Woops

This year I was supposed to do NanoWrimo in November. For those of you who don't know, Nanowrimo is an online annual event where for one month, writers from all around the world try to pen a novel down with 50,000 words or more. It's online community, but there are lots of real-life events too.

Today I opened the file to where I was supposed to save all my word counts.

There was zero.

I laughed, a little spooked. You start something a couple of months ago, promising yourself you'll get it in one---end up with not even a fifth of that amount, and with about three fold that of time passing. I wondered just where the hell that time went, if I had put into the wrong pocket of some sort, lost between one place and the next. It actually made me shiver, how fast things were going.

This is why I don't even attempt at New Year's Resolutions. Setting up a predetermined window of time to which you're going to accomplish something does nothing. If you want something, don't just start it because it's the beginning of the new year, something most people consider a fresh start. Do it now. You need to try at the worst possible time because if you can pull through something when everything around you is blowing a stack, then quite possibly you can succeed. 

Today I got a really nice message from a friend mother's about a story I wrote which had her daughter as one of the main people. She encouraged me to keep writing, and that I was doing a great job. I was humbled and ecstatic. It means a lot to me that she put in the time and energy into writing me and sending me something at all.

Usually, I find my crippling fears of failure and seeing other people's successes as a good enabler to motivating me to try to do a good job, to try to do something with my life. I've got my parents to make proud, but don't we all? That's not to say their acknowledgement isn't important, because when I'm fishing for compliments to make myself feel good, they're the first people I go to so I can preen. 

But for some people I have to work for their respect and recognition. Remember in that movie Hot Rod where the main character, Rod, is always fighting with his step-dad, because he is fighting desperately for his step-fathers approval, and is always screaming things like "AND YOU WILL RESPECT ME!" Pictures for visual explanation below:

That? That's pretty much how I feel when I want someone to like me or my work. And it's terrible. But when they do acknowledge me, like my friend's mom today, well---sometimes I find it's all worth it.