I'm going to be 23 soon! I'm mildly excited for it (wow I remember the days when birthdays were a thing of wonder and joy and not this periodic reminder of the passage of time...birthdays are just a large clock to me these days, how sad.) but I'm more excited to for my grand plan for achieving the things that I've been progressing on at a snail's pace.
I call it:
Realistically I should have called it something like 200 Challenge or Project 200 BUT I had originally called it "Project 100" and during the time I decided to change it, I spent wayyy too long trying to get emojis to work on this site 🙃
So Project 💯x2 it is!
Here's how I've decided it works (for now! If I make changes to the plan, I'll be sure to keep you u p d a t e d):
I will assign each of my passion/side projects a number from the following list:
I will strive to come up with a goal to hit that challenges me using that number. As of now, I'm not giving this challenge/project/whatever a definitive timeline, but a loose timeline is approximately one year, i.e. by the time I turn 24.
After my last post, I ran into some technical issues when trying to post it and it gave me some time to think about what I was asking of myself. Posting every single day is a great concept in theory but I also felt like it would lead to some sort of burnout, wherein I was posting useless information that wasn't meaningful to any audience. This new plan will let me balance all of my creative pursuits with a clear and defined goal in mind for each of them. As I make progress on different ones, I figure that will give me more interesting content to discuss and post about!
So let's dive into...
The BIG HUNDO 😱
For 💯 I have decided to make 100 unique Comyx. This is something I haven't really touched on on this site yet, but I do aspire to make short webcomics (branded as Comyx!) that I hope people will enjoy. For these comyx, I am envisioning that each one will contain stand-alone entertainment; this means I can't post a single panel and count it as an entire comic. If one strip tells a longer story but needs to be presented as a unit, it will be counted as ONE entry.
I would like to creat 50 different unique song ideas. I have been learning more and more about music production via Logic Pro X, and I think the best way to get great at it would be to make as many covers and/or original songs as I can. I have some ideas and rough sketches right now, but I will count a submission for this if it is a unique song idea polished and presented for listening - need not always be an entire song, but I think a 90 second lower bound is sufficient for now.
I was struggling with this one because I think I had an idea that I then forgot. Regardless, currently, I am planning to mkae 25 short literary works. These can be partial works as long as each is a unique idea. Some scenes and a summary for a screenplay, a script for a pilot episode of a show, a short story, etc. These are intended to help me express my literary ideas so I don't get burned out on writing my 1 big project (read on to find out! :P)
This one seems like a little more of a challenge and stretch to complete, but I think after the first 3 or so the next 10 will be a lot easier and quicker. I want to make 13 Minimum Viable Products. For anyone outside the tech world, a Minimum Viable Product, or MVP, is the basic premise behind any software project realized into actual code.
For example, an MVP for Spotify could be something like:
You'll notice that a lot of Spotify's signature or even expected functionality is missing from that. You can't make playlists, add to the queue, get Discover Weekly, connect with your friends, etc. At it's core, however, the items listed are the backbone behind Spotify's business and what it aims to do. The other bell's and whistle's are nice (and necessary for success!), but when you're first starting out, you should start with the main trunk and big branches, adding twigs and leaves after those are solid.
With this goal, I hope to learn different technologies, as well as get a feel for which of my software ideas I like and could be worth pursuing for a bigger project.
I'm intentionally leaving the term "post" ambiguous here because I want to have the freedom to create content across platforms. For now, most of my posts will be blog posts like this one, written updates, and I hope to make 6 posts per week, with a mix of expressing my thoughts and documenting my journey along this challenge. Hopefully I will be able to take large pieces of content like this and split it up into smaller, more digestible pieces on instagram, twitter, facebook, tiktok, etc. to spread awareness and hopefully have some discussions on and about this site! Additionally, this goal is intended to keep me accountable for this challenge, so I need to have something to show my audience for my work.
We'll take it slow, but this goal is intended to grow as I do :)
For number 3 I had two ideas, so instead of choosing between them I found a way to incorporate both. One is something that I should do and the other is something I hope to avoid doing, so together I hope they can strike a balance.
The first is adding 3 new sources of income. I want to learn to invest my money and my time effectively to generate revenue outside my full time job. To do this, I will do research and experiment with different ideas. I am not setting a timeline for this whole challenge, but I will count a new source of income as achieved if:
As with my other goals, if this proves to be easier than anticipated (X: doubt), I can increase the difficulty level
My second goal for number 3 is to have 3 or fewer diet cheats per month. I will elaborate on this below, but food is one of the things I enjoy most and tend to overdo. With this goal, I will be sticking to my diet about 90% of the time, which should help me progress on my fitness goals more quickly.
I decided to combine numbers 3 and 2 as they both relate to my health and fitness.
As I mentioned above, I have always struggled to stick to a diet and exercise plan religiously, so this goal is for me to reduce the amount of cheating I do across this challenge. As of now, I intend to have a maximum of 2 days per month cheating on my exercise regimen. I also intend to combine this with my 3 or fewer diet cheats, so I can borrow a day from diet for exercise, and vice versa. With this, all in all, I will have spent an average of 25-ish cheatless days a month. Knowing myself, my affinity for food, and my disdain for exercise, these promise to be one of the hardest goals to complete in this challenge.
As of now, I am planning an exercise regimen of lifting 3 times a week, but as I grow better at sticking to this plan I hope to increase my actual workout days while keeping my number of cheat days the same, so that I am continuously growing, even with a "static" goal.
The big ONE.
For about a year and a half now, I have been planning and working on a long form book. I'd call it a novel, but I don't know if it will exceed the length one can reasonably consider something a novel. Regardless, you can find it here (which at the time of writing this post, only contains the Prologue). It is a true passion of mine and a story I think people will love and hopefully connect to :)
As I write it I really hope to grow as a writer and develop my story to be heartfelt and relatable. But my main goal will be to complete the first draft of the book; you can't revise or edit a blank page, so once I have a book written, I'll be on the way to getting my book done.
So that's the plan for 23! I'm excited to get started on it, and I'll be making weekly updates to keep track of my progress with the tag 100x2-Challenge, as well as periodically on social media. Follow along! 😄
~ kwyx&
P.S. I finally got comments working! See below :)