How about a retroactive documentation of a retired task? Seems like that should be X worthy, yet hopefully the explanation will be interesting enough that wrath is not inevitably invited. And, I hope to raise people's interest in doing this task, because it seems like a very SF0 kind of activity!

Last November, I wrote a NaNoWriMo novel, which was the thrust of the Write a Novel (in a Month) task. It was a leap of faith to sign up for this experience, because I had not written any fiction since high school english class, and I'm not even very interested in writing fiction. But I was attracted to the mystique of becoming a writer, so I committed to the event and arranged to take 2 hours of vacation per work day for doing the writing.

I got about five other friends to embark on this quest. That was the first surprise---that even though almost everyone I know is a computer programmer, lots of them are also interested in writing fiction. We met up to talk about ideas and provide encouragement. Most of the time, the writing was kind of fun, but not so much fun that I'd want to do it as a real job. I decided to make things as easy as possible by sticking to a fictional version of my real world, and using really short chapters so that no chapter would need to be written over multiple sessions.

The second surprise was that it just wasn't that hard to crank out 50,000 words over a month, given a set time each day to work on it. Of course, it would be a lot harder if you were writing something that required tons of research, but just like the NaNoWriMo people say, regular folks can do this successfully. (Ok, I admit that none of my friends actually finished their novels, but the one who wrote every day got really close. The others weren't able to write even every week, due to other stuff going on.)

I was going with the NaNoWriMo advice of wearing a costume (kind of like a writing hat) to get in the mood, and showing up to work in a blue velvet cloak. At first, I was worried about looking funny, but people seemd to like it. So I realized that I can probably be more relaxed about seeming eccentric, which was useful to know.

Finally, I have been going back and forth about letting people read the novel. I definitely didn't want any comments during the month. Afterwards, I was worried that people might feel annoyingly obligated to read it, sort of like how you might have to attend your little cousin's piano recital and suffer through bad music and boredom through a sense of duty. Plus it was difficult to not feel embarrassed that it might be a terrible novel. But I've pretty much resolved to stop feeling self-conscious so here's the MIT Office of Work/Life Balance.

I hope a bunch of you will take the plunge and sign up for NaNoWriMo this year!