November is Super Weird

I don't know what it is about this month that makes me all anxious.  To me, November is such a confused, strange month.  Has anyone else noticed this?  I don't really think it is that it is the lead-up to the major holiday spectacle season of the year and I don't think it has anything to do with coming off the Halloween sugar rush or anything.  But maybe that is part of it?

November is SO many things.  For example, of course it is the month of giving thanks so lots of people do the thing where they post on Facebook or blogs or just at home with an advent calendar about something they are thankful for each day of the month.  It is also National Adoption Month so in the adoption world you see lots of blog posts about that (some adoption bloggers do daily debunking of adoption myths). 

Then it is National Novel Writing Month where the goal is to write a novel in a month by getting down, like, 2,000 words of text per day.  I have totally always wanted to try it (not that I imagine some great literature would come spewing forth with that approach but I think it would be an intensely interesting/challenging personal effort to do something I have always wanted to do).  Interestingly, the book "Water for Elephants" was a result of a National Novel Writing Month project. 

I've seen a bunch of friends cyber-encouraging each other through "No Sugar November" and I always feel just a teensy bit guilty going about not joining in that kind of commitment (but I won't because I know that I just can't do it.  Not for a month.  Give me a smaller and more manageable timeframe, like, say, Wednesdays.  No sugar Wednesdays.  I could handle that.  Maybe.) 

This is also the month of the "Pile on the Miles" challenge which is basically a challenge to up your weekly mileage in your running.  And I can't forget that it is the month of "Movember" (short for moustache November) or "Noshember" (short for no shave November) where basically, you ignore common grooming standards in favor of not shaving for a month - for dudes this typically means growing a mustache and for the, erm, ladies, you don't shave your legs... hmm, I feel super awkward explaining this.

And then there is Black Friday, of course, so my email is already getting spammed like crazy with non-stop emails and I find myself clicking "unsubscribe" nearly every day to some company or other (seriously Banana Republic, why do you feel the need to email me like 4 times a day?  I do like your clothes but I totally don't get the pushiness.)  I know I could just use a separate email account to sign up for junk emails like that, but let's be honest, I would never, ever, check it so why bother? 

There is tons of other stuff that I maybe don't have as strong of connections too but that are no less important like the fact that November is both Lung Cancer Awareness month and Pancreatic Cancer Awareness month.  I'm sure it is a bunch of other things month too.

I'm not saying any of the above is bad or dumb or anything like that.  All of the above have shown up on my Facebook page or blog feed in recent days as friends have updated their statuses about them.  Heck, I'm all about jumping on nerdy bandwagons with stuff like this.  But isn't it bizarre that November has turned into sort of a catch-all month for randomness?  I just can't decide whether to embrace it all or hide from it.

Okay, enough of my musings.  I have some novel writing/distance running/no candy eating to do...