The November blogging experiment

So here's what happened: I intended to do NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month this year. I did it "successfully" last year. Successful in that I managed to get a post up for every day of the month, but most were so quick and self-consciously talking about being for NaBloPoMo, especially the ones I did when visiting a friend out of state and using his computer. I was glad I did it to get a habit of blogging, but it became too much of a chore.

I signed up on BlogHer again this year for City of Destiny to be a NaBloPoMo participant, and decided to go the extra step of blogging every day on my nearly dormant sports blog, A Little Chippy, too. And I gave myself the additional challenge of making absolutely no NaBloPoMo references when posting here (I was more self-conscious with it on the other blog), just trying to look like I was back to blogging. Sort of. I mean, they still weren't lengthy story/photo-essay posts like the best ones I did around 2008.

I enjoyed doing it, even if I was a bit dishonestly catching up on several days' worth of posts at a time sometimes. I thought that was better than just quitting a few days in. And I got into a weird trap where I felt I couldn't link posts on social media if they were from a couple days ago and I didn't have new posts updated to the current day, if that makes any sense.

But then I had two out-of-state trips in one week, with less than a day in between. I could have blogged from my friend's computer (or even from my phone, though I've never tried) and I could have blogged from a computer at my parents', but I just didn't care to do that. I came back from the Thanksgiving week trips--and by the way, November is a terrible month for NaNoWriMo or NaBloPoMo, given that many people travel for the holiday (or host, and have a lot to do) and might be in the same dilemma as me, if they don't have a laptop--with many days to catch up on.

I felt overwhelmed with catching up on over a week of posts, and wondered what the point was. It's not a whiny "no one's reading my blog!" thing; it's that I didn't know anyone else doing NaBloPoMo to support me (and I didn't read any of the other participants except for clicking on a few things through Twitter) or anyone I knew clearly following my attempt and supporting me and nudging me to get more done. I struggled with the thought of catching up on all those short posts on both blogs the last couple days of November. I felt bad I failed at this. Then I realized I didn't complete NaBloPoMo here, but that I got halfway through the month on two blogs, which is the equivalent of a month, right? (Actually a total of 31 posts.) That's not awful.

Just to prove I did think about what to possibly post on these blogs, here's a rare and odd glimpse into the thought process, a list of what I did or saw in the second half of November. I had photos, links, and screenshots to go with some of the items. Some will end up in posts eventually!

Thank you to anyone who read anything I did in November!