Tomorrow begins the last one hundred days of the year. What are you going to do with those days? Will you finally get around to the New Year’s resolutions you made and promptly forgot? Are you going to slack off, giving yourself permission to take a break from the breakneck speed of your life? Are you going to get going on that novel you wanted to start, continue, finish, or edit? Are you going to make inroads in the pile of books on your nightstand, or finally read some of those ebooks you downloaded? Are you going attempt the photography project you always wanted to do? Are you going to make a commitment to blog every day?
That’s what I’m going to do — make a commitment to blog every day. I’ve been blogging every day for the past 364 days, and I intend to extend that commitment to the end of the year. (I’ll try to make the blogs interesting because posting something just to post something sort of negates the “challenge” part.) Feel free to join me! We can help each other, offering encouragement or topics when the will begins to wane.
Just to make things fun, I’m also going to give up sugar (and sweets of all kinds). I used to forego sugared products except for occasional splurges of chocolate, but after the death of my life mate/soul mate, I got on a sugar jag, eating all sorts of sweets I hadn’t eaten for years. When one is grieving, it always feels like three o’clock in the morning — your mental and physical defenses are down and your blood sugar feels as if it’s at a low ebb — so I got in the habit of treating myself. I stopped eating sugar and flour a couple of weeks ago, and I intend to continue doing so. (Sugar is a poison, screwing up the system, causing myriad problems, including weight gain. This has been known for many decades despite the front page news this morning that “new research offers the disturbing suggestion that regular consumption of high calorie sugared beverages may turn on genetic switches that incline our bodies to becoming fat.” Duh. Can you believe researches actually got grants for that? And artificial sweeteners are even worse — true poison! Besides, they make you crave sugar, and have been implicated in obesity, so I won’t be substituting artificial sweeteners for sugar.)
And a final challenge (the hardest of them all) — I’m going to stop obsessing over things I cannot change. When things happen that I have no control over, I tend to work them over and over in my mind, trying to make them come out right, but that only puts me on the treadmill of circular thinking. As I wrote once a long time ago (showing that I’ve always had this tendency):
it is real, yes
and it does exist
but that does not mean
i should have given it
so much of my reality
So, have I shamed you into taking a 100-day challenge?
Bertram's Blog 
September 22, 2012 at 11:59 am
Sugar gets easier with each day, been doing it for a while now, mood swings are not so pronounced and acceptance is the answer to all my problems today… good luck on your goals!
September 22, 2012 at 12:08 pm
Thank you. Great that you’re not eating sugar. It really is a killer.
September 26, 2012 at 6:27 am
It gets easier… 😉
September 22, 2012 at 12:48 pm
I have given up sugar before, and it is amazing how much better I feel. But it always creeps back in again somehow, and now, after a winter of high carb eating, I am feeling chubby and sluggish. So I will take up your challenge to give it up once again. School is winding down, and I have a lot of assignments due, so the next three weeks are going to be busy. Then I am looking forward to a little time off before I start a temporary full time job that goes until April next year. Not sure I’ll have any time for blogging or writing!
September 22, 2012 at 6:04 pm
It is easy to let sweets slip back into one’s diet, which is why I’m challenging myself — to make sure that doesn’t happen.
September 22, 2012 at 3:21 pm
I’m trying to finish my book and get it ready to release in November. I keep finding plot holes that I have to go back and fix. I love this time of year, but especially with the election, there are so many distractions. I need to get to my TBR pile too.
Giving up sugar is not on my list, though I don’t eat much, but good luck with your plan. (I have plenty of other vices to make up for it.) I’m sure it’s healthy but I have doubts about too many artificial sweetners.
Happy hundred days!
September 22, 2012 at 5:58 pm
I don’t use artificial sweeteners, they are even worse than sugar — true poison — and they create sugar cravings. The only way to give up sugar is to give up all sweetening agents. I don’t even drink juice.
Best of luck with your book!
September 22, 2012 at 6:51 pm
Good luck with posting daily. I tried it for this week and already skipped a day even though I had a draft ready to post. As for the rest of the year, well, I plan on having my book ready to sell on Amazon in time for Christmas. (fingers crossed)
September 22, 2012 at 6:59 pm
The Jewish New Year already passed, so I’m just doing the same old things…except for praying for salvation, of course. I’m just going to try to be a better person and learn from my mistakes, which I still make from time to time.
September 24, 2012 at 7:00 am
Hi, Pat. I so admire your daily posts – it takes a great deal of focus and dedication, and you are my hero.
I’ve been on a healthier-than-before diet since July 11th when my doc told me I had type II diabetes. At first I was really ticked off – I am very active, eat mostly out of my garden and have always stuck to organic whole foods, etc. But I guess it’s the prednisone I took for my asthma flare ups that might have damaged those Beta cells in the liver that make insulin. Anyway, since then I’ve worked very hard at being healthier – no sweets, no processed foods (white flour, etc) (of course I rarely ate that anyway before…), eating less at each meal (cut my portions in half roughly) and I’m walking one to one and a half hours every morning, in the dark, LOL. I’ve got my sugar under excellent control now, and I also have gone down in weight about a pound or two per week. I loved having to go out and buy smaller clothes – that was fun. The doc says that people like me (obsessed over the numbers and determined to beat this) won’t have any problems with side effects of the illness in the future – it’s those who ignore the news who lose toes, etc. Yikes. Scares the hell out of me so I am being good not only for the next 100 days, but for the rest of my life. Period! Big hugs and best of luck on your healthy lifestyle!
September 24, 2012 at 5:00 pm
Good for you!! Everything takes so much dedication, that it’s amazing you have so many dedications — your wife, your writing, your health. It’s easy to blog when that’s all you do.