Post #87: Here endeth the Great Writing Challenge 2012.

With the new adventure we’ve just embarked on, I feel it’s time to retire the Great Writing Challenge 2012. The Challenge has run its course, and has achieved its purpose: to get me writing.

In late December last year, we encountered constant driving rain during our time in Bilbao, Spain. I had cashed in my year’s allotment of holidays (10 working days) to visit Spain and German, but spent most of it jetlagged and sopping wet. Cue meltdown. The American, in his infinite wisdom, told me to suck it up and do something about what was really making me unhappy. Being tired and saturated were only catalysts, and the major issue was that I was not pursuing my dreams.

The Writing Challenge helped get me out of the rut I was in, and just get writing. The aim of it was to be positive and write about something, irrespective if the finished product was bollocks. It was about doing something each day to achieve my dreams.

Looking back on my first few posts, I was rigid and rusty. But giving myself the formal structure and setting deadlines has made me more disciplined, and has kept me more accountable. What I put out is not always my best work, and it pains me. I want every single post to be exponentially better than the previous one, but realistically, it’s not always going to be the case. Dealing with this is difficult than I imagined, but life’s just like that. You have to keep producing, keep moving forward.

The American also embarked on a challenge of his own, finishing a whole season of comics charting the ups and downs of the San Francisco Giants baseball team. And what a year to pick! We are still on a high from witnessing the Giants sweep the Detroit Tigers in the World Series. I am so proud of what he has achieved with this, and know how tough it was to create for 162 regular season, one All-Star Game and 16 post-season games. Collectively, we can both say we’ve achieved more this year than we had last year.

Thank you all so much for your honest feedback on my writing, and thank you for helping me be a better version of myself than I was a year ago. I am really looking forward to trying something new with The Rebecca Project and hope you’ll still continue to read it. It’s onwards and upwards from here!