200 words-a-day challenge

Today is the 1^st of September 2025, the start of meteorological Autumn. Today is also the first day after the excellent Blaugust, and I feel inspired. I have read so many excellent articles over the past month and it got me thinking: how can I challenge myself?

I fretted over how taking part in the challenge requires discipline. Realistically, it is not for everyone, which is why I do not take part myself, as the time commitment and pressure of it all puts me off. Additionally, the event is held in August, which is not a very convenient time for me; it’s high Summer for goodness sake, my downtime!

On the other hand, I do enjoy writing and shooting the breeze with myself. It feels liberating to write my random thoughts down, getting them out of my head and onto e-paper — or real paper. And, I’ve increasingly noticed that once the random thought is freed, there is space up there for the next one to form.

As the Northern Hemisphere enters Autumn, the nights and early mornings are starting to feel chilly; my downtime is at an end. As I begin to spend more time indoors with the change of season, the idea just naturally presented itself.

The challenge

Apparently:

Consistency is habit-forming.

Therefore, I’m attempting a 200 words-a-day challenge. Why? I feel that I need to do this for me. Therapy maybe? Or perhaps I like a bit of pain! Either way, I do need to become more disciplined.

Initially, I did not aim to track my progress here or publish everything I write on this blog. I was thinking of including handwritten notes as part of my daily count, and tracking every word would be impractical. Maybe I’ll make this blog-only tracking?

The easiest way I can think of right now of logging my progress is by ensuring that handwritten notes are digitised, thereby counted and tracked. Let’s see. I need to mull this one over for a while.

And…I’ve also added a “streak” counter to the bottom of my index page for a little encouragement. With this one, I’m already on a 9-day streak!

Tracking

Tracking is updated manually with stats generated from a Python script.