Life

Lessons From NaNoWriMo Week One

Well, it’s official. Today marks the 7th day of National Novel Writing Month, and I am pleased to report that I have been diligently sitting down every day and writing my 1,667 words. Currently I have:

  • 20 pages
  • 10, 219 words
Ooh, it makes me giddy just to see those numbers! It’s true that it’s daunting to have over 39K words left to be written, but I plan to just keep on truckin’ and meet my daily quota. If I do that, I’ll be proud of myself. Today I wanted to share some of the lessons NaNo’s been teaching me over the past week. Hopefully even those who aren’t participating/aren’t planning on it will still find something of value here!

1. It feels good to do something every day.

Lately, I’ve been learning this lesson with respect to my “morning pages” on 750words.com. But adding this crazy project of writing a novel to the mix really hits the lesson right on home. There’s something inexplicably satisfying in doing something, consistently, every day. Gretchen Rubin from The Happiness Project highly recommends doing something every day, saying that it teaches us to find pleasure in our routine.

The things you do every day take on a certain beauty, and provide a kind of invisible architecture to daily life. – Gretchen Rubin

I would also venture to say that doing something every day is a boost to our self-esteem. I know that every time I hit my word quota, my chest practically puffs up with pride. It’s rewarding to see the number creep up, and to have the satisfaction of a job well done.

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Peanut Butter Banana Bread

Things I dislike: plug-ins that screw up my website, having to get my wisdom teeth out, waking up tired, mushy bananas. Yuck yuck and double yuck.

Things I like: dancing around to this video, late-night walks around the sparkling city, getting inspiration for my NaNo novel, repurposing mushy bananas into something magical.

This is Real Life people, and it’s happening all the time. No more nestling up in the high school cocoon of comfort. It’s the time for strangers telling you they’re going to cut your teeth in half, long walks during which you talk about your feelings, and phone calls from your Mom instead of hugs. It’s also the time for watching too much tv and eating as many sea-salt sprinkled chocolate chip cookies as you want, so I guess it’s okay. (Don’t worry Mom, I didn’t eat that many.)

You know what else Real Life means? It means you should learn to make banana bread. Why? I don’t know. It seems like a grown-up skill. It seems like you’re saying “Look at me! I can use ingredients up! I am not wasteful. I am resourceful.” Also banana bread is delicious, so you might just want to put it in your mouth. Who am I to question your motives?

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Inspired By Autumn

{Mini, white pumpkins are tucked into all corners of my apartment. They like to hang out on the towel rack in my bathroom, the stack of plates in my kitchen, and on top of my vintage cake stand}

Fall is my favourite season, but in Montreal, it doesn’t last half as long as I would like – the weather likes to race towards its preferred and longest season: Winter. (Ugh..) But this year I’m really trying to make the most of my beloved Autumn, as long as it sticks around. I’ve been apple picking, hiking, baking, eating soup (and flagging recipes to make it!), and going on little strolls in the crisp night air, kicking up leaves all the way! What have you been doing to celebrate fall?

At home, I’ve been having lots of fun with festive, harvest-like, Halloween-y decorations. It’s been really comforting to create a few little autumnal touches for my humble little apartment – it makes it feel more cozy and homey. And it feels like I’m making an effort to appreciate my favourite season! In the coming weeks, I hope I’ll have a chance to snuggle up more into the fall weather, and celebrate with warm apple cider, carved pumpkins and roasted root veggies. Mmm.

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How To Share Photos With Your Loved Ones

I tend to be the main photographer at family gatherings. This is because I have a wonderful camera that takes nice photos, and because I love snapping away and recording these events. I usually end up with some nice shots, and then the problem becomes: how best to share them? My family usually wants to see and download the pictures to be printed or saved, but it’s sometimes tricky to find the best way to accomplish that!

Emailing generally doesn’t work – attaching the photos takes a long time, and you can only send a couple in each email. I used to use primarily Flickr and Facebook, but my family has said that it’s time-consuming and increasingly difficult to download pictures off these websites. When you have grandparents who don’t love technology at the best of times, sending them confusing emails with five sentences of download instructions for Flickr pictures is not the best method! They’re not so good at the right click, options, download thing for each picture. They want one straightforward method to get the whole bunch.

So after Thanksgiving this year, I was determined to find a way to share my pictures that would let my family download them easily to their own computers and then look at them or print them however they’d like. I found a couple great solutions to this problem, which I’ll present in a hierarchy of needs! Enjoy, and happy sharing!

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