My students are wrapping up their 30-day challenges this weekend. One of my students, who challenged herself to drink more water, wrote in her journal this week that she now can’t go long without drinking water. It has now become a habit. Research states that 40% of our daily actions are habits. They great thing about habits is that they do not require will power – they are programmed actions into our life that we automatically expect to complete. Once you get use to exercising every morning, it is harder not to exercise than it is to exercise.

Before my 30-day blogging challenge, I felt a bit at loose ends as a writer. Last summer, I completed my dissertation, which was the accumulation of years of researching and writing on new media and critical pedagogy. While I enjoyed much of the process, I also felt burnt out on academic writing at the end. Before pursuing my Ph.D., I was a journalist and a creative writer. My blogging challenge allowed me to begin to put the pieces of my many writing selves together.

It also helped me move from drafting to sharing. While I have written for years, I rarely share my words. Writing is immensely personal. I put off exposure through lengthy editing, rewriting the same paragraphs and pages over and over. Blogging does not allow for shyness or perfectionism. As Andrew Sullivan once wrote, “You can’t have blogger’s block. You have to express yourself now, while your emotions roil, while your temper flares, while your humor lasts. You can try to hide yourself from real scrutiny, and the exposure it demands, but it’s hard.”

What I like best about these challenges, though, are the unexpected benefits. For me, it was how blogging shaped my daily life. You cannot blog if you are not thinking, experiencing, and reading. I became more mindful of what I was doing so that I could articulate the purpose, and I pursued more out of my box experiences in order to have something interesting to share.

Now, I am learning more about my relationship with food and my food’s relationship with my body through my gluten-free challenge. Wish me luck!

In the spirit of “you won’t know until you try it,” I began my 30-day gluten-free challenge today. As I previously wrote, my doctor believes in lifestyle changes over medications and that the secret to improving my digestive health is to go gluten-free. Her other key piece of advice is to chew my food 50 times, a feat I have yet to achieve.

I’m beginning today, in order complete the challenge before July 13th, because I cannot have a birthday without cake. Perhaps before then I will have perfected a gluten-free cake. However, I am probably the only one in my house that would eat it. I did beg my husband to join me on this journey of sacrifice in the name of science. He, like others I have discussed this with, believe that because civilization has thrived through many eras of breaking bread, it must not truly be harmful.

I understand this point of view. The counterpoint I read discusses how the grain of today is not the grain of yesteryear. It has become increasingly processed and genetically modified. Another counterpoint is that the ratio of fat, protein, and carbohydrates was radically different in earlier times as well. Hence, the Paleo Diet, which I’m still not convinced is a legitimate representation of caveman cuisine. Perhaps, this will be a future challenge.

Honestly, I am not sure what I want the outcome of this test to be. If it is beneficial, it means that I can never eat grain again with a clear conscious. If it is not beneficial, it means I need to find a new doctor, who is not swept up in the current diet fad. So far, I’m just hungry and moody. I understand that I am in what is called a detoxing period. Only 29 more days…

Today’s consumption:

Egg whites with sauteed “power greens,” an orange pepper, and onions

A luna bar

An Activa Greek Yogurt

Carrot sticks

Peanut butter and celery

Baked tofu stirfry with tofu noodles

Stoneyfield Strawberry Banana Yogurt (designed for toddlers, perfect for end of the night, there is gluten in my Ben& Jerry tantrums)

What drives us to overburden ourselves? According to researchers, we, the overcommitters, operate under the misconception that we will have more time tomorrow than we do today. However, this mythical tomorrow full of free time never arrives, so we scramble to meet the promises and commitments we made. I knew I had a problem today when an old friend cancelled on our plans tonight, and part of me was relieved. In my effort to make the most of my time, I left myself no time.

The night before I was in a professional development class to become a better reading instructor. Today, I had my spring teaching load, my writing center duties, and popped into a podcasting class to steal some learning. How does one steal learning you ask? Well, when you are so overcommitted you cannot attend a whole class, you ask the instructor to let you sit in on half the class. I try to contribute knowledge during discussions, but really I am just a freeloader in the backrow doing some live Tweeting. This is all before school lets out and I begin my other full-time job as a parent.

So when my friend cancelled, I decided to stay in and enjoy a little reprieve from the pinball machine action that keeps me popping through the shoot. Okay, not really. I’m just moving from one machine to another—external commitments to internal commitments. Exhibit A: Blog post. The productivity machine is hungry, so I feed it.

My goal for the magical day known as tomorrow, where anything is possible and time is limitless, is to budget some downtime with a glass of wine on the back porch and invest in the art of doing nothing. Of course, to do this, I will probably have to research various philosophical theories on ” doing nothing,” take notes while sitting on the porch, perhaps live Tweet descriptions of the sounds I hear, and then go in the house and write about the experience.