Chris Baty explains it best:

Dear Brave NaNoWriMo Participant,

Okay. The holidays are over, and it's time to get back to work.

Not actual work, mind you. Forget that. After NaNoWriMo, we all deserve at least another month before we head back to our cubicles and classrooms. Your bosses and teachers will understand.

No, I'm talking about exciting work. I'm talking about the fact that there's a beautiful new year on the horizon, and it's time for us to get up to a beautiful new kind of trouble together. Which is why I'm writing to invite you to take part in NaNoWriMo's second annual Big, Fun, Scary Adventure Challenge.

The Challenge works like this: All of us come up with a list of things that we've long dreamed about doing, making, or being. These can be hard-nosed acts of practical skill-acquisition, such as becoming a ninja and learning to kill people with our eyebrows. Or they can be fantastical notions such as going back to school and getting a degree in business administration.

The adventuresome path or paths you choose are completely up to you. Last year, some BFS participants used the challenge to complete a revision of their NaNoWriMo novels and write their first scripts through Script Frenzy. But many of ventured farther afield. We finally learned to speak some Spanish (that was me). We took classes in watercolor painting, started blogs, and learned to tango. We mended fences with estranged family members, explored the Amazon in dugout canoes, hiked the Great Wall of China, and made daunting leaps from soul-snuffing jobs to careers closer to our hearts.

To take part in the challenge, you just need to post at least one big, fun, or scary goal for yourself in this forum. Then, come January 1, we'll roll up our sleeves, pack a lunch and a change of underwear, and set out into the big, fun, scary unknown together.

We'll use this BFS forum to post reports on our progress and setbacks, locate fellow adventurers who can help us reach our goals, and generally whoop it up in true Office of Letters and Light fashion as we move a few items on our lifetime to-do lists from "someday" to "done that."

Also, our great moderators Sammy and Mortaine have set up helpful Resources threads for all sorts of goals. If you need any advice or just want to chat about your adventures in those specific domains, please post there! And if you're an expert in any of those areas, please drop by and offer your insight and encouragement!

Anyone who completes at least one of their adventures before December 31, 2008 will a glowing Big, Fun, Scary Adventure Challenge winner's certificate to remind them of their feat. To claim your certificate, just email tavia@nanowrimo.org with "BFS 2008 Winner" in the subject line. We'll have the certificates ready to email out at the end of 2008. If you were a 2007 winner and haven't gotten your certificate yet, just send Tavia an email with "BFS 2007 Winner" in the subject line.

What will you attempt in 2008? I can't wait to find out.

Chris
NaNoWriMo

As for myself, my goals for 2008 are:

• complete a mail order Klingon course
• completely rehaul and reorganize my room, getting rid of the many, many, many old things and making way for the many, many, many newer ones
• volunteer for a non-profit project/organization
• find 10 things my brother and I have in common
• stop automatically turning people down when they call to invite me out
• win NaNoWriMo this year
• visit at least 90% of the museums in Houston and Humble
• make a collage
• make a skirt
• vote
• buy two pairs of brown shoes
• do something semi-permanent and spontaneous to my hair
• document everything I eat as part of my little social experiment
• visit my friend in Austin before semester's end

Also, I'd like to take this time to pimp megan_eating, a new lj I started out as a bit of an experiment. After watching countless shows on the Discovery Health channel about fat people I realized that one of the main things I heard leaving their mouths was, "I just never realized how much I was eating" or something to that extent. Therefore, I have created a theory--that by paying attention to what we stick in our mouths and shove down our stomachs, we can see how poorly we treat our bodies and can therefore take the first step to becoming healthy. So....for the next year, I will be documenting my every culinary move in a weird kind of social experiment so that I can see if it indeed works. I hope that by recording everything I eat, I see exactly how it is I am eating unhealthily rather than just that I am. Hopefully, this will help enable me to be healthier and to take better care of my body. Please share this idea with your friends blah blah blah and try it yourself--you'd be surprised at what you eat (insert more inspirational and guilt-making words).

Oh....aaaand:

( Slight Rant + OMG DRAMORZ!!!! )

Oh geez....I have turned into the very thing I hate. You know those girls who sit by the phone and wait for a guy to call? Or the ones that net-stalk the poor guy?Or the ones whose days are ruined when they don't hear from him? Yeah....guilty as charged.

I just....geez.... This has never happened before. I always swore I would keep a level head when it came to guys and, for the most part, I have yet to turn into well...someone who is constantly talking about "boyfriend" (I'm sure you know who I mean...). I mean.....gods! I'm not even dating the guy! We're just friends and we talk and we enjoy each other's company and words. And yeah....yesterday may have been a bit squeal-inducing had I been any other girl....but I usually keep my head when this shit happens! What makes it even crazier is that for the past I don't know how many months I have been telling Keri that college guys are no good and they all just want to have fun and aren't interested in serious relationships REGARDLESS of what they tell you. What makes it even crazier than that is that at the beginning of the semester I promised myself no guys until I got my ass the hell out of Humble, and here I am, seriously considering just asking the guy out. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?!?!?!?!

Honestly, you'd think with the way the last few have turned out that I'd be ready to swear off guys forever and just become a lesbian, or at least bi, but nooooo....Megan has to have her little tee-hee girl moment and get all melt-y whenever she thinks of this person. Blech. No...Megan is not a girl. Megan will suck up and act like the man of the house she is supposed to be. Men of the house(man of the houses? men of the houses? man of the house-s? how would you pluralize that one?) don't fawn over some guy who will most likely just waltz right out of her life just as quickly as he waltzed in. End of story. Megan =/= girl. Megan =/= squeal-y. Megan =/= melt-at-the-thought-of-him. Megan = ....what?

Whatev. Megan needs to take her own advice for once and keep her own promises to herself.