i’m thinking of challenging my output again.

I haven’t done one of those month-long marathon content-outputting challenges in a while, and this year I cautiously believe I can try again.

The issue is, there are several of these challenges, and obviously I want to do them all.

And this is where burnout begins. So let’s just… Let’s just talk.

There’s Inktober. It’s a challenge for artists. It even comes with prompts. The rules are to do a complete drawing a day for the month of October. ‘Ink’ implies it needs to be inked, but I assume no one would shoot me in the eye if I just do pencil.

Then there’s Vlogtober. A vlog a day, or at least every other day, for the month of October.

There’s the obvious NaNoWriMo. It usually runs in November, and encourages you to write 50k words, aka the first draft of a book.

Then there’s NaBloPoMo, an unofficial variation of NaNoWriMo. It, too, takes place in November, but it focusses on writing a blog post every day.

And then there’s Vlogmas and Blogmas – a focus on vlogging or blogging daily/ every other day all through the month of December until Christmas. My Christmas is in January, so whenever I’ve done Vlogmas, I stopped at the end of December.

I can tell I’m entering hypomania, because I get a gleam in my eye from the sheer thought of DOING THEM ALL, AT THE SAME TIME.

Can I do it? Can I push myself for 90 days of rabid creativity, obviously without failing my other commitments, with a few caveats of maybe pre-writing posts if I’m in a particularly proliferous mood? Not if I want to keep most of my commitments. So let’s trim the list.

I can tell I’m not doing Vlogtober. I won’t be in the mood to film full-fledged vlogs any time soon. Maybe come December, so I could do Vlogmas. … Maybe I could do Reeltober? Or TikTober? Shortober? The possibilities are endless, but I think I might just do Inktober and Blogtober. The latter would replace NaBloPoMo for me. Then, come November I’ll be able to focus on NaNo. I haven’t written fiction in a while. The thought terrifies me.

In December I will be able to take a break from writing – not that I ever want to, but there’s a difference between daily writing and daily writing challenge – and focus on video. I hope I’ll be in the mood by then. To tell the truth I do kinda miss vlogging, but I just want to scrap what I’ve been doing before and change the format. Maybe I’ll also do a combo of vlogging and blogging for the month of December. A blog post alternating with a vlog, 15 of each in total.

All of it sounds overwhelming and monumental, but like every other thing in life, it becomes easier the more you do it. And as I mentioned, I might be able to ‘cheat’ with blogging by writing more than one post per day. I suppose NaNo could have those cheats too, as long as the total is 50k words of fiction.