Am I tooting my own horn? In the words of Napoleon Dynamite: “Heck yes!”

It’s been a long 30 days and more of a learning experience than anything else. I learned that given a whole day to write, my concentration is shot. Given a short timeframe, I’m more productive (although I’ll still find any reason to hop on the Internet as a form of procrastination). I also can make time to write if it’s important to me, without putting the rest of my life on hold. This experience has also taught me that I don’t have to feel like I’m one of the best writers out there – or even a good writer, for that matter. If I’m being honest with myself as I write and enjoying the process, then I will continue writing – and loving it.

And, even more to be proud of, Seattle topped the charts with total word count (57,839,962)!

Nine years ago to the day, I started my first real blog. Prior, I just had crudely made a website that had a smattering of photographs, artworks and quotes that I enjoyed. But on November 26, 2001, I started a blog using Geocities, which is no longer around. I created a little icon of a wand-wielding fairy wearing a long green dress and green wings, Lisa Loeb-type glasses, and an up-do secured by a green chopstick. (Yes, that was supposed to be me.)

Each blog entry was a simple block of text, with the fairy icon at the end of the text linking the reader back to the main page, which was simply a list of blog post titles. In January 2004, I switched over to taffystay.com, which allowed me to maintain my blog via wordpress. Suddenly, blogging became much, much easier.

My first blog post was titled “hello, my name is,” and I began by saying, “So this is my first entry. I don’t even know if anyone will find this or if I would even direct anyone to it. I’ve been wanting to do something like this for awhile but who wants to maintain a web page on a 56k modem?” haha…boy, I’ve come a long way. When I started the blog, I was working off a desktop computer and dialing into Juno to check my e-mail. I shared a four-bedroom house in San Bruno, slept in a twin-sized bed with a bright green floral bedspread, and tried to be crafty by making curtains out of pale lime-green towels (an idea, I believe, from Martha Stewart).

My first entry was nothing too interesting. I talked about spending a few days in Sacramento and inviting ET, Tommy, Carol and Steph over to play games and hang out. I talked about deliberately not isolating myself from people, especially with my upcoming move back to Sacramento prior to going to Brazil. I also talked about “riding around in Kit’s chick-mobile with the cool mp3 player and collecting blood squares for lunch.”

In the months that followed, I talked a lot about capoeira fundraisers and events, saying goodbye to good friends, eating and working out (and then eating again) with Queencie, things I would miss in San Francisco, crushes, and other funny adventures that I couldn’t imagine getting myself into now.

I guess it’s reassuring to see that my writing voice hasn’t changed, and many of my convictions and insights haven’t either (although I would like to think that I’ve matured in some ways…).

I don’t know what this says about me, but I’ve printed out every single blog post since that first one. With my blog and my handwritten journals, I’m bound to have a solid record of my life ever since I was old enough to write in a diary. Our kids and their kids will be able to read my very first diary entry (I think from when I was 8??) where I mentioned that I hated socks with the line on top. In case I lose my memory, I’ll have something to read as a refresher, and I will wonder who this person is who I’m reading about. And maybe one day, our kids and their kids and their kids will want to read my writings because they want to know what I was like. I sort of doubt it, but it’s a nice thought. :)

I often wonder what the point is of keeping all my diaries, blog posts and letters from friends. Is it egotistical to want to preserve this much of me for the future, as if I were such an important person? Or am I simply creating a huge recycling task for my kids down the line?

I guess that’s not for me to figure out now. The fact is, I love to write. I love to share my thoughts, and it’s a lot easier for me to get them down on paper (virtual or otherwise) because I am not eloquent in person. I also have a hard time believing people would want to hear these types of thoughts in a conversation. Sometimes what goes through my head isn’t really casual dinner talk because we’re so programmed to talk about what we do rather than what we think. At least with a blog, people can choose whether or not to read what I have to say. And, nine years later, I’m still writing, regardless of who’s reading.

Sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of what we have in our lives when our focus is so tight on what we don’t have. It shouldn’t have to take an official holiday to make us think about what we’re thankful for, but sometimes that’s what it takes.

Over the past few days, I’ve been especially thankful for a home, and a warm one at that. I think about living on the streets when it’s 17 degrees out, trying to find shelter not only from snow but also from freezing temperatures.

I’m thankful for family who live a plane ride away, but feel like they’re much closer thanks to phone calls, Skype, e-mails, and visits. I’m also thankful for friends in town who feel like family and make us feel loved and supported. I’m thankful for long-distance friends whose love and efforts of communication make me feel like there is no distance. And, of course, I’m thankful for a God who reminds me that no matter what I’m going through, how I’m feeling, and how hopeless things can feel at times, I am loved unconditionally.

According to the suggested NaNoWriMo word count, I should have 25,005 words at this halfway point. As of last night, I have 21,487 – not too far off track. And if anyone is interested, Seattle tops the chart for overall word count with 28,719,615. Pretty impressive when you think about how people all over the world are doing this, yet our lovely Emerald City is coming in first.

Going into NaNoWriMo, I wasn’t sure how I’d fare. I knew ahead of time that I didn’t want to give up any of my regularly scheduled activities to write, but I also knew that I would have to turn down some seemingly more fun opportunities. I did hope to have some leeway with not making dinner as much (simply because I don’t particularly enjoy cooking), but I’m still waiting for Matt to say, “I’ll make dinner tonight, honey. You go and work on your novel.” First, Matt would never call me honey, and second, well, I also can’t see him offering to cook dinner.

For the two weeks leading to NaNoWriMo, my time in the shower became a time to brainstorm about my novel. And each night, I’d come up with a new storyline, but each one would raise more and more questions that I couldn’t answer. Aside from a few basic character traits, a beginning, and a climax, everything else in between had yet to show itself to me. I didn’t even have names for my characters.

But over the past 15 days, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how things have turned out. The first day, I only wrote about 3,000 words – and that was after a whole day of trying to write. I was mentally drained, discouraged, and wondered how I had fooled my employer into hiring me for my writing abilities. But Day 2 was better, as was Day 3, and so forth.

Fiction writing is a new world to me. I like to think that I have some imagination, but to put it on paper is a different story. I read several books about writing prior to starting NaNoWriMo, and each one mentioned how characters will reveal themselves as the story progresses. They will tell you what they want to do, where they want to go, how they want to dress. It all sounded hokey to me. But on Day 1, I soon found myself favoring not my main character (who just so happens to be a lot like me), but one of the secondary characters. Her name is Claire, she’s in her 20s, and she wears a purple octopus costume on Halloween. I found myself spending more time on her character because she was so much fun to write about. I wanted to learn more about her, and I was eager to see what kind of person she would become.

Another thing I was aware of, prior to starting, was that I’d have to stash away my inner editor. I wouldn’t have time or energy to pore over each paragraph. There would be no self-editing. I would simply have to move on, as hideous as a phrase (or even entire paragraph) was. Each time I wrote, I had to remind myself that it’s about the experience and not about the finished product. And that’s not just me trying to deal with my fear of making mistakes. That’s what NaNoWriMo encourages.

I shared this struggle with a co-worker, who also has a hard time keeping her inner editor under control. I forgot how I came to this conclusion, but I speculated aloud that to be able to truly write freely, maybe I’d have to delete the story come November 30. Even as I said that to my co-worker, I thought, “That is CRAZY. That is so unlike me.” I’m all about being productive and having something to show for the time that I’ve spent on something. But as I thought about it more, it seemed like an appropriate thing to do – or at least consider – if I really wanted to write uninhibited. Even the thought of Matt reading it freaks me out. He told me he won’t judge me, and I believe him, but the idea of ANYONE reading it screws with my approach.

The other night, Matt used the “Share screen” feature on my laptop so that we could do some research online together, while still on separate computers. A few days later, as I was writing, I thought, “What if Matt’s sharing my screen without my knowledge, and he’s reading what I’m writing??!!” Yes, I’m paranoid.

I’m also learning a lot about how other writers approach fiction writing. Throughout the past two weeks, I’ve received pep-talk emails. In one of the more recent e-mails, the sender talked about how, as we’re writing, we may get consumed with the image of an anthill. Maybe it doesn’t fit anywhere in our story, but we can’t seem to shake the image. Well, why not put it into the story and see where it goes? If we keep giving in to these random tangents, maybe one them may actually lead to something amazing. Or, on November 30, we may end up with hundreds of tangents that have only led us astray. Either way, it’s OK.

So after I got that email, I had an opportunity to keep a tangent, or to ignore it. I took a chance and threw it in, even though it hasn’t developed into anything yet. One of the characters comes out from under a couch, and he has dust and furballs in his hair. He shakes out his hair and – instead of everything flying everywhere and then falling to the ground, as was predictable – the particles flew into the air and remained suspended, hovering over all the characters. Has anything become of the “magical” dust and furballs? Nope. And who knows if anything will come of them. That’s the image that came into my head, and that’s what I wrote down. A tangent.

Inserting a tangent, taking an unexpected and unexplainable twist makes no sense to me. Why do something that makes no sense? Because that’s that writing is about. It’s about being imaginative, exploring roads we’ve never considered. It’s not about being safe. Yet that’s who I am. I’m safe, but I really, really want to break free and be unpredictable. And I think that’s what this experience is already teaching me and prodding me to do. Hopefully this is just the beginning, and who knows, maybe it will extend to other areas of my life.

15 down, 15 to go.

The Urban Dictionary has spoken. Looks like we’re destined to live in San Francisco. Between the Mission and the Marina districts, I’d choose the Mission. You can easily access other parts of the city, you’ll have more good Mexican food than you can handle, most of Omulu’s capoeira classes are nearby, and – best of all – we’d be super close to Tartine Bakery.

A few weeks ago, Dorc e-mailed me a link to a 21-page paper titled “Always-on/Always-on-you: The Tethered Self”. The title immediately turned me off (too long, too many hyphens), but Dorc thought I would enjoy it – and she was right. The topic of the paper is about how people are tethered to forms of technology, thanks to connectivity which grows easier and easier each day. Our existence is not only about where we are physically – walking down the streets of Seattle, in our office buildings, in the groves of Yosemite. Regardless of where we are, we have the option of a new location – being online, on our cell phones, on Skype, etc.

When Dorc sent this to me, she said, “Ironically, it might be something you’d end up blogging about.” Again, she was right. Although I’ve had some fun experiences that I initially was enthusiastic about sharing (like the recent trip to SF or even the Harry Potter Exhibition), I’m much more motivated to write about a specific topic rather than a summary of what I’ve been up to. Maybe it’s because I spend too much time getting asked (and asking others) about what we’re doing rather than what we’re thinking. My blog becomes my platform to talk about what I’ve been thinking, and not having to wait for anyone to ask me (or caring if anyone wants to know). :)

The day before Dorc sent me the article, Matt and I had yet another conversation about him upgrading to the iPhone. While I think it’s a helpful tool, I get nervous about putting something in Matt’s hands that enables him to be online not only at home, but when we’re out and about. Call me selfish, but I don’t want to be one of those couples who sit across from each other when dining out, both staring into their phones. I gave Matt my blessing to get an iPhone, but I made him promise not to be glued to it when we were out together. It’s the equivalent to me pulling out a book and reading while he sits staring into his food.

The day after Matt got his iPhone, I sat next to my boss during a meeting led by her boss’ boss. Throughout the meeting, my boss continuously read and sent e-mails. She didn’t even bother muting her phone, so each e-mail successfully sent was accompanied by a loud whoosh. I looked around the room. Other people were on their iPhones and Blackberries. Yes, these are important people who have jobs to do, but since when did this become acceptable? “Always-on/Always-on-you” reads: “When an audience member closes down his or her screen, the gesture is a kind of ‘curtsy,’ a sign of respect to speakers whose status makes it unseemly to multi-task during their presentations.” On the flipside, continuing to do your own thing communicates a message that the speaker is not that important.

But I’m guilty in my own way. Throughout elementary school all the way to college, I wrote letters to friends during classes, especially during boring ones in which I knew didn’t matter if I paid attention or not. Does it make me a better person that I tried to be considerate by at least pretending like I was paying attention and taking copious notes – as opposed to someone who blatantly is not paying attention by sending e-mails on a Blackberry? My concern was not about being rude; it was about making sure the speaker didn’t perceive me as being rude. haha…

I know that I’m prone to spend a lot of time writing e-mails (which I’m trying to change), and I seem drawn to checking my e-mail whenever I get the opportunity. I’m deliberately spending less time away from my computer in the evenings…or, should I say, less time online, even if I am on the computer. I like keeping up with several blogs, and I like the idea of people keeping up with mine. But I don’t like people knowing everything about me simply by reading my blog. I don’t want reading my blog to take the place of someone actually e-mailing me. I want people to have to make the effort to keep in touch, to know what’s going on, because that’s what friends do. Friends make the effort to stay involved in each others’ lives. (Trust me, this is hard for me, too. It’s much easier for me to lay on the couch with a book than call up a friend.)

When I talk about staying involved in each others’ lives, I don’t mean being in constant communication, talking on the phone every single week, or exchanging e-mails each day. This could mean Skyping every few months or exchanging snail mail several times a year. To me, those in-depth, even if infrequent, exchanges mean more to me than the quick frequent updates. Take, for example, my relationship with my best friend, Dorc. She and I talk on the phone only several times a year, we e-mail a couple of times a month, and we’re definitely in touch with other people more than we are with each other. But I never feel out of touch with her, and I never feel like we’re drifting apart. Let’s be realistic. At my age, nothing changes that dramatically where I have to be in touch with anyone every few days…unless you really want to know about all the weeds that have taken over my garden or the new blood blister that I got from capoeira class. No? Didn’t think so. Let me clarify that I do enjoy receiving e-mails (so, mom and dad, don’t feel like you have to monitor the frequencies of your e-mails). I’m simply saying that frequent contact about all the intricacies of life doesn’t necessarily define a “close” relationship. That’s what works for me. It probably doesn’t work for everyone, especially those who are more “people people.”

Even as I write this, I’m well aware that many of my friends are those types of people who crave more frequent contact – and I need to balance what works for me with what works for them. One of the things I need to work on is to make sure my loved ones don’t feel like they’re bothering me when they do contact me. Because I’m a planner and have expectations for how my time is used, sometimes I can seem a bit…ruffled…when an unexpected phone call comes my way.

I’m curious to hear what works for you and why? What do you prefer when it comes to keeping in touch with people?

Sometimes the tug of the online community is pretty strong. I think about days on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) when our chat rooms seemed more realistic than life itself. People felt comfortable to cast aside their shyness and express themselves more freely. We bonded over drama caused by one particular member, and felt superior when we set up daily changing passwords to keep the troublemaker out of our room. The odd thing was that the members of our chat rooms were mostly people I saw each week at church. To miss a night in our chat room was torturous. I didn’t want to miss out on anything. And, aside from what I’ve already talked about above, the addictive tendency from my past online experiences is one big factor that keeps me off Facebook. I know how I could be online, and I see how Facebook has changed how people view friends (or “friends”) because of it. There are way too many things that I’d like to be doing, and I don’t want Facebook – and more time online – to be one of them.

Speaking of which, today marks Day 1 of National Novel Writing Month. I debated about announcing it, but decided to make it public. However, this is also my disclaimer that I am not obligated to share my work with anyone. :) The purpose of my participation is not to produce something to be distributed. In fact, I’d be lucky to end up with even a mediocre draft. Fiction writing is new for me, and – from my experience today – it’s not natural for me. It’s going to be harder than I expected to reach 50,000 words without putting the rest of my life on hold. The ultimate goal of National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) is to become disciplined to write and, personally, to stop reading and talking about writing – and actually do it. If I could devote hours and hours to train for a half-marathon, surely I could devote one month to writing.