This year I decided that I had made NaBloPoMo way to hard on myself last year. Last year, I valiantly reviewed a Very Special Episode most days and those posts were lengthy. So this year I focused on alternating between long and short posts, which was really great on the nights that I felt wiped out from work and didn’t feel like churning anything out.

And somehow I managed to suck even more at cross-posting to BlogHer than I did last year. So I tried to catch up one night by cross-posting like 4 posts in one fell swoop. This caused them to label me as a spammer and I have since had my account locked. This turned out to be the BEST THING EVER! It turns out that I hate cross-posting. I also hate the design of that website. Somehow I felt obligated to cross-post to “get the most out of NaBloPoMo” and being locked-out of my account released me from the self-imposed chore that I had created. (If this ever happens to you, you can contact the website to have them re-open your account. But I opted to just say goodbye.)

Most of all, this year I remembered that NaBloPoMo is about community. Sure, it’s about giving yourself a challenge. But that challenge wouldn’t be nearly as fun if you weren’t checking out all of the other blogs participating as well. So this year I read more, liked more, and shared more. This made the entire process less-stressful and more fun.

Note to self: You’re going to look back at this post while agonizing over whether or not you should do NaBloPoMo again. And I’m telling you that you probably shouldn’t. But you, future self, are probably reading this and saying, “Yeah, I see what you’re saying, but I want the new badge that says NaBloPoMo 2016.”