Accepting the Challenge: Post a Day in 2011

Well, after reading the announcement of a new blogging challenge, as well as the blog specifically established for the challenge, I have decided to accept the challenge:

I, A.Hab., will be posting every single day in 2011!

I am doing this for a couple of reasons. The first is the most obvious: I’m in the middle of writing a dissertation. One of the hardest parts of writing a dissertation is writing the dissertation. Believe me, if I could just research the hell out of my topic and speak about it during my defense (to come in June or July 2011), then I absolutely would. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as an oral dissertation…a spoken-word diss, so I must write. I’ve always found writing to be a tempestuous little talent of mine. Sometimes the creative juices flow, and I feel barely able to catch up with the amazing ideas long enough to actually write them down. More often than not, though, I am paralyzed by so many fears that the initial writing never even happens. What if my ideas are wrong? What if I’ve completely misunderstood everything I’ve ever read? What if my committee laughs me out of the university at my defense? What if nobody ever sees the value in this years-long project I’ve been working on? What if I sound stupid and uneducated on the page?

My father used to call me the Queen of Catastrophizing. He’ll tell anyone himself that I have this remarkable talent of essentially “what-if-ing” myself until I’m absolutely crippled by all the horrible possible outcomes and am left a quivering mass of inaction.

So, how do we combat this? We write anyway!

Very likely my daily posts will not be all about my dissertation, but neither should they be. I’ll play with different voices: informal, light, funny, scholarly, formal, serious. I think that the more I write, even just in general, even “off-topic” (off the topic of my dissertation), the more I’ll get into the very habit of writing.

I’m going to participate in this Post a Day challenge because this is the perfect time for it. There are other variations, of course: if, for instance, you’re not sure your schedule will allow you to dedicate every single day to posting, then you can join the Post a Week challenge. Either works. There is no requirement of word count, there’s no requirement of topic. Just use the tag “postaday2011” or “postaweek2011” so that the statisticians here at WordPress.com can keep track of the numbers of participants and whether or not those participants meet their goals.

I start with my first official Post a Day post tomorrow! 🙂

In advance, thanks for your support, friends!