Certifiable

This post has been sitting in draft for almost 2 months. I've been deliberating, but I've decided to do it! Scary, but here I go...

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I've been thinking... about doing NaNoWriMo this year. For those of you who don't know, that's National Novel Writing Month and it occurs in November. The basic idea is that you write every day, with the goal to write a 50,000 word "novel" (aka first draft, m'dears) in a month.

Insane? Yes.

Insane for ME, mother of the still being sleep-trained baby, non-mother of the year, still trying to get it together on this crap gal to be considering it? Certifiable.

But, the reason I'm considering it is this...

• I've long wanted to do it, but the timing was never right. 
• At night, when I have the chance to come down from the day, I'm not sure what to do with myself. Yes, there are many "productive" things I could do, however, I'm never quite in the mental state to do them. And tv just doesn't seem appealing either. My mind wants quiet in the night hours.
• When I WAS writing 2-3 hours a day, I found it to be an incredible stress reliever, as well as an outlet AND stimulant for creativity.
• I want to revive that part of me that's independent of mama-ness - the creative chica.
• And I do have a novel idea that's been simmering for a long time - maybe this would bring it to a boil?

Of course, in the cons column...

• Shouldn't I be spending my time trying to deal with the novel I have already written?
• Should I be adding any pressure to myself? Giving myself ANY sort of month long and daily projects to do? On the other hand, maybe it would be inspiring, enervating, instead of negative.
• There's no way I can do the balls to the wall writing it would take to hit 50K words in a month. 
• I don't want to take away from the free time I have with my husband. But... it would only be for a month and my husband needs time to be creative too. 
• I don't want to become imbalanced - I still need to eat, sleep, exercise, cook, clean, have social time, etc - and NaNoWriMo is pretty much all about imbalance - the idea being that you are imbalanced for one short month only.

So, NaNoWriMo... anyone ever tried it? Thinking about trying it this year?
Anyone want to join me on an adventure?

So I'm going to do NaNoWriMo, starting in 5 days. Yikes. 

But I'm calling this the low pressure version. I'm not breaking my back to get 50,000 words, okay? I'm not 25 anymore, peeps. And I've got a baby. I'm sleep and shower deprived as it is. But I'm going to use it as an inspiration, an opening to reignite my writer's fires. It feels a little artificial, like I'm forcing it on myself from the outside, but sometimes that's what you've gotta do to get momentum.