I was only one day into my personal blog writing challenge this month, and I have to admit, I flubbed it. I headed down to LA for the weekend without my laptop, and it is awfully hard to update a blog in any meaningful way from a cell phone. So days 2 and 3 of my Month Long Write Every Day Challenge were a bit of a bust, but I’m not letting that get me down.

The thing about me and challenges is that I’m not very good at them. I’m a forgetful person, it’s true, and if I set myself a goal to do X thing Y number of times, it’s very likely that I’ll space on it at some point. I’ve even tried setting reminders for myself, and have actually had the experience of turning off the reminder, and within two minutes forgetting completely to do the thing I was trying to remind myself to do. It can be embarrassing.

I can also be kind of hard on myself. It’s true. But the thing about personal challenges is that I’m learning to be more forgiving of myself. I can learn just as much from being gentle with myself as I can from pushing myself, like how to persevere, rather than admitting defeat after one tiny failure. And if I’m gentle with myself, it’s easier to keep the focus on what the real goal of this challenge is. It’s not just to update a blog every day. It’s to write. To write early and often. To write good things and not so good things (uh, like this, I suspect), as long as I keep writing. The idea behind a daily writing challenge is to do the work, even when you don’t want to, and even if you think the work isn’t that great. So if I miss a day due to my forgetfulness, that’s ok. Tomorrow is another day, and I’m going to keep on writing.

In more lighthearted news: I found The Dress this weekend! It’s a beauty, I can’t believe I have to wait a whole seven months to wear it! (I also can’t believe we’re getting married seven months from tomorrow.) Shopping for the dress with my mom was a great experience, and seeing her face when I put it on is something I’m always going to remember. And thanks to the folks at Dolly Couture for being amazing!