Nablopo...

The Britmums weekly prompts this week include a couple of questions to tie in with NaBloPoMo - is it realistic to publish a post every day?  And, when it comes to blogging, how can we find a happy medium?

Is it realistic?  Hell, no.  I cannot tell you how many times this month I have cursed the whole concept of NaBloPoMo as I sat up late to write some unnecessary post when I needed to be getting to bed, as I let something else go undone to write a post, as I felt my stomach twist into a knot of tension at the thought of having one more thing to do, dammit, on the already-too-long list of the day's jobs.  For a month, I can just about stretch to it; but I'm going to be bloody glad to see the first of December.

So I'm probably deluding myself when I say that I'm still glad I chose to do it.  Nevertheless, for all the stress it's caused and is still causing me... I am still glad I chose to do it.  Sometimes, the right course of action just isn't the one that seems to be indicated by logic.  I needed something to kick me out of my near-terminal writers' block, and this did the trick.  I've faced up to my phobia of posting mediocre work, and discovered that nobody actually seemed to object particularly and some people liked it.  I've committed myself to a challenge I initially thought I just couldn't manage, and I've found out I actually can.  I've posted some sheer drivel, but I've also posted some stuff I wanted to post and wouldn't otherwise ever have found time for.  And the anecdotes about the children seem trivial in the short term in the face of everything else I ought to have been doing with that time, but maybe not so much in the long term - ten years from now I won't care exactly what date I got round to getting this month's bank statement reconciled or the laundry put away, but I'll still enjoy going back and reading what Jamie and Katie said when they were on the cusp of turning seven and four.

So... coming down the home stretch of NaBloPoMo, and with a reasonably good chance of actually making it through to the end, I have to ask myself where I'm going to go from here.  Am I going to be able to carry my new habit of non-perfectionism forward into non-NaBloPoMo-ing months?  After all, the thing about NaBloPoMo is that it's just substituting one form of perfectionism for another - instead of perfecting the quality, I've been focusing on perfecting the quantity.  When I no longer have the challenge of writing something, anything, each day, am I going to be able to hang onto the knowledge that it's OK just to type a quick account of something funny or cute or memorable without agonising over every word?

I suppose time will tell.  But I'm not going to be imminently putting it to the test, because, come the first of December, I'm really looking forward to a few days of not blogging.

Comments

[Granny C]

Your daily posts have been a little blessing for each of us round the world that follow Good Enough Mummy and each day of November was better for it. You write so well and these little gems about life, children, the universe and the complications of getting from day to day are the product. A real achievement.
You writing and living are amazing.
Granny Constance

[Dr Spouse]

I've had a complete fail on daily posting, though I have posted a little more often than usual.