NOVEMBER NANOWRIMO and DIAS DE LOS MEUERTOS

• Thoughts on deck today…for the month of November
• Here are a bunch of letters put together to form separately an acronym and a phrase. One stands for a movement (NANOWRIMO) the other a holiday to remember those we have lost (DIAS DE LOS MUERTOS)
• What do they have in common other than letters?
• Nothing yet.
• I have always loved the excitement of NANOWRIMO which stands for National November Writing Month or something close to it. The clever founders went one step ahead and used the first two letters for each word to shorten the name of their movement. It has a catchy cadence and with its four-syllable beat and two beat repeat which just works in my opinion. This is a challenge to write every day for thirty days to create a 50,000 word novel or draft. It is both exciting and exhausting. How can one act of passion be both? You can try the challenge or follow me as I try it again this month. If this blog counts for today, I am already up 772 words. Speaking of words, here are a few more.
• Dias de los Muertos is a Mexican holiday celebrated the day after the American holiday of Halloween and is translated to “the day of the dead” to be exact. But I am not dead you say. You can search up and learn about the meaning and history on your own.  This answered some questions as to why our Halloween happens the way we created it. Honestly, I don’t celebrate  dias de los  muertes, but I absolutely love the way the words of this holiday name rolled off my tongue, but it typically will repeat and roll itself in my head for the rest of the month. If you didn’t know the meaning of the words, you might find the combination of letters quite beautiful, at least I do. I reread the true meaning of the holiday from the Daily Stoic, and relearned the phrase, “memento mori,” which also has a pretty ring to it which when translated from Latin means, “remember that you have to die.”
• Yikes! I don’t want to remember that! Yet, there it is. Here I am. The first motion of the Uncapsize Perspective is to acknowledge and accept where you are. While your capsize moment may not necessarily relate to a life or death situation, you will at some point have to acknowledge and where you are. That is that very idea of memeto mori. You know where you are now but eventually you will de. I Acknowledge I will die someday, but for now, I Accept that I am here, alive in the now and want to reap the joy, fun, excitement and life experiences while I am here. Why am I here?
• “Death doesn’t make life pointless-it makes life purposeful.”
• That is the message I will carry with me today. With my limited time here on earth, I acknowledge the purpose of my life. For right now, it is to write in the morning to right myself and stand up to the day ahead. I will celebrate those we have lost as the holiday suggests and will allow my day to take shape remembering those loved one that went before me. Love you, Betsy.
• I can’t help but acknowledge again, that we are in the first day of the eleventh month of November, and with both NANOWRIMO and dias de los meurtes to lead us off, I turn my focus towards the eleventh motion in my log-ins.  This eleventh motion is where I turn my TILLER. I turn to The Things I Love, Learn, Embrace and Rejoice. It is a month of thanksgivings, a time for remembrance for our Veteran’s who fought for our freedoms and must not be forgotten for the freedom they gave us which includes our right to vote. I think of the pilgrims who fled from religious persecution and am saddened that it still happens today. I pray for the safety of all people throughout the world.
• Every month has it’s Tiller moments and while I Look back at last month, I can’t and wouldn’t change any of it. I Learned to dig holes very quickly before the frost prevented me from planting my newly rescued shrubs. I Loved going on my very first couples’ trip (anything on the water is love) to Learn and experience the art and skill of crabbing on the Chesapeake Bay. I Embraced my cousin I had not seen in ten years and his new wife, I had not met yet. We celebrated and Rejoiced the upcoming birth of his first child. I celebrated a few personal and relationship milestones as well.

Next month…the ME and the TREE

Seas the day and right yourself! ~ Amy Writes