I’m on the mailing list for NaBloPoMo, the group that encourages people to write one post per day for the entire month of November. Since last year, they’ve been sending out themes each month for people who struggle with topic ideas or just need reminders that the do in fact have a blog and should perhaps post on it. I tend to ignore these emails – the topics they give are pretty lame, and god knows I don’t need more reasons to update – but the email sent out for September caught my eye.

The theme is predictably pedestrian, but it was the blogging “challenge” that got my snark all in a knot:

Additionally, I’m adding a new 21-day blogging challenge to run from the 1st to the 21st of the month. September’s challenge is “Five-dollar lunch.” Spend $5 on lunch every day for 21 days and tell us what you ate! That’s $5 American, but a currency converter can be found at http://finance.yahoo.com/currency?u.

At a minimum, I find that a little insulting – and at worst, a terrible, terrible idea.

$5 a day for lunch over 21 days is $110. For a lot of people, that’s a fortune – is blogging suddenly only for those with enough disposable income to be able to waste money for the sake of fulfilling this “challenge”?

I admit that I’m often guilty of spending much more than $5 on my lunch from time to time – delicious yet needlessly expensive Jugo Juice smoothie/grilled wrap combo, I’m looking at you – but there are also many times I either bring my lunch from home, go without lunch, or spend less than $5. For example, $2.05 will get me a delicious pan of gyoza from the Japanese store downstairs. Tasty and cheap, just like me.

This blogging challenge can only be a terrible thing. You’re actively encouraging people to break the first cardinal rule of good blogging: NO ONE CARES WHAT YOU ATE FOR LUNCH. It takes a very rare kind of writer to make a lunch menu worth reading, and I’ve yet to come across someone who can list what they ate for 21 days in a row and make me want to check in each day.

Maybe I’m just cranky and looking for something to bitch about, but this email made me go wtf and then grr.