I filed 20 postdoc applications this weekend.

Estimated number of offers: 0.1. That’s right, with 22 applications in, I have a one-in-ten chance that I might hear back from one of them.

Real life is no fun.

Anyway, now that my big batch of postdoc applications is filed, I’ll get back to the posts I meant to write last month, still hoping to complete the 30 posts I wanted to write in November by the end of this year. There is still lots of interesting physics to cover!

At the beginning of this month, you may remember, I set out to write 30 blog posts in 30 days. Well, there are four days left, and I’m barely a third of the way to my target of blog posts. It turns out that applying for postdoc positions will take up all your time, and then some, leaving precious little for blogging. Which is kind of a shame, because I had some good sciencey posts lined up.

Most of my postdoc application deadlines are coming up this week or early next week, so I have to prioritize those for now. To make it up to you, my reader(s), once I’m done with applications I’ll keep going with all the posts I had wanted to write this month. With any luck, I can crank out all 30 by the end of December.

Back at the beginning of this month I set myself a goal: 30 nontrivial blog posts in 30 days, to coincide with National Novel Writing Month.

Now it’s nearly the end of the month. Did I make it? Not even close — although it’s the 29th of November, I’ve only written 22 posts total (well, now 23), several of which are decidedly trivial. Partly, though, that’s because I’ve been sick for the past week. Being sick is very much not compatible with a strict writing schedule. Better to sleep to blog another day, I suppose.

Because I’ve been sick, I’m making the executive decision to extend NaBloWriMo for a few days into December. Probably not long enough to make it to the 30-post goal, but really, it’s not like anyone (except me) cares about that anyway, and maybe it’ll give me the incentive to put the finishing touches on some more interesting posts I’ve been working on.

November is National Novel Writing Month, where both professional and amateur writers around the world try to write a 50000 word novel in a month. While it sounds like a fantastic goal, I would be terrible at it. Writing 50 thousand words on one topic would take me forever.

But I do have a blog, as you know if you are reading this, and last year I had the bright idea of doing a blogger’s version of NaNoWriMo: 30 nontrivial blog posts in 30 days. Last year, it was a spectacular failure. So of course, I’m trying it again. Let’s see how it goes!

Last night I noticed that I’ve posted something on this site every day for 5 days in a row. In comparison to my usual pattern of posting maybe once every two or three weeks, this feels pretty good. It’s nice to see my site looking “dynamic” or whatever.

As it happens, this streak coincides with the start of National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo. The concept of NaNoWriMo is that you force yourself to write an entire novel between November 1 and November 30. (By the way, NaNoWriMo people: the idea is great, but you seriously picked the worst abbreviation I have ever seen.) Of course, I couldn’t hope to write a novel in a month, but writing is writing, so I’m setting myself a goal of averaging one blog post per day for the entire month of November. National Blog Writing Month, I suppose. If nothing else, it’ll be a good excuse to finish up some of the posts I’ve been meaning to make for ages. Let’s see how this goes!