here we go…

A couple years ago and then a few years before that, I took up the NaBloPoMo challenge and both times, I vowed never to do it again. You see, the thing about posting every day (or doing anything each day for 30 days) is that it’s a bit like giving up smoking. The first few days you’re so gung ho that you can’t feel the pangs of withdrawal. You are pumped. Cigarettes? Ew! Never again! By Friday night, however, at the pub, after a few ales, you’d just about lick the pavement for a smoke. It would be so easy, in that instant, to give up. And that’s what generally happens to me around day 12 of NaBloPoMo.

But here I am, like some masochist, doing it all over again. All it took was a nudge from my pushers friends Xanthe, Karen and Andrea, and this condition: that we can post anything we want… words, videos, even a single photo. I think maybe this is the kind of challenge I can take on. I don’t know, ask me again on day 12.

Honestly though, when you’re a new mom, it’s so easy to put creativity on the back burner. Right there with reading a good book and taking a hot bath, and exercising and brushing your hair. But I’ve realised that if I don’t make time for at least a little creativity in my days, I start to feel stagnant. The office space in the old right hemisphere has been gathering dust for the past couple of years, there are cobwebs everywhere and papers spilling out of the filing cabinets. Perhaps this NaBloPoMo thing is just what I need to start using that space again; a good excuse to take a creative time-out every day. I have months’ worth of untold stories and random scribblings in half-finished journals and loads of 35mm scans and a shit-ton of video footage just sitting on my computer so there should be plenty to post for the next 30 days.

Are you pumped, people? Because I’m pumped!

Here we go.