Okay, I posted every day through the 17th (which really is some kind of record for me), and then I fell off. What happened?

At the beginning of the month, I was going through some serious sh**, due to an ill-thought-out decision to go off my anxiety medication six weeks earlier. (I had made some cool lifestyle changes, so that ought to be enough, right? Guess not.) Posting to my blog every day in November had a special appeal to me this year, because it was one more way I could try to hang on to what sanity I had left. Frankly, most things made me think about death, and writing about it (well, parts of it) was a welcome distraction. I could kind of remove myself and be an observer of what was going down in my brain.

Yes, riding in the car made me think about (accidental, violent) death. Happy old people made me think of my own inevitable decline and demise. Cute little kids made me think about how they would grow up too fast, get old and die. I had a constant sense of anxiety — fight or flight! — that made everything a source of panic.

At one point, before deciding to call the shrink, I told Pete, “I feel like I’m already dead.”

This is my brain, not on drugs!

So, the first six days of the month were me trying not to lose it. The second six were me getting my mojo back. And the rest of the month, well, I’m busy living. Most of it is fairly mundane stuff. The internet does not want to know what I had for breakfast, right?

That’s my excuse for my NaBloPoMo failure. I won’t call it an epic fail, because in so many ways it’s a resounding success.