challenge complete: 100 push ups a day

...2999... 3000.

Oh hi, I didn't see you come in there. I was just doing some push ups.

Don't know if you heard me counting, but I just did 3000 of them, so no big deal.

100 push ups a day is a very reasonable goal. I'd break it down into 4 sets of 25 usually, and space them out over the day.

It was a little strange waiting in an airport, and then suddenly doing a set of push-ups.

It takes less than a minute for a set. I immediately feel better if I've been sitting around for an hour or two, and then I do it. It has made me more aware of the effect of exercise on my body.

Summary: Great way to add some extra exercise into the day. I am going to keep doing these.

new challenge: meditation

I'm traveling in India for the next month and a half, so I think that is a big enough challenge for now.

While traveling, my emotional state bounces between joy and extreme frustration on a daily basis. It would be nice to have at least one moment in the day where I can calm myself, and restore some sort of mental balance.

So I will try to meditate every day for the next 30 days. I actually started this two days ago.

I am not concerned with the amount of time, or any other concrete goal. It might take me a few minutes one day or 20 minutes the next. When I feel like I've done it, I've done it.

Challenge complete: picture every day

I took a picture every day for the last 30 days. It sounded like it could be fun. I did it because I'm not often a picture taking kind of person.

But I enjoy a picture as much as the next man, and I think there's a lot of artistic thinking and technical skill involved in taking good pictures, which is something worth practicing.

The most disheartening part of this challenge was when I lost my camera's charger. I should have gone straight out and got a new one. Instead I took pictures with my computer, or with my iPod.

When I wasn't using a camera that allowed me to manually adjust the white balance, and the focus, and all that, the challenge lost a big part of the "technical skill" aspect, and that made me take it less seriously, and probably took worse pictures. I'll do a gallery of some of the best and worst pictures soon.

Despite mixed feelings on the success of this particular trial, I intend to renew this challenge for my upcoming trip in India (3 days from now!).

Summary: Try it out if you're curious. Everybody likes a picture. At the very least, you'll have a photographic diary of a month of your life.

challenge complete: Korean diary

For the last 30 days, I've been keeping a diary in 한국어 (Korean).

It's hard to notice improvements in a language skill because it's all so gradual. It's coming though. I need a little more faith sometimes.

I got drunk with a friend the other night and went to a Korean grill house, and I spoke a little bit. Basic, quickly spoken questions have become much easier to understand. It's always nice to notice improvement in yourself.

Like a lot of things, the better you are at it, the more fun it becomes. Anyone struggling with the basics of a second language, don't give up! 화이팅 하세요!

Summary: great challenge. Almost a necessary thing for anyone who wants to master another language. But also, not enough by itself to gain a language.

challenge complete: TED talks

For the last 30 days, I watched a video every day on ted.com.

This challenge was fun.

Watch a TED while eating your bowl of oatmeal in the morning, and then you have something inspiring to think about for the rest of the day.

In no particular order, here are a few that stood out for me over this last month:

Jill Taylor talks about her amazing insight into the human mind she had while having a stroke!

Salman Khan reinvents education through youtube.

Matt Cutts's 30 day challenges inspired me to do these challenges in the first place.

Chimamanda Adichie talks about the danger of having a "single story" about someone. Good talk about keeping an open mind and fighting stereotypes.

Bryan Stevenson will make you think about injustice in America.

The hardest part of this challenge was choosing where to start! So I would often choose my Ted talks based on lists like "20 best ted talks of all time" or something like that.

But honestly, I haven't listened to a bad one yet.

Summary: Inspiring, easy to do, and well worth the 15 minutes every day. It'll broaden your world, inspire, and make you think.

Does anyone have a good TED to tell me about?

challenge completed: contact old friends

For the last thirty days,  I sent a message a day to a friend whom I had not contacted in a while.

I came to a few realizations.

People are very receptive to messages. It's like a little present. People I hadn't talked to in years would respond very quickly and warmly.

It was easier to send a quick message. And I think it was easier for people to respond to a quick message. A four-paragraph novel to someone you haven't talked to in two years is big thing to deal with. They'll feel they have to make an appropriate response, and that makes it easier to put it off.

After a while, it became very easy to write these messages. I just starting defaulting to a formula. My basic message was sort of like:

"Hey, Stevie what's up?
I was thinking about that time that we were over there and we did that one thing. That sure was fun! Just wondering where you are, and how you're doing.
Hope all is well,
Tom"

Hopefully in the real message I would mention an actual activity I shared with this person.

Finally, I realized there were a lot more people I want to keep in touch with than I thought. There are still people beyond those first thirty, whom I plan to contact.

Summary: Great challenge to anyone who has trouble keeping in touch. Very easy, and very rewarding.

challenge complete: blog

Challenge: Update this blog every day for 30 days.

Status: Completed!

Challenge Review

This was a pretty easy challenge to complete. On several days it would literally take less than a minute to upload a picture, or to write a few simple sentences about something.

On days where I attempted to be funny or insightful it took longer. No surprises there.

Now let's get a little deep here. Did I learn anything valuable? Did it change my life?

Not really, and maybe a little, respectively.

I started this challenge because keeping a blog, and keeping up with my writing has always been difficult for me to do consistently. On most days, I lack the motivation or the discipline to write.

I don't know why, and it's probably because I'm unsure of my own motivations for doing it. Do I crave attention? Is it because I enjoy the process? Do I want to share things with other people? Is it an outlet for creativity or stress?

Probably a mix of a lot of those things, with certain ones flaring up more than others on any given day.

But inside of these 30 days, knowing that I have to post something, it was easy. I would just sit down and do it, without considering my feelings about it first.

I plan on continuing to post, but not every day. There's no one who has something they need to share every day.

Short version:

blogging easy! Good blogging hard. blog generally doesn;t improve my life.

technology, eh?

The other day I noticed that this blog is covered in really obnoxious advertisements. It is not an attempt to make money from the two people that read this blog. I really don't know how they got here, and I don't know how to turn them off.

I feel like this old man I saw at the grocery store yesterday. He was having problems with the credit card swiper machine, where you have to push the buttons yourself. He looked over at me and said "Technology, eh? When I retired I thought I'd never have to use a computer."

I smiled and politely agreed with him, meanwhile thinking about what a stupid old man he is.

Then I promptly handed my credit card to the cashier, and she told me I had to use the machine. We are not so different, old man.

A grocery store cashier's day is a never ending stream of people who don't know how to pay for their groceries.

fake grad school

While on a nighttime summer stroll with my good pal Kyle, we discovered something that will change our lives forever.

It begins with this inexplicable urge for people in their mid/late twenties to want to go to grad school (myself included). 

It's not that you particularly enjoy going to school, or that you think it's going to help you in your career, or that the subject matter is just so interesting to you (if it was, you'd be studying it on your own).

It's not even a practical reason, such as thinking you'll make more money in your future jobs (we all know that you might get a little more, but the cost of grad school + opportunity cost of not working for 2+ years more than offsets potential gains in most fields).

No, the real reason you want to go to grad school is...

...so you can tell people you're going to grad school.

Think about it. Sure, there are lots of little reasons. But understand that deep down inside, this is really the primary reason you want to go to grad school.

It's because you don't like working. Jobs generally aren't fun. Grad school sounds way more fun by comparison. But most importantly grad school is a "legit" thing to be doing with your time. When someone at a party tells you they're in grad school, you might say "Good for you!"

So here's an alternative:

Since you don't really want to go to grad school anyway, but you do want the perceived social status boost, and a mandate to not work for at least 2 years... why don't you just lie about it?

Seriously. Next time someone asks you what you do, just say "I'm in grad school." And then sit back and reap social acceptance.

Meanwhile, do whatever the hell you really want to do. Work your normal job. Or screw it, and quit. You've got at least two years to do whatever you want, and nobody can even say a thing about it, because you're going to grad school!

"Hey guess what best friend, remember when I took the GREs last summer? You don't? Well I did, and I also just got into grad school!"

"Hey mom and dad, guess what, I decided to go to grad school! And I got a full scholarship!"

Think about it. Nobody is going to check up on you. Nobody is going to think "Is this guy REALLY going to grad school?"

But just to be safe, always have a specific school in mind, and a field of study. Just in case there are any follow up questions. You should also probably wikipedia a few basic facts about your field.

Oh, and if you're ever in the same room with someone who goes to the "same" grad school as you, and he starts asking a few too many questions, such as "How come I never see you at grad school?" or "Who is your favorite teacher?"

The thing you have to do in this situation, and this is VERY important, you have to accuse him of being a fake grad student. It's absolutely essential that you be the one to do it first. Nobody will even think to question you after that.

And after that, he can't turn around and accuse you of being fake student, can he? He's going to look foolish, or just crazy. People will think he's desperately trying to shift the attention away from himself. And then you've won.

But you should probably leave the party fairly soon after that anyway.