250 words.

On the surface it doesn’t seem that hard, and yet I’m sitting here wondering what the hell I was thinking when I decided to take on this “challenge.”

Let me back up a step.

A few weeks ago Sam Falco, a friend and (if I’m being honest) someone who I consider to be a bit of a mentor, tweeted about a 14-day, 250 words per day writing challenge that he was taking on. The point was just to write, essentially. Kind of like Morning Pages, I suppose, but instead of being stream-of-consciousness writing that nobody was supposed to read the point was to get the work out there in front of others.  I kept tabs on him during the challenge, making sure to poke him when I hadn’t seen a post go up on a given day and thoroughly enjoying what he put out there. Several of the pieces he wrote made me want to reply in kind, but mostly it just reminded me of how much I used to write back before the days of Twitter and Facebook.

I miss those days.

All those factors combine with another pretty big one. Today is the first day, pretty much since 2001, that I am no longer a student. I have completed the coursework for my second Masters degree, and I am just waiting for the final grades to come in before I can officially say I have earned my Masters in Business Administration. It’s been a very long, very hard, and very expensive journey. It feels odd to know that part of my life is over. On the plus side, I have a very strong desire to put some of the things back into my life that went by the wayside while I was finishing up school. Acting, for one. Reading for pleasure is a big one in there too. And, of course, my writing.

So. 14-day challenge. I’m generally scornful of the whole challenge thing, so we’ll see what happens. I may end up cheating and pulling out a few of the many unfinished drafts that are clogging up my WordPress Administrator, but we’ll see. Maybe I’ll just enjoy expressing myself in more than 280 characters for a change.

We’ll see.

The song currently stuck in my head is…