NANOWRIMO

National Novel Writing Month is over and there are lots of reasons to feel bad. First of all I didn't manage to write 50'000 words which is the point of the whole month. Second it wasn't a novel or even an attempt at a novel but just random paragraphs. It's been the third unsuccessful attempt. However for the life of mine it feels impossible to be sad about these things. On the contrary, I actually logged 37'339 words which is not 50'000 but probably more than I have written in any other month in my entire life. It's the first time I didn't quit after 5 or 10 days but kept writing throughout the month. A third of the words or possibly even more were ramblings about my day or stuff that was going on in my mind that isn't very interesting and had quite a humbling effect. However the rest contains one or two stories which I might develop once I return to fictional waters. There was even one children's story I will soon test drive on one of the three kids born or soon to be born who will be a part of my life. Lots was also study related so the writing might have helped clarify some issues I had with my essay. I had a few nice ideas I will implement soon or one day with my future family. It reminded me that the writing worth reading is the kind where you try to reach beyond what first comes to mind. I learned that I find it extremely hard to focus on just one topic for days but that maybe if I organize myself well that's not a problem but an asset. Nobody said you can't work on a few texts at the same time. And last but not least it contains beginnings of psychology pieces I want to write.
To conclude I suspect the end of NANOWRIMO foreshadows what the end of this bucket list journey will be: I won't have reached all my goals. If I let myself down to that level there would be lots of reasons to fret. However like with NANOWRIMO I will look back on this and say, that without writing this list up I would have done some but not all the things I ended up doing. How could I ever be sad that I came up 12'661 words short when I ended up writing five to ten times more than I usually do?