Halloween / Nanowrimo Eve

At the cafe with a writer buddy, after a morning where it seemed everything was conspiring to challenge me. Every task felt difficult and cumbersome. I think I simply slept too late and waited to long for that first cup of coffee, and as a result was running behind and with a headache for three hours.

But the dog has been walked, the food boxes have been delivered, the daughters have been dropped off at their respective locations. R. is doing her weekly volunteering stint at a therapeutic equestrian center, S. is dancing, and D. will probably be putting more mud on the walls in the entrance way.

And I am (in theory) focusing on writing. With a cup of coffee.

It's a beautiful October day, clear and not too cold. Halloween has almost always been my favorite holiday, and I would normally be full of Fall euphoria. But any light-heartedness has been tainted by the sobering news of an H1N1 diagnosis for one of S's closest friends from dance (they even share a locker, which I've since wiped down). I've also just had news of two deaths in a local family from the virus as well. It's easy to brush it off until it hits so close to home. But this is, as I say, sobering.

On another note, tomorrow (well, midnight tonight, actually) Nanowrimo starts. The goal: write 50,000 words toward a novel in 30 days.

Why? Because I writing is satisfying for me, and I like to do it. And I clearly like a challenge like this. There's also the possibility that I can come up with something worth editing and sending out into the world. And besides, if I can jump-start the habit of writing daily, after November I can apply that same time and discipline to poetry. I also have this crazy naive notion that poems will come as I work on the novel. I do believe that creativity breeds creativity, and that opening up oneself to the Muse pays off.

Sure, I don't seem to have the time or energy for such shenanigans. But it's only one month, and it's this type of forced time-constrained focus that enables me to drop away the unessential busy-work that otherwise consumes my weeks.

I've started reading The Four Hour Workweek, and although I'm not far into the book, the concept of changing how I look at what I do with my time has already inspired me.

So I'm going to do this. I'll keep track of word counts here, which means that Nanowrimo brings the added benefit of me blogging more often, and keeping tabs on a more regular basis with my FB and personal email accounts. If I'm not on the computer, I'm not online. And if I'm not online, I'm disconnected and behind in correspondence. Sometimes that's just what I need as an overwhelmed introvert. But a month of reading and responding to messages instead of shoving them under the cyber carpet won't do me any harm, either.

How long, how long

What a tremendous and unprecedented hiatus. Even knowing how busy I've been and having decades of first-hand experience with my propensity to procrastinate and withdraw, I'm amazed at the extended blog-silence.

So much has happened since June. Time marches on, moments well worth recording come and go, and I think, "I should blog this. I should write about that." But as someone once told me, "'Should' implies a negative," and the moments remain unrecorded. Many will be forgotten, unless they surface at a random time and are written later. Not that writing immortalizes, anyway. Certainly not with the volumes of thoughts and musings and personal histories being poured onto virtual pages. Who would read it all? Who, in the long run and the scheme of human history, will care?

I've been well, but overwhelmed. Something about shifts in schedules - my own and the kids' - and about new stresses (private high school expenses, heavy workload, puppy, home remodel, being part of 3 carpools) and the loss of old coping mechanisms (I miss the gym!) has lead me to retreat and avoid the computer entirely. I hardly read friends' blogs. I have a FaceBook account but don't sign in very often. I get up, go to work from 6-2, drive kids (my own and other peoples') from place to place from 2-6, then do dinner, homework supervision, dog walking, chores. And I call it a day as early as I can, avoiding anything extra.

But I've always had resurgences of creativity in October, and I'm well into the month and looking forward to participating in Nanowrimo again in November.

I don't know how I'll write 50,000 words in a month. But I know I do well with outside accountability when it comes to writing, and I know that writing does me almost as much good as regular exercise - keeps me sane and stable, helps me cope with stress. And creativity breeds creativity. And writing puts me online, where reading and writing blog posts and being inspired by, and connected to, friends, can happen more regularly. These are all good things.

I may not write posts as frequent, insightful, compelling or moving as those of my friends (see links on sidebar), but writing is how I process thoughts and feelings, and not processing thoughts and feelings is so detrimental to my health. So here's to pulling myself up out of isolated silence and back into the world of words.