Screw Work Let's Play 30 Day Challenge

I feel like I've been wandering in the wilderness for a long time. I'm not sure what I'm meant to be doing in life, what my purpose is (apart from raising my family) and how to make the best use of any gifts I may have. I'm sure I ought to be having more fun than I am. So when I came across Screw Work, Let's Play I was intrigued and fascinated. And when I saw they were starting a 30-day challenge to run from 1st-30th April, I was tempted. The Challenge is to actually take action and do a 'play project'. So many of us think of things that we *might* like to do, but we're not sure enough that it would lead to a job/money/a future so we hold back, stay in our secure but unfulfilling jobs and never break out and try something different. So the SWLP idea is to just play! Find something that I would love to do, that would be fun, that uses my skills/talents/personality, to explore whether I really do enjoy it and want to do more of it, to find out which bits work and which don't, which aspects inspire me and which don't, and see what comes out of it.

I only joined the Challenge on 31st March. I kept reading the e-mails about it but felt I wasn't 'good enough' to do this kind of thing. That everybody else would be high-flyers, go-getters and confident extroverts, whereas I have largely been a 'go-with-the-flow' kind of person, maybe a bit lazy, unfocused, unsure of what I wanted or where I wanted to go, so not really going anywhere much. And anyway, I didn't know what project I wanted to do. But at the last minute I realised I really didn't want to let *another* opportunity slip by; that I could change my image of who I am and what kind of an impact I can make on the world. That I can *make things happen*! Wow, how cool is that!

So, without letting myself think about it too much further, I signed up. I watched the video on how to choose a play-project, and wrote a list of ideas. I came up with several - there are all sorts of things that interest me - but there's no doubt about the top two.

Idea 1: Move forward with my 16-year dream of working in academic nutrition, by writing a systematic review for the Cochrane Database on an area of nutrition related to pregnancy/maternal/infant health. I drool over academic jobs such as working at the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit, but I am the parent of 2 young girls, one with special needs, and don't want a full-time out-of-the-house job. I think in the end I might like this to lead towards editing a nutrition journal of some sort, but that's too far in the future to be sure yet.

Idea 2: Go and do a horse-whispering course, to learn Monty Roberts' methods of training and helping horses. I don't think I want to work in this field, i.e. I don't want to be outside all the time in the freezing cold and mud (been there, done that), but on the other hand it totally fascinates me, uplifts me, inspires me and I just want to be able to do it! No idea what the outcome would be there, except that it does feed in to how I deal with my daughter's particular issues. But it would need around £500 to go on the UK-based training course, and I just don't have that right now. So while I would still love to do this, I can't do it on the time-frame for this project.

So Idea 1 wins, for now. I'll give it a go, see how it turns out and whether I still enjoy it like I used to.