NaBloPoMo stands for National Blog Posting Month and I didn't read the details of it until tonight. It started November 1st and involves blogging about a specific theme every day for the month of November.
Since I got in on it a little late, I'm not exactly going to follow the rules. Instead, I am just going to try and blog every day in November. Since I missed a few days, I will write some extra posts so that I eventually have 30 posts, one for each day of the month.
NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. It also occurs every November. The rules are that you must write a 50,000 word novel between midnight November 1st and midnight November 30. No one ever reads your novel unless you want them to. To get counted as a participant who completes a novel, you just upload your writing to the website and if it's 50,000 words or more, you get a little certificate. I participated in 2002 and 2004. I doubt that anyone will ever be allowed to read either of my novels. I'm not sure that I ever want to reread them. They were both completely awful. But I'm proud of myself for having participated and I'll probably do it again someday.
So writing 30 blog posts in a month is a piece of cake compared to putting out 50,000 words.
Blogging and writing novels is something I never imagined doing when I was younger. I hated writing. I actually chose my college major, mathematics, because I figured it would have the least amount of writing assignments. Seriously. I did actually like math but I disliked writing more. My university did require a writing class specific to every major so I had to write several papers about math but I'm still pretty sure that I wrote less than most other majors.
Somehow as I got older, I found that I liked writing. It's a way for me to vent my feelings when I'm mad or frustrated but also for me to express when I'm happy and grateful.
Right after Brian and I started dating, I came back to the States while he was in Korea. Each week that I was gone, I wrote him a long letter. After we got married and he left for his first deployment, I wrote to him every day for the first several months. On weekdays, I would just write a postcard (I had hundreds collected and so I'd just pick one at random each day). Then on weekends, I would write a two-page letter each day on some funky Korean stationery that I had been given as a gift. I learned to write letters from my mom who wrote me once a week while I was in college and then every day for over a year while I lived in New York. My mom's letters got me through a very hard time when I first started teaching and I hope my letters to Brian helped him while he was in Iraq.
On his second deployment, my letters to Brian were very scarce. I had a new baby and rarely found the time but I managed to send a few. This time, I didn't send a single one and I feel horrible but with two kids, things were crazy right after he left. I have time to write now but they have no more mail service so I can't send him anything. Hopefully he knows that I still love him anyway.
Someday when my kids go off to college or move away to a different city, I'll write them letters occasionally to let them know that I'm thinking of them. If I'm lucky, they might write back.
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