About Living Challenged

Late last year I decided that 2011 was going to be much more exciting & challenging than the previous two years. I wanted to try new things, challenge myself, and create a lifestyle that wouldn't be as monotonous as prior years. I sat down on a cold December afternoon and wrote out a bucket list of exciting ventures I hoped to conquer before I "kicked the bucket". Before long I realized, that there might be things that I wanted to do that I had never thought of or even realized I wanted to do/try. I then came across http://www.themonthlychallenge.com/, a blog designed to get people to try new things. I loved the concept so I decided that in a quest to try new things I would engage in a different challenge every month for the year 2011. The basic concept is this:

"Each month, a goal is set - whether it be a daily goal (ie., complete a Sudoku puzzle every day) or a weekly goal (ie., read a book every week) a monthly goal (ie., cycle 1000 miles in a month) or something completely different.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Hopefully you will learn from your failures and that will help you refine challenges down the road. However, don't expect to succeed at everything - if you're completing each month's challenge easily, then it's not really a challenge, now is it?"

Thus the Living Challenged was created. It works as a double entendre, I'm even willing to argue that its a triple.

The challenges are a work in progress (I will take suggestions within reason & if I feel it will be fun, interesting or most importantly beneficial) but once a challenge is started that will be the challenge for the month.

I'd more than welcome you to play along or even try out your own challenges. From these, I hope to learn something about myself, challenge myself, try something new, better myself, or at the very least, have an interesting year.