It’s almost becoming a part time job now promoting and updating this blog. Again it is all optional, voluntary work but it needs to be done if I am to be successful enough in raising the optimum cash for the five charities.
To do this I’m kind of running this like a business now, contacting radio stations, newspapers, promoting the socks off everything so I can try and get people’s awareness.

What I want to say next is important – I know I go on a lot about everything to do with these challenges, some of my friends have heard me repeat what I’m doing so many times I bet they’re getting sick of it. However, I don’t EVER want to appear that what I’m doing is far more important than anything else I see on Facebook or whatever when someone is doing something for charity – God No! Someone said this to me last night and it hurt me a bit as that is NOT AT ALL what this set of challenges is about. Someone pretty much said “I won’t accept that you’re not doing this for personal gain”. Yeah I was quite surprised (silently gutted) by this 😦 and again absolutely NOT what this whole challenge was set up for in the first place.

I don’t expect praise but don’t get me wrong it’s very nice and helps me in my quest. But when you get the opposite you can’t help take a long look at yourself and question or look back on what you’ve done to see if you’ve made a poor judgement or error somewhere to deserve the negativity.

The only reason why I am promoting this to death, setting up pages etc is for the money raised for the charities. I absolutely understand that in this day everyone gets inundated with sponsorship forms and charity requests and I understand that not everyone can afford to donate to everything they see. What I’m doing, for example making the challenges as horrific as possible, is hopefully enough to make people think – yeah fair play I’ll give whatever I can to this bloke.

I completely appreciate that there will be some people who can’t donate and that’s completely understandable – all I could ever ask from you is to promote this event on your social media and for a bit of encouragement along the way. However, if there are people who are touch and go with donating and if it is possible to dip their hands into their pockets then this is absolutely why I am going about it the way that I am.

I suppose it’s like getting the constant Radio 1 or Sport Relief donation requests, there are some who donate every time, some who do not, and some who might….. until they actually give in because they hear that Jo Whiley is running 26 hours straight on a moving treadmill around the country – a massive recent achievement that will get those touch and go donaters like myself, donating!

If anybody does have some advice or suggestions, positive OR negative, especially if you have experience in fundraising then I would absolutely LOVE to hear it – my email is paul@meista.co.uk

Thank you to EVERYONE who has given me the support and donation promises thus far! It is this which spurs me on to get this done! I look forward to the end of September!