- Changed jobs
- Started knitting again
- Said goodbye to one of our dogs (*sniff*)
- Began learning kenpo karate
- Welcomed a new dog into my heart
- Visited my mother and stepfather in California
- Was laid off
- Took up spinning (spinning fiber, that is)
- Started freelance writing and editing
- Provided a variety of support to
- My big bruddah, who went through a painful divorce
- My husband, who had major surgery
- My father, who had a stroke
- My sons, who continued to be a source of delight -- and frustration (of course)
And while all this was going on, I worked on my mom book off and on. Three years ago, on a whim, I decided to participate in National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write a 50,000 novel in 30 days. It doesn't have to be perfect -- hell, it doesn't even have to be coherent. The purpose of this insane endeavor (insane because it's held in November, always a busy month) is so that you can prove to yourself that you can string together that number of words, relatively painlessly, by getting into a daily writing habit. So far, I've participated in NaNoWriMo in 2009, 2010, and 2011 ... and I won each of those years. Boo-yah!
Early this last December, while I was preening over my most recent NaNo win, my older son said, "Yeah, mom, but how many books have you finished writing?" I sputtered and squirmed, but the fact is that I hadn't finished any of the four ... no, wait, make that six ... books I'd started writing. Whoa.
During the last week of December, I decided that I'd try blogging my mom book. I have bits and pieces of it written, so those posts would be easy. I had chapter heads and subheads, so I had a road map of what still needed to be written. And it wasn't like I'd have to post something every day, right?
So on January 1, 2012, I clicked Publish on my first post on The Blog of Mom. The year stretched ahead of me, and I'm pretty excited to see where it will lead me.