February Challenge Completed

This is my 152^nd consecutive blog post since I made a promise to never miss a day. There have been plenty of times I was tired and just wanted to go to bed, but the thought of missing a day drove me to get it done.

It’s the 59^th day of the Writing 2026 Words a Day Challenge. And as of last night, I have written a total of 116,529 words since the beginning of the year. In 2024 I had my highest word count of 117, 980 when I was doing the short story a week challenge. It blows my mind to see that by the end of this evening I will have surpassed a year ‘s worth if writing in only two months.

One of my friends told me that word count didn’t matter, only quality matters. Quality is too subjective to measure. But seeing the increase in how much you are writing can be measured. And if you are writing more then you are practicing more as well. Seeing those numbers increase gives you a little push to keep at it. the improvement is tangible.

I’ll continue to track these streaks, like daily word count, consecutive days I played a game of chess, and blog streaks. I plan to add more as I go, like reading streaks and exercise streaks. For me, they seem to be working.

Last night we had our dinner out at the Brant Street Fork and Spoon. I ate so much food that I am still not hungry. We slept in late and boy was that wonderful. We watched a few episodes of ‘The Last Thing He Told Me’, then Robyn went down to the kitchen and started frying up some bacon. I waddled down the stairs and did the tea, eggs and toast.

I probably could have gone without breakfast, it was after 11 am at this point, but there was bacon and I never turn bacon down. We watched an episode of ‘Paradise’ then Robyn had a friend coming over and they went to Ikea and then the mall to upgrade her phone.

Meanwhile we received a cheeky invitation to dinner at a friend’s house for this evening. Unfortunately, I had to decline. One I am still full from Pizza Thursday, followed by Gluttony at the Spoon and Fork Friday. Keep in mind that they always make a delicious meal when we go there and there were rumours of cherry-lime fresh baked donuts.

They have sent us pictures to taunt us of their prime rib dinner with mashed potatoes and those amazing roasted parsnips, just to make sure we know what we were missing out on.

But I have an important assignment to do tonight. I could have done it earlier in the day, but I knew I needed the recuperation time before diving into something that was going to be cognitively difficult for me to do. Hopefully, we can see them tomorrow for a tea and coffee.

My Sunday is looking less crazy. I only have some overtime to do and then I needed to get my 2026 words written for the day. If I get some sleep tonight and finish my assignment at a reasonable time I might even get up early to make sure, I get everything done that I need and want to.

As it is, I am writing down in the cave with my phone set to do not disturb.

We did find out one disturbing thing today that we only found out because Robyn when in to upgrade her phone at Fido. Our son separated his phone account from the Fido family plan about this time last year and went with his own phone with Rogers. Apparently, Fido has been charging us the entire time for his disconnected phone. We are talking about $800-$1000 dollars of money wasted. You really must pay attention to businesses these days. They will happily take money out of your account and then shrug their shoulders afterwards like they had nothing to do with it. Anyways, we are going to save $70 on our bill tis month now that we have noticed it.

I’ve been chipping away at my assignment and really thinking about it and comparing it to published author’s works. I really wish I had another week to work on this as the past two weeks were a bit of a blur and even though I got a bit of rest last night I am still low on energy reserves.

I keep thinking I’ll have all day tomorrow to rest, but I still have overtime work to do and then there is the ever-present 2026-word challenge quota to meet. At least I can say I am not bored with life at the moment, maybe just slightly overwhelmed.

There are plenty of people around the world who are truly suffering. I saw today that the US and Israel are bombing Iranian military targets as well as anything that will increase the likelihood of a regime change. It’s hard to know how to feel about this. I want the people of Iran to be free and to have all the joys of life that my own country allows me to have. I am not sure how they are feeling about the intervention by Israel and the US.

From what I have heard so far, the strikes have been very targeted. We’ll have to wait to the dust settles to know for sure if the outcome is as advertised. There were early reports that the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, was killed in the strikes. Israel and America’s biggest concern is likely Iran’s ability to create nuclear materials that would be used in weapons of mass destruction.

At the very least there are many flight delays and restrictions that travellers will be facing in the coming days due to the attacks. What remains to be seen is what kind of response the Iranian’s can muster. Reports of missile attacks on neighbouring countries that house US military bases were on the TV this afternoon. And I believe I heard a voice of decent from the UN. Canada seems okay with the removal of an evil regime but maybe doesn’t like the way in which it was executed.

For a guy that doesn’t like war, Trump seems to be getting himself into a bunch of armed conflicts.

In happier new, Robyn told me she thought she saw that there was another episode of the Muppet Show out on Disney Plus. I haven’t confirmed this as I thought it was just a special that they did. Maybe they were too gun shy to commit to a full series contract without testing the waters first. And who could blame them. Most of their purchased franchises have tanked because they didn’t understand the IP or their fans.

But I thought they nailed it with the Muppet Show Special and hope they make more episodes.

 I just finished writing my mentor assignment for this week. I had to rewrite the last assignment taking into consideration all the notes and comments my mentor made. It was an interstng exercise and it was great to see where she thought I had gone wrong and where I succeeded. Getting this skill down it paramount to my future success and I think I am starting to understand it better after this redo.

I’ll be studying other authors works as the weeks go on looking particularly for the things mt mentor has mentioned are my weaknesses.

I must say I am relieved tomorrow resets the word challenge. Going back to the 2026 words a day will feel like a bit of a vacation compared to this last week. I have written over 3100 words per day for the last six days in a row.

Looking back at my spread sheet there was just a few days that caused me to get behind and struggle until the end. I do not want to repeat that ever again.

Having two writing outlets per day really seemed to help the output. The days when I had the blog and the novella going went pretty well.

There were no patterns as to days of the week where I failed, it all seemed pretty random and had more to do with how much energy and drive I had.

I feel like with this last week that I can write more than the minimum. I have proven that this week but for the month. I also felt like I wasn’t writing enough fiction. This is me saying that after writing a 26,000 word novella and writing another uncompleted novella up to 16, 000 words. 42,000 words of fiction doesn’t sound so bad to me. At least not this point in my life.

But in March I will endeavour to make a push to get the majority of my word count through fiction writing instead of blog posts. These have the tendency to turning into nonsensical rambles, like it is right now!

And I need to get more reading done. That is a huge factor in a writer’s education. Writing and reading. The two most important variables to success.

I keep these little notebooks by my writing desk. I make a daily checklist of all the things I need to get done, and the things that don’t get done get carried over to the next day. I can see that I stopped using it around February 18^th, which is the day after I went back to work, so no real surprise there. It’s amazing how those little books became my touch stone for my days while I was off. I really did rely on them to keep me on track.

I use a similar system at work and at the end of the day I fill everything out for the next day. This way I can go to bed and not stay up worrying all night if I forgot to do something. And some mornings I am grateful because by the time I get to work I have often forgotten something important and my little book tells me what I need to do.

And right now, it is telling me to go get some sleep.

Until tomorrow.