Competing with Myself

By Deb Yamanaka

Every year in November writers from all over the world come together for a month of writing furiously. The goal is 50,000 words in 30 days. Some use it as an opportunity to work on their version of the “Great American Novel” (although many Wrimos are not actually Americans) while others, like me, sometimes do it just to see if we can. And I have – twice now – completed the challenge, the first time in 2008 in my inaugural year and then again in 2011.

National Novel Writing Month – or NaNoWriMo as it’s referred to by all of the insiders and the folks around them who think those writers might be a little nuts – was founded in 1999 by Chris Baty. The group of writers, including Baty, all hailed from the Bay Area of San Francisco and, according to Baty, began the project not because he and his friends had ideas for the great American novel but because they “wanted to write novels for the same dumb reasons twentysomethings start bands.”

As a twentysomething I was in a band. So I get it.

That first NaNoWriMo started with 21 writers. In 2022, 412,000 writers from all over the world participated. I was one of them. I didn’t finish. I got to 8,000 words and then realized that while I was telling a story some of my family had asked me to tell, it wasn’t a place I wanted to be mentally.

Sometimes that happens. My twenty-something self would have felt bad about not finishing. My much older and wiser self has a better understanding about the value of competition.

NaNoWriMo lifts every single writer. It recognizes that sometimes competition is really about encouraging ourselves and each other to get going on something we’ve been dreaming about. It lifts us up even as we’re dragging ourselves to keyboards, coffee in hand, determined to get a few words onto the proverbial page. In the end, it makes each of us better – even if we don’t finish. And sometimes we don’t.

But – sometimes we do.

Excel Technologies is a government contracting firm. This means that we specialize in solutions and services that focus on, and meet, the unique nature of delivering the government mission. Leading this company of service-oriented individuals is an honor. We live and operate in an environment with thousands of other companies working in the same space. Each and every one of those companies is led by someone who gets up every morning, looks at the day in front of them, and knows that they will be competing with thousands of other people for that work.

It doesn’t stop. But done right it can make us better people. Which is ultimately what competition was designed to do.

What really matters is how we decide to handle that competition – because in the end the people we’re really competing with is ourselves. And like NaNoWriMo, and the roughly half million writers who are getting up in the morning just like I did, the best competition is the one that makes everyone better.