A blog post a day keeps the writing yips away

Welcome to November!

November is a lot of things for we Melbournians. It's late spring, which means (theoretically) warmer, longer days, less rain, and the breath of coming summer. It's racing carnival, which means chicken, strawberries and champagne, fancy hats, and the lone public holiday in the Long Drought (by some quirk, most of our holidays fall between January and April; there's the Queen's Birthday in June, then nothing til Melbourne Cup Day on the first Tuesday of November). It's the beginning of the real-in-earnest dash to Christmas, with stores ramping up their festive marketing, early seasonal break-ups being scheduled and even starting to occur, and everybody making their lists (maybe even checking them twice, who knows!)

This year, for my family, November is also a time for increased engagement (again) with our community, as we help run the school's night market, participate in the Relay for Life cancer fundraising walk (if you want to sponsor me here, please! feel free!), and help with the planning for the local Uniting Church's Christmas Fair. We have my Dad's birthday, the first of several Christmas parties, and three friends' significant-number birthdays to squeeze in as well. After a couple of months of virtual herimtage for hubs and I, due to our various work things, this will be an extremely social month.

November, for me personally, has also been NaNoWriMo month for the last few years, but this year I am just too snowed under with paid work to contemplate NaNo, much as I regret it. I have commitments amounting to about 4 days a week's worth of contracting all month, and that just isn't compatible with novelling AND doing all the community / life stuff as well. I have really loved writing my two books during NaNo, and I will miss the experience this year very much.

However, I've decided that, work busyness aside, I *can* just about manage to do NaBloPoMo again - that is, a post a day on this 'ere blog for the month of November. This seems like a fair enough compromise to me - really, I write therefore I am, so giving up November creativity altogether was never going to sit well with me.

So here I am, committing to putting up something every day until 30 November. Some of it will be poetry, some gluten free cooking, some opinionated ranting, some funny stuff the kids have done, some book reviews, and some work-life balance musings. (Situation normal, in other words!) I hope you like at least a few of the things I manage to get out as I scramble my way to the back of this over-stuffed but sun-filled month.