NaNoWriMo: I did it!

I finished National Novel Writing Month--and right on schedule! This is the page I was greeted with when I submitted my 50,000+ word story:

And here's my lovely stats page, complete with little purple "winner" bar:

Yay! 

But I'm actually not finished with the story--I've got the end of the story to write out yet, so I'll keep working on that the next few weeks, albeit it at a less break-neck pace (the house has to get tidied sometime after all!).  When I'm done with that, I'll take a little break and then go back and read the whole thing (something I haven't done at all yet) and see if I hate it or if it's worth editing. I do have a lot of anxiety that my characters are flat and uninteresting and that the whole story is boring, but I'm laying all that aside until I finish it.  Either way, I am really proud and astonished that I even had 50,000 words in me to write, and that I did it in 30 days! 

On a more serious note, I'm a person that often has a hard time believing in myself, or worrying that there are things I might not capable of.  But I'm beginning to realize that doing things like this, and running a half marathon, like I did last year--definitively hard things--helps me realize that I am a person that can do hard things. A lot of times I look at my life and try to total it all up, but I always have these qualifiers: I'm a college grad (but I didn't work after college), I'm a stay at home mom (but having a toddler is really hard for me and sometimes staying at home makes me bonkers), I'm an etsy store owner (but I just do little silly stuff and don't earn much), etc--and sometimes the list feels lacking.  I love my life, I do--but it doesn't always seem AMAZING, or special, and sometimes I worry that means I'm not a special person. 

But regardless of whether those little qualifiers matter (when I'm feeling optimistic I know they don't), doing hard things reminds me that I am a capable person.  I might not know what I want to do with 100% of my life, but I'll figure it out eventually, because I am strong and I can do difficult things, like running 13.1 miles and writing 50,000 words in a month. 

So while I may not end up liking the novel I wrote this month (and it very well may never see the light of day), it was a good experience for me all the same, and I'm glad I did it.