My challenge was to design my own two day challenge (more like day and a half), and carry it out. To be honest, even the simple act of brainstorming proved to be a challenge for me. But when this idea was thrown at me, I knew I had to do it. I set out on Monday with a definition of success for myself: Talk to three business owners and extract their stories of how and why they got into the business, and then write it all up and publish it as a Kindle Book by noon the next day. I knew that I could do this easily within a week, but the time restraint is what really pushed me.
I decided to begin this challenge as a listener. I wanted to learn everything I could from the subjects of my interviews. As I talked with Josh, Rebecca, Nancy and Michelle, I realized even more about myself. As I saw the passion in their eyes as they talked, I realized what is important in life; it is more than important and necessary to follow your heart and gut and go for what you believe in. After talking with these people that are so passionate about their fields and had taken the necessary steps to create their businesses into places of joy, made today one of the most inspirational days of my month here in Paonia. I sat and listened with eager ears; I really couldn’t get enough. Now that I am writing up all of the interviews, I can hear all of the little things that are so easily looked over in a conversation. Now I can hear the little laughs that come after the confession of the failures. I hear their tones pick up and their speech get faster when they start talking about their favorite part of their stories . I enjoyed talking with these people so much and am so honored that they were willing to share their time, their stories, and their passions with me.
I am also excited to be able to document this little piece of Paonia and become a published Kindle author. Even though the process is almost TOO easy these days to get your book published , it still feels really great to do it.
Last night I learned a lesson in procrastination, a lesson I just seem to keep putting off learning: DON’T PROCRASTINATE. I had a great time giggling and dancing and eating trail mix until midnight, until I realized my very real time crunch to complete the challenge. So from midnight until 3am, I was a total machine. I just knocked it out of the park (with a few 2 minutes naps here and there) and got probably half way through. This morning, fueled on 4.5 hours of sleep, I was able to finish the last interview and whole Kindle publishing process within 2 hours, so that’s pretty exciting.
All in all, I am proud of myself, and I think if I could change anything, I would have tried to interview even more people and document even more of Paonia’s stories.