I agree, stormdream. Although I've been a writer all my life, I'd become so embroiled in family &tc - everything else is always so much more important - but in 2009 when i gave myself the birthday present of participating in NaNoWriMo.
(Fortunately the husband & kid are capable of feeding themselves at this point
The coolest thing about it is that you can use NaNoWriMo exactly the way that you want to, you can follow their agenda, or you can do your own thing. If you haven't got last years' ms edited, maybe you want to spend this year's NaNo doing that. Or maybe, like my husband, you just want to take a crack at writing a novel.
For me, the most important things about NaNo is that it gives me an excuse to say "no" to other things (including having to celebrate my birthday) and focus on the writing part. And it gives me a deadline. Don't get cold feet, jedipencil, just have fun with it.
Of course, every year I tell myself I will actually have an outline by November.... characters worked out and all... but this year I am the worst prepared ever because there are too many other calls on my time... I haven't even settled on genre!! But I'm going to do it anyway.