Freshman Year at 46 - #NaBloPoMo

Going from a small Lutheran grade school to a much, much larger Lutheran high school would have been intimidating had not my best friend since kindergarten been by my side.

We scheduled most of our classes together, developed crushes on the same guys and giggled. All the time. At everything and everyone. Especially the guys who were the object of our crushes.

We had high hopes for successful auditions into extracurriculars like pompon squad and planned our strategies to a tee – what we’d wear, the routine we’d do and scheduled our auditions back to back. We’d go in front of the coaches and knock ‘em dead.

One of us made the pompon squad; and the one wasn’t me. It was devastating to a fragile teen, and the truth is I’d probably shed a tear now if I was telling you about it over a glass of wine.

I got over it, but the rejected freshman girl in me still pokes at me during job interviews, or whenever I hit the publish button on a post (like this one), or whenever I submit a piece to be published someplace other than this blog.

Some thirty years later, NaBloPoMo – or National Blog Posting Month - has me feeling like a freshman again, although I’ve married my crush and have neither the inspiration nor inclination to learn a pompon dance routine.

It’s simple: write a post each day in November. Every day. EACH day. Which is actually pretty intimidating.

So I did what Freshman Rochelle did what she did back in the day: get a friend to do it too. Only this time, it’s Carrie of Candid Carrie.

NaBloPoMo isn’t about acceptance or rejection. It’s about challenging myself to be better and more disciplined about writing.

And I can do that.

After all, this isn't freshman year and no pompon shaking is involved.