Creating the Next Birthday Challenge

You would think after 19 years of creating birthday challenges that creating next challenge would be easy. That with all that time and experience it would be simple task. That the ideas would just flow. And at the start they did flow. 

Mid April I had a growing list of potential goals. By the end of the month there were 296 ideas. I was on track unveil the new 44 While 44 Challenge a month ago. I went as far as to say I would have the whole list ready to share on May 10th.With that many ideas I thought finalizing the list would be straightforward. 

I was wrong.

The Delays

Several things happened concurrently leading to the delay. In my brain these events and thoughts interacted like painting with watercolour on wet paper, overlapping and mixing with each other. For ease of explaining I’ll share them as a numbered list:

1) I was at a convention over my birthday. Right after returning home I was sick for a week. This threw both my home and work life off. I felt it took most of May to catch up on all the things that were missed while I was either away or sick.

2) We decided to move out of our current apartment. Searching the internet for available rentals, apartment viewing, and application filling has cut into my thinking time. I need a certain amount of boredom to work on the list. I am happy to share that today we signed a new lease.

3) I realized that some of the ideas on the list would take more than a year to complete. I started thinking about extending the challenge beyond a single year. Asking questions like: What would this look like? What would the best time frame be? What would an extended challenge look like? Would it be different? How would I track over a longer time frame and avoid forgetting about challenges?

4) With those questions swirling in the background I also noticed a trend in the hopes my lists were generating. There were a number of challenges that were about increasing things my life. It was things like read more, write more, dance more, hike more, or laugh more. All good things that I enjoy in my life but those aren’t tangible goals. Making SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based) goals is an important factor of my challenges. I need to know how and when I have completed a challenge goal. When is “more” achieved? Technically if I read nine books last year, reading ten this year would be “more.” At the same time I do not want to ignore what my preparation was showing me. Which is that there are interests and hobbies I want to cultivate by increasing my time spent on them.

I am not sure how this last point got me thinking about my years as a Girl Guide and earning interest badges, but it did. I got to thinking about what if the challenges were more like earning a badge. That question got me contemplating my time in the Pathfinders. There were five core badges program in the 90s. I think the areas were camping, community, outdoors, home, world. Each had three levels of achievement bronze, silver, and gold. With the exception of the camping badge, which had its own requirements, the remaining for badges had subcategories. To earn a bronze you need to complete one task in each subcategory. To earn the silver you need to complete two more tasks in each subcategory. And to earn the gold you need to complete two more tasks in each subcategory.

Something New

The questions these last points asked have led me to reimagine my birthday challenge. The Birthday Challenge is changing in two ways:

1) I have decided that the next birthday challenge will be: the 45 Before 45. This will give me two years to complete the goals. Allows more time to complete 45 challenges. That first challenge only had 25 goals. Each year the increase in tasks has been a challenge in itself. 

This two year challenge will also overlap with the 20^th anniversary my first birthday challenge and the start anniversary of this blog. I am a little said there will not be a 44 Before 44 nor is there a clear 20^th Anniversary challenge. Yet, it is a good choice overall.

2) This might be nostalgia talking or my ADHD love for external rewards. There are going to be challenge badges. Well, more likely challenge stickers since I have yet to figure out how to have 45 unique badges embroidered and I am do not want to add a 46^th challenge of hand embroidering them myself. Each challenge will have a specific emblem, and three levels of achievement.

The final hold up has been working through how to best set up this new iteration of the Birthday Challenge. It is still in process and percolating. Creating this program has four parts as I see it: 1) choosing and defining the 45 challenges, 2) designing the actual badges, 3) write the explanations, 4) gather all the decisions in an aesthetic way. Any time I have sat down to work on the project I have felt pulled to do all four at once since they are all interconnected. This has result in frustration, paralysis, and discouragement. I was really beating myself up for not having got this all worked out yet. That was until I reminded myself that whole teams get together to write material for actual badge programs, and this is not my full-time job. This is for fun.

Instead of being not fun, we're going to come up with a new plan to get the challenge ready for 2024-2026. We are going to plan the plan:

The Planning Plan:

1) The first task is setting the 45 challenges. Over the next nine days, June 11-20. I will post five challenges a day. If my math maths, on June 20th all 45 should be announced. The goal order may change during a later step.

2) The badges will be designed between now and June 25.

3) June 25th there will be a blog post introducing the 45 badge designs, the final order, and introducing a PDF of the new (and hopefully aesthetically pleasing) Birthday Challenge Adventure Book.

4) June 26th will be the first review of the challenge progress. I think this is something that will also need improvement to match the new direction the challenge is going.

5) Lastly, I would also like to record and edit a video about the challenge but that might be a goal for July.

See you tomorrow with
the first five challenges!