There are 10 days of the year left — 11 if you include this evening — and I have 11 films left to complete my 100 Films Challenge (you can see the state of things on the tracker, here). It seems almost like a match made in heaven. But it isn’t. Quite the opposite, in fact. Which is why I’ve decided to abandon the challenge at this point.

Why? When I’m so close and it seems so possible, why?

Well, it may look doable on paper, but it isn’t in real life. Not this particular real life, for me, here in 2022. Not for any grand or scary reason; just simple scheduling.

Here’s the problem: having to watch specific films. The old-style “any 100 films in a year”? Easy peasy. Done it already, in fact (I mentioned it in November’s review). That’s why I created the new system: to make the Challenge more of a challenge. But it’s turned out to be too challenging this year. It’s my own fault — I was too laissez-faire earlier in the year. “There’s plenty of time to catch up.” Reader, there was not plenty of time. Or if there was, I still let it run out.

With the days of the year that are left, and knowing my personal schedule (of family get togethers and whatnot), some of it is still possible. Three DVDs? Not too hard. Three ‘series’ films? Yep, could do. One more film noir? A doddle. A wildcard attached to one of those three categories? Hardly a wildly difficult task.

Here’s the rub: Yi Yi for Blindspot, and The Name of the Rose and The Transformers: The Movie for WDYMYHS. One of them? Plausible. Two of them? At a stretch, possibly. All three? Nah. And with the aforementioned categories as well? Not on your nelly. I’ve just run out of time to make them all work with the other stuff I have going on for the rest of the year.

Also: even if I could get it done, it’d be pretty unrelenting, with little or no room for ‘free viewing’. Catching up on some 2022 misses? Forget it! Christmas films? Not bloody likely! A relaxing something-and-nothing flick on a lazy holiday afternoon? Get back to it, Challenger!

By choosing to abandon the uncompleteable challenge, I give myself permission to (perhaps) watch some of those things. Might I still tick off a few more films — watch some DVDs; progress some series; maybe even allow a little more noir into the white of Christmas? Perhaps. Perhaps not. That I don’t have to doesn’t mean I won’t. But choosing to declare the completion of the Challenge dead at this point means I can just enjoy the last week-and-a-half of the year, without the constant background nagging of how many films I still have to try to squeeze in.

So, was this new experiment a failure? Well, technically, yes — obviously, because I failed it. But that’s my own damn fault. It’ll be back in 2023, in a revised form. It was always my intention to revise it year by year (there’s a reason the film noir category is called “Genre”, not “Film Noir”, for example), and hopefully 2023’s version will be a little more completable.

Plus, I must try to remember that leaving such a big chunk ’til the last minute is not a very workable plan.

Anyway, hopefully this won’t be the last you see of me in 2022 (I’d like to get a bit more caught up on reviews); and then it’ll be the start of 2023 — time to look back at 2022 (I’ve got my usual suite of year-end posts planned (yep, there are gonna be statistics!)), and to begin afresh (for my 17th year).