The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

A bright shiny new month begins and it's time to take stock of the old one.
For a few years now July has been devoted to Camp Nanowrimo. But this serpent has been slacking. Ever since they replaced the default setting of 50,000 words for the month with a 'choose your own word count goal' option back in 2014 I decided to wimp out and go for 30,000 words. It's a lot less but still a reasonable commitment of about 1,000 words per day.

This time I added two more challenges. Plastic Free July is definitely a local idea and Dry July is likely to be local too.
Dry July involves giving up booze for the month with the option of getting sponsored or donating the amount usually spent on drink to a charity.
It's pretty easy compared to doing Ramadan where even drinking water is verboten during daylight hours and alcohol the whole year not just July. But still a bit tricky if you are in the habit of drinking a glass or two of red at night to unwind.

Plastic Free July is not quite so simple to describe. It's not just about giving up plastic shopping bags for the month but any form of single use disposable plastic such as straws, styrofoam cups, milk or drinks in plastic bottles and pretty much two thirds of the content of a typical supermarket.

While the nano muses did miss their booze around the campfire at night, they were reasonably satisfied with the alternative of chai tea or hot chocolate and happily churned out their 1,000 words per day.
The first week was quite difficult since I had gotten rather in the habit of sitting out in the garden at night sipping a glass or two of red. But after one week I hardly missed it at all no doubt helped by all those grey rainy days.
The plastic free challenge was rather another matter. I did manage to complete it for the first time in 2013 and had only 5 items in the 'sin bin' but this time I did not even get past the first week before giving into a craving for cheese and chips. Also my favourite shower gel was on sale for half price and that comes in a single use plastic bottle.

A proper plastic Nazi would resort to buying milk in glass bottles, using only the cheapest and nastiest of loo paper because nearly all the other brands are wrapped in plastic and would have a cheese free month and do a ridiculous amount of home cooking and vegetable growing because that's by far the best way to reduce usage.

The constant vigilance required to do the month properly without cheating has a whole bunch of unintended side effects most of which result in eating and living much healthier. That's even aside from the drastic reduction of one's personal pollution foot print.

In the end the one of the three challenges that I did not successfully complete is probably the most useful and important of all and also of course the most difficult.

From now on I will leave the Nano camping adventures behind since the skill I now need to learn is not churning out words but editing, revising them and forming them into coherent final drafts.
Will definitely make a serious attempt on dumping disposable plastic for next July and will resolve not to cheat or to chicken out early like this time.

So now it's time to slink off downstairs to grab a glass of The Scribbler Shiraz and sip it outside under the light of the nearly full moon.