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This blog on occasion addresses depression, death, suicide and other sensitive themes. Continue at your own discretion in reading the content.

Monday, November 6, 2017

NaNoWriMo is here!

Hi All,

The website is getting little changes made here and there. When things settle down a bit I hope to add more information.

NaNoWriMo has begun and unfortunately I am not off to a good start.  The goal is always to aim between 15,000 and 25,000 words.  If a huge chuck of the 50,000 word goal can be done in the first weekend it allows you to relax a bit for the rest of the month.

I have had that approach for the past 10 years and this year I finished the weekend with 10,000 words. Not where I wanted to be but I also didn't have the luxury of doing more than that as my time was spent dealing with work.

My job ends each day at 4 p.m. It does not follow me home. My work laptop stays at work and my weekends are free.  I am an hourly employee so anything over 40 hours requires approval and is overtime.  Something that my boss will not approve.  So anytime I work  more than 40 I have to compensate by taking time off early on another day.

This weekend I was asked to do software testing after we migrated several applications to new servers.  I spent five hours doing this over the course of the weekend.  The upside was that I was able to leave work early today and will probably do so tomorrow or one of the other days this week.

For NaNoWriMo this year I am not writing a traditional story like I normally do but an observational piece of the nutty things people do like walking into a glass door because they had their head down looking at their cell phone.  I have a list of topics already but not enough to get me to the 50,000 words. I knew that I didn't have enough but I will come up with it. I always do.

I hope those of you that are doing NaNoWriMo are doing well in the first six days of this crazy affair. It is a little nutty to write 50,000 words in 30 days but it is doable. I've done it for 10 years so I have no doubt that by the end of the month I will have done it again and so will all of you.

Next week I have tickets to see Joe Bonamassa for a third time.  As much as I like Joe's music and often play it when I'm writing, my schedule at the moment may prevent me from going.  If I miss his concert I won't be too upset by it.  The two times I've seen Joe have been unforgettable.  You really do have to see him live to realize how good he is. The videos on YouTube are good to watch but there's nothing like seeing him live. If you get the chance to see Joe in concert you will not be disappointed.

These days I've been working on my radio station so I haven't had a chance to listen to a lot of new music but the other night while software testing I had Seth MacFarlane's "In Full Swing" album playing in the background. It made software testing tolerable at 12:30 in the morning. It was the right type of music to have playing.

I own three other Seth MacFarlane's album that are really good if you need music in the background to work on a project.  I've listened to Seth while writing, cooking, laundry, cleaning the bathroom and working on various craft projects.

I'm going to share a song from his album with you all as a special treat.

Rock on!
~Maynard