to incorporate a theme for this blog challenge and hopefully get a little bit more understanding of myself out of it along the way.

I had originally planned on a theme of “Things About Me” but couldn’t really think of 31 things to write about that could cover a blog post a day and in all honesty, I was a bit stuck for ideas.  I happened to be listening to The Minimalists Podcast (episode 197 – Successful People) where Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus were chatting to Alex Banayan and they were all chatting about finding the thing that you are passionate about and how to go about it.  Alex bought up that passion was a pretty intimidating word and it should be re-framed as enthusiasm.  The whole conversation was really interesting and I really would recommend that you have a listen to the podcast to understand the full concept.  Alex spoke about how excitement can be mistaken for enthusiasm and then spoke about how to find what you are most enthusiastic about then introduced the 30-day Challenge.

The 30 Day Challenge is what I am going to be undertaking here on the blog for the next 30 days and is pretty simple in its concept.  There are 3 questions

  1. What made me feel enthusiastic today?
  2. What drained me of energy?
  3. What did I learn about myself today?

And these 3 questions need to be answered each day, which seems pretty simple in theory, but as Alex said in the podcast, by the 6th, 7th and 8th day you will start to struggle to answer them, then, by the end of the 30 days there should be a pattern emerging from which you can see what you are most enthusiastic about and where your passion lies.

Why have I chosen this for Blogtober?  I chose this because I am interested in the outcomes and what I can learn about myself, what I should be moving toward and focusing on and what I should be spending less time on.  I also chose this as my Blogtober theme as, should I undertake this on my own I don’t think I would last a few days let alone a full month so I need to be accountable somewhere, Blogtober seemed like the perfect time to set myself this challenge.

Are you taking part in Blogtober?  If so, let me know in the comments, I’d love to support you through this crazy month of blog posts!!!