DigiBakeDay prep

Tomorrow's #digibakeday! For the many of you out there who have no idea what I'm talking about, lemme break it down for you: some of the participants from DigiWriMo were sad about the idea of the community just dissipating after November 30th, so Lonni Wilson (@lonniwilson on Twitter) decided to organize DigiBakeDay to keep the community going and to share holiday baking traditions with each other.

Some of last year's cookies

I can't say that I'm very good at keeping traditions, but for a few years in a row when I was younger, my mom and I did bake sour cream holiday cookies together and then decorate them. I liked that, so I baked some cookies last year and invited some people over to help me decorate. Just a small group. It was fun. We had some - ahem - "creative" folks among us (read: cookies decorated like penises and vaginas), but they're my friends for a reason so....

And it just so happened that when Lonni proposed DigiBakeDay, I had already planned to have people over for cookie decorating again this year. More people, actually, since I made many new friends this year. (Huh. It's funny; I hadn't even thought of that before this moment, but it's true. As a result of taking a creative non-fiction writing class in the spring, I'm hooked into a whole community of wonderful, creative, smart, hilarious people. Who of course think I'm hilarious.) I'd set a date and everything. And it just so happened that the date I'd picked was also chosen to be DigiBakeDay. How convenient!

Which is all leading up to this moment: The Recipe.

Brain-dead and incredibly tired

This is me at 9:28pm on Friday night, fairly brain-dead and incredibly tired (since when did I get so freakin' old that I'm ready for bed at 9pm??) in a last-ditch attempt to magically produce 8,600 words in the last two and a half hours of Digiwrimo. (Notice that I did not say "2.5 hours" but rather opted for the wordier version. That's what I'm talkin' 'bout.) So to any of you who are unlucky enough to stumble upon this blog post, I apologize in advance for the verbal spew you are about to witness. Although I do not intend to attempt an 8,600-word blog post (that would just be silly), I do intend to vomit some poorly-constructed sentences and paragraphs all over this virtual page...possibly up to 1,000 words. I'll worry about the rest after that.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Digiwrimo, you can learn yourself more here, here, and here.

Now, where was I? Oh, yes. I was going to tell you a bunch of random stuff.

Digiwrimo-ing

Yesterday was November 1st, All Saints' Day. Also Day 1 of Digiwrimo. Also my second-to-last day in Minneapolis-St. Paul, where I was visiting my very good friend Jackie. Also the day I woke up with food poisoning and spent a couple hours getting to know Jackie's toilet before suddenly feeling much better and going back to bed.

At some point yesterday afternoon I had a computer in my lap and thought about writing a blog post as a way to make some progress toward my daily goal of 1,667 words. I thought about starting that blog post with the story about food poisoning. To make it clear that my slacker-dom on Day 1 of DigiWriMo was mostly due to circumstances out of my control. (Note: I could have said "beyond my control" rather than "out of my control," which might have sounded better but would also have been one word fewer. This is the level to which I will stoop in order to reach my word count by the end of the month.)

But then I remembered that I wanted my next World Citizen post to be a Dear John letter to cigarettes, in honor of having quit smoking (except for that one day). That seemed like a lot of work. And I didn't have the energy. Or at least that's what I told myself. So I decided not to write a blog post. Instead I decided to watch TV on the Internet with Jackie.

My excuse for not writing yesterday, therefore, was that I didn't have the energy to write what I'd planned to write. I had the energy to write something else, but I felt attached to that plan. I think that's kind of dumb. I think, in retrospect--meaning from my current position of now having to figure out when I'm going to make up all those words I didn't write yesterday--that I should have just written whatever I had the energy to write rather than letting "the plan" or what I was "supposed" to be doing prevent me from writing.

I've written about this before, this idea that I want to stop trying to beat my Muse into submission. But clearly it is a concept that I have yet to master. (Or mistress?)

Did I mention that in addition to my goal of writing 50,000 words this month, I also have a goal of losing 8-10 lbs.? I did? Just now? Oh, okay then.

You'll have to forgive the scattered nature of this post, friends. Though it's only 11pm in Portland, it's nearly 1am in the time zone I just came from, and I've been traveling all day, and my eyelids each weigh ten pounds, and my brain, which was never that sharp to begin with, is currently about as sharp as a cotton ball.

 But this is me not using perfectionism or "the plan" or "supposed to" as a reason for not writing. This, instead, is me writing.

Go, me.