It begins here

It's November!

November means many things for me: Thanksgiving, scarves, cranberries, the transition from fall to winter, knitting, mulled wine, root vegetables, fireplaces, winter coats, incessant and obnoxious Christmas music in stores. On the west coast, it means Peet's Holiday Blend; on the east coast, it means apple cider (and apple cider donuts). Everywhere, November means that the holidays are officially only one month away. It's the beginning of the Gluttony Period, that wonderful food-focused time of year that starts November 1 with the leftover Halloween candy, ramps up to peak at Thanksgiving, follows with a small refractory period of righteousness before the holiday baking craze kicks in, and truly finds its stride right around the middle of December. Guilt and contrition follow, mostly in the form of New Year's resolutions to join a gym or eat more salad. But really, November reminds you that since you can now swaddle yourself in layers and layers of coats and scarves, who cares if you get a little pudgy? It's not like you'll be wearing a bathing suit any time soon.

November 1 marks the beginning of the Gluttony Period. It also marks the start of two important month-long challenges: No-Shave November and National Novel Writing Month.

No-Shave November is self-explanatory: men don't shave their faces. What began, I think, as laziness with an excuse has sort of morphed into a competition. Mostly I like No-Shave November because it gives me prime mocking material when I see my brother at Thanksgiving and he looks like a lumberjack. It's also great to reveal who can actually grow a beard, and who cannot. (Usually, however, if a man can't grow a beard he doesn't do No-Shave November.) For the truly lazy, the next step is Decem-beard.

National Novel Writing Month (affectionately known as NaNoWriMo) is more relevant to me. Traditionally, the challenge is simple: write a 50,000-word novel by the end of the month. I do not currently have the time, discipline or inspiration to write a novel, so I am re-interpreting the challenge (as most people are wont to do). My challenge to myself is to write one blog post every day. They won't necessarily be awesome posts, but they will be posts. I will do my best to not hide behind the "...Uh, here, have a poem" heading too often. I figure that even if I'm not writing a novel, at least I'll be exercising my brain somewhat.

So there you have it. One post a day for thirty days. When you compare it with an entire novel it's mostly a cop-out, but at least it's something, right?