October Challenges

 

Wow.  I sort of can’t believe it’s October already; this year really is flying by.  That seems to happen more and more the older I get.  At any rate, here it is, a brand new month, and I’ve got a little bit of catching up and getting started to do. 

I have returned home from the whirlwind getaway with my BFF, Kim, and we had a great time in Branson.  We talked and laughed and relaxed, which I’m pretty sure is exactly what a girls’ weekend is all about.  Of course, upon returning to real life, I’ve got dishes and laundry to do, homework that I barely touched while I was away, and the business of blogging—not only writing my own, but visiting some of my favorites.  With travel and my granny and school, this past week or so has been pretty overwhelming, and things have fallen by the wayside, including some things I really enjoy.  Tomorrow I’m not only taking care of the “have to” chores, but I’m also getting back to some of the fun.

But for tonight, I’ve got one last task of publishing this post, and then I’m heading off to bed, so let’s get down to the details.

For the month of October, I’ll be participating in three separate challenges that will show up in these pages.  The first is a photo challenge that I’ve been doing for months.  For the past couple of months, those pictures have been rolled up into the Snapshot Sunday feature, and that will continue.

The second is the Ultimate Blog Challenge, which is designed to help grow your blog by encouraging consistent posting while exposing your writing to members of the challenge, thereby increasing readership.  This is a quarterly challenge, and I participated in July and enjoyed it.  I met some really nice folks and discovered some really interesting blogs, and did, in fact, increase my readership above what it was when I began, so I’d consider it a success all the way around.  The rules for this challenge are pretty simple:  post every day for the month of October (or at least 31 posts, even if you have to post extras on some days), and visit other participants’ sites.  Mostly pretty easy, but, as you may have read, I did fall off the daily posting wagon a few days ago, so it will take some preparation and determination, but I’m looking forward to participating again.

The final challenge is new to me, though it seems that it’s in its fourth year of existence now.  It is simply the 31 Days challenge, again with a goal to post every day for the month of October.  The difference is that this challenge is designed to be about one topic all month long.  31 Days is hosted at Nesting Place, and there are currently over 1000 bloggers joining in the fun.  I don’t know about you, but I’m sort of astounded at that level of participation, and just a little bit nervous about joining in something so big, but I’m going to give it a try.

If you browse the listing of 31 dayers, you’ll find topics ranging from music to fitness, Bible verses to DIY primers, parenting to travel.  I haven’t read through all one thousand topics, but it looks like there’s something there for everybody.  For myself, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I’m going to write about one of my lifetime passions: television.  If you’re even a semi-regular visitor to these pages, you’ve heard me say how much I enjoy a good TV program, and that’s been true all my life.  Even so, I think it really may be a challenge to write about it every single day for a month straight, but I also think it will be fun, so I’m going to give it a try.  I’m calling the series 31 Days of the Small Screen.

In order to help keep things organized, I’ll be creating a tab at the top of my page to take you directly to the 31 Days posts, if you’re interested in reading just about that topic.  I may still be doing other posts from time to time throughout the month that won’t fit in with the theme—Snapshot Sunday comes quickly to mind, but there might be others—so a page will keep things separated a bit.  In terms of what you might expect from this month, I’ll give you an excerpt from my first Tube Day Tuesday—a new weekly feature focused on my television habit, and sort of the drawing board for this month:

“. . . even on a theme day, there won’t be a lot of rules.  Oh, the starting point will be TV, but it might be a current episode recap/review, news about a DVD release, discourse on character motivation, or idle commentary on whether I care for the soundtrack to a particular series.  You just never know.”

As you can see, I don’t expect a whole lot of structure, but I think it will be fun to see how it works out.  In terms of the most recent television, I’ve been a little bit out of the TV loop while I’ve been traveling.  We didn’t spend much time with the TV on, though it was long enough to be exposed to a new-to-me program: Restaurant Stakeout.  As I mentioned before, reality TV is just a deal breaker for me, so I can’t say that I was overly impressed.  It was probably the longest span of time I’ve ever spent watching the Food Network, though, as we not only saw that program, but also an episode of The Great Food Truck Race, and Iron Chef America.  My guess is it is also the longest span of time I ever will spend watching The Food Network.  Kim and I see eye-to-eye on many, many things, but we long ago realized that television isn’t really one of them. 

So that’s it; that’s what’s going on here at Idle Chatter for the month.  A little bit of old, a little bit of new, and hopefully enough of a mix to keep things interesting.  Wish me luck on this month of challenges.