I’m not writing. After years of guilty Novembers, pursuing the banality and pure quantity of NaNoWriMo, I declined to participate this month on a mere handful of excuses. They are…

1) I should really be working on my other writing project. That particular effort is not forgotten. Really. Admittedly, it is not going exactly as originally planned — 365 words per day, hmmm — but it is not forgotten. Rather, lets just say that the idea worked a little too well. It began as a throwaway concept. I didn’t REALLY care if it amounted to nothing more than a few thousand words of deletable trash. But I only pounded away on the keyboard for about five months before a creepy thread emerged. And then I went on vacation. And by the time I got back the thread had solidified into an abstract concept that has resulted in a few notepads full of scribbles and plot outlines that could actually result in a unique quasi-multi-media fiction-thing. So, I’ve taken my efforts offline. For now. Until I get a better grasp on it all.

2) As Christou is simultaneously realizing, it’s tough to type with a kid in your hands. I try. But the idea of pounding out fifty thousand words in a single month is not in the realm of my current reality. New dads are not meant to be frivolous authors. Get me some voice recognition software and I might reconsider.

3) November has become my busy month at work. Details aside, the rush of events and details leading into the holiday season leave me with packed days, multiple road-trips, unreliable schedules, and (worst of all) mental fatigue. From a professional perspective, it’s great. From a side-project perspective, it sucks. I should really pull out the audio recorder and dictate a book. I’ve been in the car enough as of late, I could probably make it happen.

4) I’ve spread myself rather thin on the side-project front already. And it’s only skimming the surface to start counting the multi-tome stack of books to read, a half-dozen video games to finish, a modified pre-winter fitness regimen, a small handful of media/web-development projects, and some ’social networking’ ideas I’ve been investigating. In my deeply restricted free-time I’ve barely left a handful of moments to blog (as you may have noticed!)

So, really, it came down to priorities. I would say I need fewer, but I’m really enjoying the few I have already. It makes for a day-by-day — where-did-the-time-go — sort of existence. But then, maybe in a few years it will make for an interesting NaNoWriMo project, no?