A Read-a-Thon, a New Challenge, and a Little Post Pumpkin Malaise

I'll be honest, I'm struggling to have much motivation today. I think I'm coming down from the post-pumpkin high. It was a long week getting our pumpkin display all up and ready and I may have very well just plain worn myself out. 

I don't have much time for lazing about though. With the end of the Halloween season, that just means that the two other big holidays are looming around the corner. 

Around here, that means cleaning up the house and getting things ready for Thanksgiving and then the big project of getting all of the presents made for Christmas. I'm slightly prepared. The list is more or less finished (I have three people without solidified gift ideas) and I've purchased about half of the items I need to get moving. Now it's just a matter of getting myself moving. For some reason, I'm finding myself less jazzed about it this year.

Since the last week has been nothing but pumpkins, I kind of flaked out on my plans for the Wonderfully Wicked Read-a-Thon and fell very short on my goals. I knew there would be some slowing down, but I didn't quite expect the complete obliteration of anything in my life that didn't involve carving and pumpkin prep. That's what I get for taking on a big assignment this year.

In order to somewhat redeem myself in the read-a-thon department, I'll be taking part in Karsyn's Beat Your Best Read-a-Thon later this month.

The Info:

Beat Your Best is a brand new read-a-thon, running Nov 15-22. ByB is a completely laid back challenge in which you choose how you will beat your own personal best when it comes to reading. This can be done in small or big ways, and is just meant to encourage you to push yourself with your reading in any way that you choose.

ByB will be my last read-a-thon that falls entirely within 2014 and one of three read-a-thons I have scheduled before I go back to school in January. That's right...I'm headed back to school. Those who know me in "real life" are probably wondering what in the world I'm thinking, but there is a method to my madness. I have been experiencing some increasing pain and restriction in my abilities as far as endurance goes since my diagnosis with fibro back in 2012. With the recent recommendation of my doc that I cut back on work, I figure it's only a matter of time before my current profession isn't really an option for me. In preparation for that, I've decided to do something new. 

I'll be taking classes towards two new degrees, English and accounting. I've always loved school and I've been wanting to go back for something different for quite some time, so this just presented the opportunity for me. I'm both excited and terrified. I haven't been a student in over a decade. I've forgotten how the routine of balancing home and school works. Add to that the fact that I'll be juggling a full-time job and my family and it's bound to be a challenge. I expect that I may be a little quieter in the blogosphere and that my life will be different, but I'm still feeling excited by the possibilities.

Since I expect that my reading will be relegated primarily to school assignments once classes start, I'm taking the opportunity to throw myself into these last few read-a-thons and enjoy some reading for pleasure. I'll be completing my 2014 BOTY Bracket Challenge as well, and then it's going to be a craps shoot as far as how much enjoyment reading I'll be afforded.

The Goal...

Deciding how to approach Karsyn's challenge has been interesting. I want to do something that isn't really easy per se, but that won't be impossible for me to reasonably work towards. I busted out the spreadsheets to look over what I've been able to accomplish in the past. There are some daunting statistics there; daunting in that this won't be a fluff challenge.

I've decided to try and beat my average. I realize that this sounds ridiculous. The thing is, in a lot of my past read-a-thons, I've done a GOB of reading on Saturday and Sunday while puttering away the rest of the week and not really being consistent about my reading. So the challenge for me is to put aside things like the iPad, Facebook, and even blog reading, and get my nose stuck in a book on a regular basis.

The goal is to read each day of the read-a-thon, but more than that, to read more than the average amount of time I've read on past read-a-thons. Calculating all of that mumbo jumbo, it appears that my reading time for past read-a-thons (when spread out over the full length of the read-a-thon at hand), works out to an average of about 3 hours a day. This is a fair challenge. Therefore, the ultimate goal of my Beat Your Best Read-a-Thon participation is to read...

A minimum of 3 hours each day of the read-a-thon.

This means that reading all day on Saturday and Sunday to boost the numbers is not only unnecessary, it doesn't meet the challenge. I have to read every day and I have to read at least 3 hours every day in order for this to work. There is to be none of the procrastination that I am so famous for. 

Here's hoping that I can stay focused enough to make this happen!