It’s January. I don’t know how I feel
about it. I’m listening to Debussy. We’ve just come off of 2022, and
for me, I just graduated from Front Range with a degree in graphic
design. It has been the most fun experience I’ve had in school, ever.
It’s probably because graphic design, for me, has been a creative
endeavor. And if there is anything I like to be, it’s creative.
Perhaps I should define that differently: I like to have created.
I’m no stranger to a creative
challenge. I suppose my first creative challenge was NaNoWriMo, or
National Novel Writing Month which I first did in November of 2017.
For anyone not in the know, the basis of the challenge is to write a
50,000 word novel in 30 days which breaks down to 1,667 words a day.
It is no easy task. NaNoWriMo offers three such challenges a year.
Classic NaNo is in November, but they also have Camp NaNoWriMo in
both April and July. I have participated in these since November of
2017 with the exception of 2021.
I got hook on these challenges, doing
the now defunct SoFoBoMo, or Single Photographer Book Month in August
2018. I later did this challenge on my own every August since. I have
done poetry challenges too.
Last October, my friend Kimberly and I
did Inktober, which is one ink drawing a day in October. It’s an
organized event like NaNoWriMo. I found this challenge very
worthwhile for no other reason than how difficult I found it to be.
And I immediately followed it up with a novel in November.
I had to wonder, if these are month
long challenges, would I be able to do one a month for a whole year?
I asked Kimberly, because I knew it if was an art challenge, she
would do it with me. We talked about all the challenges we could do
in a year. And I was very excited at the prospect. After all, I
really like having created.
This was an easy thing for me to
outline. After all, I plan to do all 3 NaNoWriMo events this year. I
also want to do at least 2 photography projects, May and August.
That’s already 5 months. I decided to do Inkober as well. The
question is what about the other six months? I could do another
poetry project come September.
That left: January, February, March,
June and December.
Kimberly found a winter drawing
challenge for January, complete with prompts, which we’re doing. We
decided on a watercolor challenge from Kick in the Creatives for
February. For March, knowing my buddy has a little story book she
wants to finish, and I have a mini comic series, we decided to do
that. For June, I want to do another painting challenge, more on that
later.
December is a strange one. I haven’t
decided what to do, but I think I may do a submit a story a day,
everyday, for 31 submissions. We’ll see.
In the meantime, how creative can I be
in a 365 day, 12 month period? We’ll see.