LED Astray

For me, one of few stress relievers during the holiday season has always been to lay on the living room couch at night in the darkened room and spend some quality time gazing at the Christmas tree. I can lose myself in the reflections of the tree lights off of the glassy sheen of the ornaments. It induces a kind of hazy daydream effect that sort of washes over me, letting my troubles and the not inconsiderable stresses of the holidays float away in the soft glow of the lights. Or at least it used to.

This year I fought the strings of lights for about a half hour before giving up and telling my son to go buy some new ones. He did, only they were the new LED lights. "You and burn them all year Dad and they never get hot and they take about as much electricity to run them as a fart." he promised. OK, they are cost effective, they are safe, but they emit a harsh light that has totally ruined the one sure stress relieverer I had. I tried to lay down on the couch and lose myself in the tree, but those damn lights were burning holes in my eyes.

Oh soft glowing lights, why have you forsaken me?

One of the 36,774

Someday, and I swear it will be soon, I will stop talking about the NaNo. But today is not that day.

They released the stats this week for the National Novel Writing Month and they are pretty impressive:

• 256,618 participants, up roughly 28% from 2010’s total of 200,530 writers.
• We wrote a total of 3,074,068,446 words, up 7% from 2010’s collective word count of 2,872,682,109.
• This averaged out to 11,979 words per person!
• We had 36,774 winners, giving us a 14% win rate!

Happy to have been a part of it all. Of the 25 writing buddies I had this year, 13 of them completed the NaNo or 52%. Not too shabby for my friends.

Lessons Learned

This should give you an idea of how I managed my NaNoWriMo. Pay particular notice to the graph on the right and the long flat area starting about half-way through. In looking back at my first NaNo to see what it taught me, and hey, that is what all of us winners and loser are doing about now, I came to four lessons learned. They are as follows:

1. When the going gets tough, Barry takes nine days off.
2. Though I tend to complain about things quite a bit, they are usually problems that I have caused all on my own, and in actuality, I sort of get off on the drama, as it allows me more time for self-absorption.
3. Eventually I will rededicate myself, after I have waited the prerequisite amount of time to make the outcome once again somewhat in doubt (this also relieves me of any responsibility for how bad it might turn out as it is now crystal clear to all that I just don't have enough time to do it the right way).
4. I can do anything to which I set my mind.

3,073,176,540

National Novel Writing Month Total Collective Word Count for 2011:

3,073,176,540