Apparently, I am not actually destined to answer Question No. 1 tonight. No. Instead, it seems I am meant to sit and watch my internet / server / network connection take turns spinning for minutes on end and then erasing everything I’ve done so far.

Well. I didn’t write the menu for tonight’s events, but if I’ve got to eat off it, then I’m ordering a peppermint hot chocolate and bedtime for dessert! See you tomorrow!

In another lifetime, many many moons ago, I eagerly looked forward to November in anticipation of NaNoWriMo. I often suffered from interminal writer’s block and relished being in community with so many hundreds of writers all pushing through whatever carefully constructed wall of excuses we’d built throughout the year to just get it out already. It was harrowing, it was fun, and I loved feeling like I was really doing something meaningful.

The last couple of years have seen a return to university and November became a month of writing essays, term papers, exams, and so on. NaNoWriMo was no longer feasible, and even though it’s been completely worth it to be occupied with school instead, well, I kind of missed the madness.

Enter NaBloPoMo! During November when everyone else was writing a novel, we who were not in that place in our lives could work on posting on our blogs every day for a month! What with the site, the blogrolls, and the novelty, it worked well and I loved it. And then, of course, all the people who missed the boat or couldn’t commit or have no patience got to vote somehow and NaBloPoMo got changed to an every-month thing. Which kind of negated the whole idea, I thought. NaNoWriMo is about getting you to bash through walls and fling yourself over hurdles you haven’t made it past the whole year since last November. If it was every month, it would sort of be… well… the same as every month you’re trying to write a book. It wouldn’t make things different. I felt (and still kind of feel) that NaBloPoMo should have tried to retain the essence of NaNoWriMo. But like Christianity, it kind of split off and started doing things its own way because the “point” as they interpreted it was different.

However. As someone who recognizes themselves as a bit reluctant to embrace new ideas and ways of doing things, I decided to give this month a shot. Sure it’s January and it’s ALL WRONG to be doing anything that begins with Na and ends in Mo, but you know, maybe the stratosphere won’t crumble overnight just because someone had an idea to do it differently.

But if it does, I so know who to blame.

Anyway, I have committed to posting on this blog every single day for the month of January. In addition, to overcome the lack of community I’m sensing, I’ve thought up a little caveat I can add to the original goal. I am going to visit every single site on the January NaBloPoMo Blogroll and try to leave a comment! Two exceptions: I won’t sign up for a new account on any site just to leave a comment, and I won’t comment on a blog if I am totally put off by it, for example, if it’s full of hate or anti-anything writing. Actually, there’s one more exception: ads. I know a lot of people are feeling a crunch these days and are looking for ways to keep those ends meeting, but if a blog looks, feels and sounds like its main purpose is to be an ad vehicle, the writing needs to grab me within a couple of sentences or I tend to leave pretty quickly.

I will begin with the Zs and move up through the list alphabetically because otherwise I have no idea how I would keep track of where I left off. Also, I’m going backwards because I bet those blogs always get looked at last if at all, because that’s what happens to the later-letters when being listed alphabetically. Trust me on this. I have sat through enough roll calls as a later-letter name to know!

The next step is to figure out how to keep track of this little project in my sidebar. I think it’s going to be fun!

But then, I am a geek, after all.

I just found out another (much more popular) blogger has the Notepad Chaos layout I’m using right now. I was so hoping I’d stumbled across a little-known find, or that it would be too unique for most people to want to use it.

*sigh*

I always want to be incredibly original and fresh… then either everyone else copies me or I find out I’ve inadvertently copied someone else. Then there are the times I do manage awesome freshness and I start to worry that something is wrong with what I’m doing because I’m the only one!

See, with a brain that reasons like that, it almost makes sense that I would have bipolar disorder! Maybe I should just figure out how to design themes my own self.

Still in the cold clutches of dread tonight and yet dealing with it is the last thing I want to do.

I’ve just moved here from a very public site on which I could say very little of what I wanted to say, due to my entire name being available on the thing. Embedded in the domain name, no less.

I’m not shooting for total anonymity here, I just don’t want people to be able to link this or any other blog with my real-life self. Don’t get me wrong. I stand by everything I say. I would never try to be completely anonymous and thus avoid all responsibility for my words. I just feel it’s a bit of an unfair advantage when people who have seen you at work or school or church or even accepted an application for an apartment from you go home and Google you to their heart’s content. If I could turn around and peek in their underwear drawer, well then, it would be all right!

OK. I’ve been up for 24 hours. I’m not entirely sure any of this will still seem like a good idea on the other side of a good long nap, so I better scoot!