2024W51: Challenges That Were Partially Successful

With 2024 being my Year of the Challenge, this week I’ll dig deeper into the two challenges that were moderately successful.

• In October I did something WILD and combined two different challenges : Peachtober, hosted by Sha’an D’Anthes aka Furry Little Peach, AND Lettering Style Challenge, hosted by Aurelie Maron. These women have provided me and countless other creative people inspiration and guidance over the years, and they have each built a community around their work. They each host a challenge every October, and I’ve never participated in either. This year I decided to participate in BOTH. So my challenge was to create one piece each morning in October that met both prompts, and included both an illustration and hand lettering.
  
  The good: My ultimate goal is to combine illustration and lettering, so I got a lot of practice not just conceptualizing, but also scaling the scope of each piece once it became clear that, on occasion, it was my only way to get it done on time.
  
  The not so successful: October was a busy travel month anyway, and even when I was home I barely drew at all outside of this very rough sketch each morning.

• I set an annual goal to blog every week. It was important to me to re-establish some regular posting habit, somewhere. The corporate-owned platforms are uncomfortable places for me, and so the blog was my only place to just… post.
  
  The good: I got over my hesitation to post! I actually remember to blog most every Monday, whether I get to it or not.
  
  The not-so-successful: I don’t think I have figured out how to be both fully me AND provide content through the blog that is consistently valuable to a reader. I’ve been fully me, posting whatever is on my mind or timely. But value? Not sure the blog has done that yet.
  
  That said, I have faith that now that the habit is established, I can work on a content calendar for 2025 that is more purposeful, structured, and strategic.

Next week I will finish the challenge round-up with thoughts on and a personal celebration of the two challenges that worked all the way around.