Saturday 30 November 2019

Reflecting on NaBloPoMo

Well, today is the last day of November and the last day of NaBloPoMo. That's five posts in five weeks (including this one). How did it go?

Firstly, it's worth acknowledging that this has been the worst month for this kind of thing. I've been on leave for one week, and away for a few weekends so my normal writing topics and opportunities have been thrown to the winds. Couple this with some extremely difficult weeks in the office giving me no desire whatsoever to write in the evenings and let's just say that it hasn't been easy.

On the positive side, it has been nice to see my blog grow more quickly, I don't think the less thought out posts have been much worse, and I have enjoyed experiencing this with the small community that has attempted NaBloPoMo. I'm also pleased that I have managed to set myself a goal and achieve it (posting on each weekend) even if I did cheat a bit with one of the posts.

On other hand, the pressure to write when I haven't felt like writing has been a bit of a problem. This is the motivation I use throughout the year, however committing to a monthly post means I have weekends free in between so this cadence is less intrusive. I've definitely made decisions to write over doing something else (such as coding) over this period purely because of the challenge and even as I write this I know I'd rather be cooking and playing on a MUD - I'm putting off fun and relaxation in order to write this reflection. When I'm at low energy and low ebb (such as now) this can be dangerous so I'm glad it's only a few weeks - and even more so that I didn't even attempt a daily post. I think that would require a radically different approach to blogging from me.

So will I do it again? Probably. I'm not likely to push it too hard if I'm on my own, but if a group is keen to give it a go again next year I'll be on board. I guess what I'm saying is that the true spirit of NaBloPoMo is the friends made along the way.

And I still hate the name.



This post is the fifth of five written in NaBloPoMo - the National Blogpost Month which, yes, is a thing. My plan is to write one post a weekend for the month of November. Due to some amazing planning, that means I have to write five posts rather than the four you might immediately expect. These posts will be a bit shorter than normal most likely and all of the posts will be tagged with (sigh) NaBloPoMo2019.

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