Day 30: 30-day #noFacebook challenge - Time to move on

Today's the last day of my 30-day #noFacebook challenge, and I can safely say that my habits have been altered. I was sufficiently able to curb my Facebook use, and I don't think I'll ever return to the way things were before. I feel so much less looming pressure to sit and wait for notifications on something that I've said or posted about.

I am getting used to being alone with my thoughts, again, to not needing the validation that I'm witty or smart or deep. I can just be me and not worry about who I'm presenting myself as. I am me.

As the great Chuck Wendig so eloquently put it in his blog post today: "I will try to be present when the world asks that I be present."

And now it's time to move on.

Yesterday I mentioned a new 30-day challenge I'm going to embark on. I won't post about it in the same way I have the #noFacebook challenge, but it's another important one for me. For the next 30 work days (Monday thru Friday) I will spend at least 2 hours working outside my home.

See, I'm a freelance editor of novels. I get to work at home and read some pretty cool stories, and help authors sculpt their manuscripts into the best book they can write. It's an amazing job, but it takes a lot of time behind the screen. I have been going a little crazy being at my computer in my house all day every day.

But I also have a little anxiety disorder that makes the thought of taking myself anywhere else to work seem like this huge, horrible, scary thing that could never be accomplished. Because what about buses and finding power for my laptop and not being approached by weird scary people and getting thrown out of somewhere because I've been there too long and they don't like me anymore and being hungry or thirsty or needing a bathroom...? All the worst case scenarios I can think of... right now...

Obviously those are all not life-threatening problems and most are easily surmountable, but when you have anxiety disorder it makes everything seem unsolvable and life-threatening. So... yesterday, with a little extra encouragement from my good friend Gabriela over at DIY MFA, I ventured out into the wild for the first of my thirty days of working outside my home.

Yesterday's plan was to hit the library at 10, work for a couple hours, and then reward myself with a tasty lunch that was on the bus route home. Only the library didn't open until 1! (A worst case scenario I hadn't accounted for.) I almost went home right then, but it was my first day of challenging myself and I was determined. So I walked a mile to the downtown area and found some food and a seat with a plug next to it at Panera. And I spent three hours plowing through a frustrating manuscript to finish it instead of needing to work on it again today.

Today I'm at the library. Got here at 1:30. I got the bus schedule wrong, so I ended up spending an extra ten minutes waiting at the stop because it wasn't long enough for me to walk back to my apartment and wait, but now I'm here I have a good seat with a plug for my laptop and I'm shaking off the frustration that the library opened at 10 today... I'll get it right eventually.

My goal in all this is to face a fear, no matter how trivial it may seem to the rest of the world... and to eventually give my brain some external stimulus and help me feel more connected to the city in which I live.

So, reader, what about you? What fears do you need to face? How can you push yourself to try something new and different, even if it's a little scary? What new habit do you want to cultivate that I can encourage you in?