Hitting the Halfway Mark on Our Year-Long Challenge

by Julia Phillips Smith

Last summer I wrote about the 100-day A For Adventure challenge my husband and I have taken on:

Day 7 -- A For Adventure -- 93 days to go

I discovered this challenge while chilling out after my day job and reading the paper one evening. I'm a big one for taking on challenges. So far, they've been in the creative category -- taking part in NaNoWriMo, taking part in the A to Z Blog Challenge, doing a reading challenge, doing a year-long Movie Madness challenge.

So it's not that strange for me to want to start up a new challenge. This is aside from the daily challenge of fiction writing, mind you.

I can safely say I've never caught the 'I want to run the 5k marathon' urge, or pretty much any urge that is physical in nature.

But nature...

Now that's something that speaks to me. It's always been a balm for my soul.

2014 went down in history as the hardest year I've ever lived through, due to a chemical exposure in December of 2013. Sounds scary, doesn't it? Yet, as a person with multiple chemical sensitivies, the chemical exposure was merely to carpeting.

Yet it derailed my entire writing year, as I could not think straight. Certainly not straight enough to write fiction.

I received treatment at a specialized clinic and began to improve. I knew I needed to get more physical movement going in order to feed oxygen to my starved cells, to keep limber and build strength. All counter-intuitive when my chronic pain made it all seem impossible, but the exercises I'd already done at the clinic assured me that more walking would be better for me.

I mentioned the challenge to my husband, who has rapid-cycling bipolar disorder along with a high degree of agoraphobia (he suffers incredible anxiety levels whenever he leaves the house.)

I told him I was going to do the A for Adventure Challenge, and asked him if he'd like to join me. I had no expectation that he would say yes, but I always invite him to try things. I also don't pester.

To my surprise and delight, Brad said yes.

I signed us up for the challenge -- an event we customized for ourselves in order to ensure success -- and six months later, we are thrilled to have hit the halfway mark. 100 walks in 100 different places has celebrated walk number 50.

I'll keep you posted as we close in on the three-quarter mark.

Yeah, baby.

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Photo by Helen Tansey