Photo credit: Nimbu

Well … poop. I did it again.

I signed on for a month of intense novel writing, got 10K into it, and then let my new writing habits die away. So 2008 National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)? FAIL.

I’ll try again another year.

This year, I let myself get caught up in some other time sinks:

• A lovely technical conference that I thoroughly enjoyed attending and helping to organize.

• A not-so-lovely sinus infection that has survived two rounds of antibiotics and is still merrily wreaking havoc with my head.

• A weekend of setting up our Christmas decorations early for a change, with the help of one of my younger daughter’s friends.

• A sick cat who violently resists all attempts to cure her. (She’s sensitive to some food ingredient we haven’t identified. We cheaped out and changed her food and it worked fine … for several months. Now she’s back to clawing at her head again until it’s raw. Lesson learned. We have expensive food back in place, rubber tips glued to the cat’s front claws (thank you, SoftClaws), and a cone collar on a very, very, VERY annoyed and pathetic cat. Sorry, kitty.

• A long, long, looooooong month of wallowing in fairly serious and mostly silent depression over the fact that I haven’t seen my moved-out 18-year-old daughter since July 28, that she apparently doesn’t want to visit home even though we have loving phone conversations every week or so, and that it’s the holidays without her for the first time. I’m worried she hasn’t moved past her first-ever job of waitressing into something that will pay her actual benefits (my insurance coverage of her runs out in about six months). I’m sad she has ditched college. I’m still a little angry at the cowardly way she chose to leave (while my husband and I were at work one day), even if I understand that it’s intimidating at 18 to face down one’s parents. And I’m sad, angry, and depressed that I didn’t have the transition of the college years — or even a discussion — to ease me into the fact she was leaving home. It was literally a change from one day to the next. With the holidays, it’s hitting me — HARD — all over again. This is like a very sore and loose tooth I can’t quit poking at with my tongue, day in and day out, over and over and over. Metaphorically speaking, my gums are bloody.

• My mother, who has lived with us for the past 14+ years, is getting worse. She’s 80, for heaven’s sakes. Her mind isn’t what it used to be. It’s hard to watch. Hard to live with. I’m sure for her it’s hard to live through.

These aren’t excuses. Just some of the reasons I chose not to honor the promise I made to myself to really DO NaNoWriMo this time. My head and my heart are not in the right place. Or should I say, the “write” place. :o)

I’ll keep thinking of things to do to keep myself busy so I don’t dwell on unhappiness. But I don’t think I’ll try to kickstart any writing projects until January 1.