Birthdays and NaNoWriMo

Today is my 26th birthday. There are some mixed emotions with that. On one hand I'm excited, but on the other hand, it makes me really depressed. I'm now four years until thirty. Four. It's just bizarre, you know.

I made an effort with my appearance to lighten my mood. The full works too. Make-up, tights and a skirt. There's a cute sweater, too.

That's me at Starbucks.

Anyway. Birthday aside, it's still NaNoWriMo.

Now, this is my fourth year doing NaNo. I know what I have to do to get shit done. My first two years were easy. I had just graduated college and I had no job. I could completely devote my time to writing. Last year was my first year not only holding a job during NaNoWriMo, but a full time retail job. If you know anything about retail jobs during November, you know exactly how holiday shopping season is and how much you want to kill yourself. So not only was I working thirty-five to forty hours a week, but I also didn't have a computer. My poor Macbook, Hanners, had her screen go out several months previously.

I was writing by hand. Yes, I was attempting 50,000 words in thirty days BY HAND. I was an idiot. I only got to 8,601 words before I finally gave up. I didn't care anymore and I was too busy with everything else to give two shits.

Enter this year.

I have a new laptop (Hanners II), and despite the promotion to supervisor, I'm averaging roughly thirty hours a week (And yet, I'm always at work, it feels).

So here we are, Day 8 of NaNoWriMo. I'm 8,361 words in. That's way behind. We're talking about like almost 5,000 words behind. And I think my problem is that I've lost motivation. Yesterday I didn't write and today I'm struggling to even open the word document. But I guess I gotta do, what I gotta do.

I'm opening my word processing software now.