Today’s #weverb12 prompt asks:
How were you challenged by a project or goal this year? What did you learn from it?
Reading Challenge
100 books in 2012 turned out to be not much of a challenge, in that there wasn’t really any danger of me not meeting the goal: I think I’m now at 106ish, and December still has 3 weeks left to go: 1 week of which is vacation…
In 2013, I think I’m going to up the challenge, not so much with quantity of books, but with trying to meet different goals, like…reading books that I already own, but haven’t gotten around to because other, new shiny stuff catches my eye.
I think I’m going to also participate in some of the online challenges I see around, such as the 2013 Debut Author Challenge — my goal for that is to read at least 12 debut authors.
Other Stuff That’s Challenging
2012 has been an odd year. I’m in my second year working at the high school, but I still feel like a beginner much of the time, in part because we have a new principal. Don’t get me wrong, I like him quite a bit, I think he was a great choice for our school, but he’s a brand-new principal, and sometimes I feel like we have the blind leading the blind. Also, we’ve had a lot of weird stuff going on that has nothing to do with the personnel, it’s just been…weird.
Taking on the additional responsibility of being the cheerleading coach has also added to the feeling of being a beginner. The cheerleaders are a challenging bunch for a number of reasons, and I think (hope?) that we are making progress in making things better and more positive for them and for the school. I always remember cheerleader as being a cool, popular thing to do, but maybe that’s just at some schools? Here, they are treated with such disrespect, it’s discouraging. The other students actively ignore the cheerleaders some times, while they are cheering, and a lot of the response or commentary is “well, that’s just the way it’s always been.”
Talk about a phrase guaranteed to make me insane. Just because it’s always been that way doesn’t mean it it’s right, or that we shouldn’t try to change it.
One More Challenge
Have I mentioned this before? I survived a 6 day rafting trip in the Grand Canyon.
I will definitely sign up to challenge myself to read books I already own! Maybe a 2-to-1 ratio? The house is overflowing with reading material, but then there’s the Sunday book reviews, Bookmarks magazine, recommendations from friends… not enough time!