Sometimes we keep learning the same lesson over and over again: never announce that you want something, because the minute you do, everything will get in the way of your obtaining it.
I was planning to participate in National Novel Writing Month (also called NaNoWriMo for short), taking up the challenge to write 50,000 words during the thirty days of November. Of course there are the usual obstacles like Thanksgiving and Black Friday to contend with, but when my own equipment turns on me, maybe it’s time to quit.
On November 1, I found out I didn’t have Internet, and that lasted two days. So I figured I could try writing at work with the guest WiFi, but my attempts to get to the office early were met by a traffic jam, and I got out of the house ten minutes late in the first place. Being somebody who doesn’t always get an assigned break and, when she does, uses it for the restroom (which is much needed at a certain age), I’ve managed to squeeze in about twenty minutes since the event started.
So my first four days have been met by not only those problems, but no cloud access, so I can’t get to what I managed to write, and no quiet time at all for the past 96 hours that I wasn’t trying to sleep away work-related stress, eating or, shall we say, biological time. Have you ever used a portable computer on the john? Me, neither. I’m not one of those who takes phone calls in the restroom, and I certainly don’t want to play Edward Bulwer Lytton (the author of the famous opening line, “It was a dark and stormy night”) in the bathroom. Though the idea of writing a good line might be beneficial to my digestive system.
So what does one do when you’re supposed to have written over 6,000 words already, and you’ve got about 300? Thank God for every word one gets put down somewhere that it can be counted, and cuss through the whole process.
Kids don’t know how easy they have it when they want something. Somebody usually does it for them, like buying that hot toy for the holidays. Then when childhood ends, we end up chasing a carrot called dreams on an impossibly long stick. We chase it until death makes it unnecessary. Giving up is not an option. Failure means at least I wrote something, but not enough.
The day still has 24 hours in it (and this night we get 25 because daylight saving ends), but why does it seem we have less time than ever to do what we want?
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