I’ve noticed people doing this neat thing called Inktober in which (I gather) you draw something every day of the month. Everything that follows in this post is tongue-in-cheek and is just me being silly and not denigrating people who do these sorts of month-long challenges. I’ve done (well, failed to do) a few myself! I think they’re neat ways to motivate yourself to do a thing you’ve had trouble forming the habit of doing. But being who I am, I can’t have a one-off, (very) mildly humorous thought and leave it be. I have to poke and prod any potential little humor opportunity until I’ve teased all the pleasure out of it. Read on for my good-natured ruination of the “blog a thing every day in a month” challenges.

It all started when I kept hearing about Inktober. What if (I said to myself — these asinine things almost always start with a “what if”), since I can’t draw at all, I put my own twist on it and made it Oct-toe-ber and just posted a photo of one of my toes every day. Sure, I’d only get through part of the month or have to get creative by staging my toes in different ways or asking people if I could post photos of their toes (what one will do for art!), but it’d be something. (No it wouldn’t. I was being silly, picking and pulling at the thing to remove all real humor while pretending that I was actually being funny, which is how like 90% of my jokes go, which maybe explains some things about why I laugh at more of my gags than others do.)

Not content to leave it at that, I thought about blogging challenges I might propose for each of the other months too (putting aside the more established ones that already have a foothold, like the familiar NaSomethingWriMo challenges). Here they go.

June-uary. Re-publish every post you published on the corresponding day last June. You’re on your own for the 31st.

Fibruary. Publish a fib — not an outright lie, but just a little fib.

March. It’s hard to get too creative with this one. March around your neighborhood and write about the experience. March is a weak link in this series. Stage a 31-day protest about how weak a link it is. Hold a march each day. Post about it.

Ape-ril. Post something about an ape. If that’s not especially inspiring, consider celebrating Apiary-il instead and post something each day about beekeeping.

May. This is another tough one. Consider it a wildcard. I guess… you may post whatever you like each day.

Jan. Re-publish every post you published on the corresponding day last June. You may donate the extra one to the prior month’s quota.

Ju-lie. This one’s sort of like Fibruary, only you tell real lies this month.

Dog-ust. Post something every day about a dog. This one’s a hair less un-nuanced than it seems, since we do talk about the dog days of August. If you don’t like dogs or have ready access to information about them, you could go with Ore-gust (write about mining different ores) or UGG-ust (write about your stylish boots) or Auger-ust (there’s potentially some overlap with Ore-gust here).

Suptember. Post something each day about either your supper (it’s a good month to phone it in with some photos) or about different experiences you’ve had either greeting or being greeted colloquially (“s’up?”).

Oct-toe-ber we’ve already got covered. If you’re squeamish about feet, you could go with any number of other things like Rocktober (stones or music or sometimes, when rolling, both), Bocktober (chickens), Bachtober (music), Croctober (more stylish shoes), Jacques-Cousteau-ber (marine exploration). Really the possibilities for this one are almost endless. A colleague recently proposed that the favorite month of the humble potato was Octuber, so you could go that route if you don’t have eyes for any of these others (if you really like potatoes and don’t mind taking some more liberties with the naming conventions, you could do back to back months with Spudtember and Octuber).

Nah-vember. Nah, don’t worry about this month. Take some time off to cultivate that beard you’ve always meant to grow for Movember.

D-cember. Every post this month is about the letter D.