NaBloPoMo 2014

It's that time again. National Blog Post Month, more commonly known as NaBloPoMo, when thousands of bloggers commit to posting a blog post every day through November. Originally NaBloPoMo was a spoof of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), but it became so popular women's blogging network Blogher took it over and made it a thing. Although the challenge runs every month, November is the big month, the month when people win prizes. The first time I did it, two years ago, I won a $150 Visa card. That's the only time I've ever been paid for blogging, so it felt like a windfall.

Of course the elephant in the middle of the room is that I haven't posted anything here since the end of June, the last time I did one of the small NaBloPoMo's. Sorry about that. I have reasons. I'll write about a few of them this month.

One of the excuses I give myself and others for not writing here is that I'm lazy I don't have enough time, because I'm doing things like this.

(Photo credit Darrell McKinney.)

Tonight instead of writing I was slamming a bamboo rod on the ground with hands so cold and numb I might really have been dead and parading to a Dia de los Muertos celebration. My co-teacher had set up a beautiful ofrenda, or altar, for our boss, who passed away just three days before school started. Yes, a lot has happened since I last wrote here.  And then I went to another party with Drake and Montana. So by the time I had time to write, it was after 2:00 am.

What that excuse really says though is that I'm making other choices about my minutes and hours. Choices that don't feed my need to write and publish. I settle for tossing off quick, clever paragraphs on Facebook or I write whiny long-hand pages in a journal or, worse yet, I read other people's blogs until it's too late to write on my own. Every time I write, I'm making a choice. Every time I don't write, I'm also making a choice to put something else ahead of doing something I love hate love hate love. I'm conflicted.

It's always a challenge to publish a post every day, but I know not writing affects my mental health and turns other people into total assholes makes me irritable. Which is why just writing this post made me want to throw my computer (it's a slow-ass piece of shit and will probably punish me for writing that) out the window. Just as I was going to insert that photo up there, my browser decided it didn't want to recognize my ethernet. So it said I wasn't connected to the internet. My computer said I was. They argued. I clicked and clicked and finally brushed my teeth and got ready for bed. Then I returned for one last go at it. By the time I got back on that famous highway to the interwebs, the clock had ticked past 3:00 am, and I'd lost part of what I'd written here. Hmmm. Maybe I have good reasons for being irritable after all.

Anyway, fuck it. I'm going to bed. Good night. I'll see you tomorrow. Or you'll see me. I guess that's really the way this works.