To Nano or Not to Nano, That is the Question

I keep see-sawing back and forth about this year's National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo). It was such a good thing for me last year. Despite having written loads of things previously, it was the first time I accomplished 50,000 words on any one manuscript and the first time I continuously worked on something like that for almost 30 days in a row. The freedom to write without worrying about failing was exhilarating. The encouragement of watching my peers crank out the words (especially Cardiogirl, who totally kept me inspired by always keeping ahead of the pack) was tremendously motivating. Mostly, it was just a phenomenal thing for me to have a goal, a vision, and to be plugging away at it, instead of merely passing my days here in the barren wasteland.

So why, then, am I dragging my heels about participating in the Nanowrimo reindeer games this year?? I guess, primarily I am worried that I will not have the gumption to see it through. Lately, everything has become far more overwhelming than it should be.

Case in point, Trevor's classroom Halloween party. I have agonized over that darn thing for too many nights, waking and finding myself unable to go back to sleep because I was worried about whether things would turn out all right. I didn't want to end up paying for the whole thing, but also didn't want to collect money and then end up not requiring as much as people sent in.

I didn't want to plan too few things, in case we ran out of ideas or something failed and we needed a back-up plan. I wasn't sure about the snack. I didn't want the kids to take home another useless craft like a spider headband.

In the end, I clearly over-analyzed the whole deal and one other parent even boldly told me to my face that I had spent too much time thinking about the party. She agreed to man the craft station where 5 groups of 5 students came to make an ABC pattern beaded necklace. It was obviously too much for the students because when they made their way to my station, I could see that the students had only beaded half of the beads I had provided.

I barely survived manning my snack station. With each rotation of five students, I had ten minutes to dole out mini pizza crusts (that I had prepared the night before, making my own dough since only five parents ended up sending in money), spread a spoonful of sauce for those who wished it, hand out a slice of cheese (and help unwrap, since most of them struggled with this) and a toothpick, for them to carve their jack-o-lantern face pieces.

The Queasy Bake Oven did indeed eat most of the toppings and none of the kids seems all that excited about the oven (besides Trevor, who was sad that I wouldn't let him be one of the ones to bake his pizza in the oven). I'd say most of the kids had a shell-shocked look about them (but then, perhaps I did, as well). The girls seemed to wonder why the Easy-Bake Oven had a spider on it.

The other three stations seemed to have too much time. For games, the kids tossed bean-bags into a Halloween bucket. For a counting station, I had them guess how many candy corn filled the candy corn container and then guess how many popcorn kernels it would take to cover a ghost drawing. Finally, I asked the teacher to lead an erasing game (where the students were to erase items from the board after figuring out a rhyme). She must not have felt comfortable drawing the items on the white board, so she read the books that I had brought and told a Halloween participation story I had copied from the computer.

I'm sure in the end, the kids had a good time. I went home with a massive migraine and a general feeling of self-doubt (asking myself over and over again why this has become such a difficult thing for me to handle, when I handled parties and more, with ease, in the past).


And now, I am facing the question of Nanowrimo. The badge alone makes me want to join in. It has such a cool monkey (and I've always been a sucker for monkeys). It looks like it was made just for me ... just to make me want to participate.

I keep telling myself, "what is the worst that could happen?" So what if I tell the whole world that I am going to attempt to win the Nanowrimo challenge again, while knowing that I don't have nearly the steam built up for the whole process that I had last year, and end up falling on my face? In fact, how many people are even going to care whether I meet the goal this year or not?

As for me, it is probably better for me to have something to focus on than to have nothing to focus on. Indeed, my old counsellor has recently enlightened me to the fact that I choose to sleep in the "victim" tent.

There was a great deal of truth to his assessment. It is far easier for me to sit around and moan about how unfulfilling my life is and how much better off I'd be if I didn't have to live in this isolated house, constantly pulled every which direction by the needs of the four males who rely on my feminine care. I want, desperately, to be happy ... but seem to expect that happiness to come from somewhere outside of myself.

I need to address this. I need to figure out how to make myself happy. I need to learn how to meet my own needs. Perhaps, I do need to do Nanowrimo, after all. But, for tonight ... the jury is still out. I have one more day to decide, right?