Thirty Hubs in Thirty Days Challenge - 5 Days and 10 Hubs Left

March 8, 2010

On Friday, February 12, 2010, I undertook a challenge from fellow Hubber, Darlene Sabella to join her in writing 30 Hubs in 30 days.

She had issued the challenge on February 11th with a comment below, which she had posted on my Hub Honoring Dogs During Chinese New Year Festival

Darlene Sabella says:
3 weeks ago

Chuck I just love this wonderful fantastic hub, however they said I was born in the year of the rat! uk that is not something I can accept. LOL, I love those wonderful pictures, and hey check I doing the 30 in 30 days, I am in my third day, why not join me? We can push each other to to finish the challange. Great hub, thanks for sharing.

I pushed myself and began writing and publishing one Hub a day. On the fifth day I published a Hub entitled Accepting a Challenge to Write 30 Hubs in 30 Days.

In that Hub I discussed some of the reasons why I decided to undertake the challenge.

I also expressed concerns about the time commitment as I have a full time job managing a vocational training program at the college where I work.

In addition to my full time job I also teach an online class part-time and have a small network marketing business I am trying to get started.

To add a little humor, I went on to say that I felt that I needed some help with this project but that my wife and two sons who still live at home were all too busy.  So, in an act of desperation I decided to hire our dog Chika.  After all, all she does is alternate between playing with her toys and napping.

So my wife and I got out the camera and arranged both my laptop and netbook on the table and took pictures of Chika posing as if she was really helping me to write.   
Of course Chika doesn't know the first thing about using a computer, let alone how to compose a story.  She doesn't even know how to locate or use the space bar on the computer let alone actually type a word.

But this is not to say that she didn't work and help me. During our 20 minute photo shoot, she had to stand on her hind legs in front of a computer which is hard work for someone designed to use four legs to stand.

Then there were the glasses. Try putting on the glasses belonging to someone with a different prescription than yours or putting glasses on when you don't need them and everything is blurred. Chika had the same problem and then we compounded it by putting sun glasses on her. She looked cool in the pictures but I doubt she could see anything.

Of course there were also the the pictures we took of her wearing goggles, which she hated, and then rejected them as not giving her the look we wanted for the article. However, this goes with the territory when you are a model.

While Chika didn't produce anything in terms of written content her pictures have added considerable spice to the Hubs I have written and have also generated some great comments.

Readers of my first Hub featuring Chika loved her. Here are some samples of their comments:

Chika is soooooooo cute!!! The Hub is good too! :)

We all need a little helper as cute as yours!

What a wonderful little helper you have!

What a bright and perky assistant. You are a very lucky guy. Good help is hard to find!

Can we borrow your assistant if we need help? Chicka is to cute, loved the pictures.

Chuck - Your assistant is very photogenic and appears to be computer literate (?). If she knows how to use the phone, I'll hire her in a minute. Can she travel?

Go Chicka Go!

And the above excerpts were just from the Hub, Accepting a Challenge to Write 30 Hubs in 30 Days, in which I introduced Chika as my assistant.

This was written on my fifth day of the challenge (February 15, 2010) and was my fifth Hub as I had been consistant in writing one Hub per day - this changed a week or so later when I lost my Internet service and had to wait 5 days before my service provider could get a tech to my home to diagnose and fix the problem (more about this in a separate Hub).

A few days later in my Hub Charlie Wilson's War - Movie Review Chika received this comment:

Your dog's writing skills are excellent, I am impressed.

By my ninth Hub, How to Find a Job in Ireland When You Don't Live There, Chika's popularity began soaring with:

What a Great hub, you are rock-in my friend, but tell all our writer friends that you assistant is really writing all these wonderful hubs, I know you didn't write this one for sure, and you never give credit to your poor sad doggie. He is so smart and I think it is time for you to come clean! Great hub mr. doggie, you are fantastic.

Give my regards to Chika. She looks like a first-class executive assistant.

In my Hub Why St David is the Only Welsh Saint in the Roman Catholic Church's General Calendar of Saints, I was being described in the comment below as if I were Mr. Scrooge in Dickens' novel A Christmas Carol.

That night as I worked on the next day's Hub I had visions of being hauled into court and charged with animal cruelty or violating the state wage and compensation laws - or both! Meanwhile, Chika simply looked up from her bed on the sofa for a moment and then went back to her nap.

Wow, what happened to doing shorter hubs LOL, your are working poor Chika to death. Poor baby, if you come over and help me I will triple the doggie bones, He, (Chuck) is giving you, but don't tell him. I think this is an outstanding hub, and yes in history the people did decide. Um, people don't really decide on anything anymore. We are working our fingers to the bone, no pun intended my dear Chika...

In the Hub Thomas McKean colonial Patriot and Irish Signer of the Declaration of Independence Chika got some advice on how to improve her writing and that was to ditch the dark glasses so she could see the keyboard better. Of course this advice assumed that Chika knew how to use a keyboard in the first place.

By the way, which hubs did Chika write? You might want to have her take off her dark glasses. She'll be able to see the keyboard so much better.

A couple of Hubs later, my Hub, Irish Signer of Declaration of Independence Thomas Lynch Jr and His Tragic End, I again found myself being portrayed as the heartless boss who sits back and lets his poor employee do all the work.

This, of course is a credit to both Chika's skill as a model and the person who taught her to model, my beautiful wife, Bella, a former semi-professional model herself (as well as the photographer for this series of pictures).

I, of course, can console myself with the knowledge that I must be a pretty fair actor myself as I came across very well posing as the heartless boss.

how are you doing, Oh I know you are relaxing and enjoying your coffee, while your best friend is doing all the work. But, I am not here to judge, lalalalala

We only had the one photo shoot for the series and for consistency kept reusing the same photos of Chika and me throughout the series.

This apparently caused Chika's public image and reader's opinion of her to change from that of being my poor exploited assistant to a sucker who could be exploited by others as evidenced by this comment in the seventeenth Hub, Why Retirees May Be Reluctant to Embrace Annuities:

Great Hub Chika, Could you please come over here and help me for a while, your buddy Chuck has taken over the advantage by making you work. Now it is my turn...call me okay? (Note to Chika - this is what is known as jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire!).

So, this is where our little project stands with five days and ten Hubs left to go in order to successfully complete 30 Hubs in 30 Days.