NaNoWriMo week 2

Oh boy, this last two week have been interesting indeed. Not only because I accepted the challenge of NaNoWriMo, but because so much has happened that I don't know where to begin! I guess I will start, at the beginning then...

This past Saturday, we were finally able to celebrate my boy's birthday party, albeit it was a very small family gathering, my wife and I felt that we owed the little guy his party and I have been really struggling letting go of what happened to him a couple of months back. His was born on September 10, three years ago. This time around, everything was ready for his party, but he fell ill, and I mean, really, really ill. He contracted a nasty bacteria that destroyed his stomach and intestines. I don't know if I have ever been more afraid in my life, than when I got to the emergency room and saw my little boy, pale (he had lost a lot blood via his stool), dark rings around his eyes and the uneasy gaze of not knowing what is happening. I hugged him and tried to tell him that everything would be all right, but I did not know for sure, we had no idea what was going on. Just writing about it is hard...

The good news is that he obviously recovered; he spent 11 days in the hospital, enduring a grueling battle with his IV medicine and the tedium of feeling better but not being able to go anywhere. My wife and I had to split the time between the hospital and home, and I did not want my 5-year-old girl to spend too much time in the pediatric ward of the hospital for obvious reasons. So we never really had time to stop what we were doing and to analyze what has happening, heck, like I wrote above, I have just begun sorting through all the feeling and emotions.

Being able to see him this last Saturday, happy, playing with his toys and with his cousins, it just made my year. A smile from one of my kids wipes all the worries away, that's for sure.

I got sick on Thursday (My wife was the culprit for this one, her new nickname shall be the Petri Dish) and could not get much done in terms of my writing. Friday I was slowly dying (at least I felt that way) and Saturday I had the party and on Sunday I rested, still not feeling 100%. So, now I am 9k words behind on what I want to accomplish from NaNoWriMo. Yesterday I was able to get around 600 words back, and I am determined to write at least 25k words this week. I know that word counts are not that important in the grand scheme of things, but for a professional procrastinator, it has been a life changer. I now have a measurable goal; before NaNoWriMo, I wrote roughly 2k words a day, but now I see that I am perfectly able to write 3k+ daily, in the same amount of time and I owe the knowledge to the Challenge.

Hope you all have a great week and keep on writing!