So I've been stalled out, per usual, had a strong start but am now discouraged by how behind I am, per usual, and I realized why this happened, and why it's happened every year I've attempted NaNoWriMo:
I don't like to choose.
Every year I've tried to do this near-impossible challenge, I've also tried to do everything else I would typically do in a month. I go out with friends, I have people over, I binge-watch Netflix with my girlfriend.
A coworker at my day job is also doing NaNoWriMo, and now we're "writing buddies," so I can see her word count rising in a way best described as "meteoric." Folks, she is killing it. And how? She writes. Every night. We had a farewell party for another coworker recently. She came to the in-office part and skipped the raucous dive bar part. Instead, she went home. She wrote.
I went to the dive bar. I did not write that evening, nor the next morning, on account of the hangover. It was a great night, don't get me wrong. But I lost more of that momentum, while my coworker reinforced a good habit and added another 1,667 words to her already staggering word count.
When you commit to something you have to make it a priority. And the only way to do that is to choose it over something else, over and over again.
I'll get there.