I had some crazy Pinot Noir-infused dreams last night, and I finished the bottle tonight, and I can’t seem to keep my eyes open. My blog ends next Monday, and all I want to do is rush through to the end.

I’m tired and lazy and I just started watching Attack on Titan on Netflix and I just want to go back to watching that and did I mention I’m tired?

So I get paid at work tomorrow. I only worked two days this pay period, but I had 40 hours of vacation time saved up so I ended up with a bit over 50 hours this pay period. That’s awesome. That’s more money than I thought I would have earned, and that should keep me afloat for September, so I can actually use the fire checks toward debts. I’m thinking of allocating just $500 or so on wants and saving the rest. This will cover a lot of my kitchen wants and maybe a few things for my desk. Cool cool cool.

I planned to workout today, but that didn’t happen. A friend of mine actually wanted to go hiking with me today, but she had to go to Polson, and by the time she got back, I was already at the bottom of my Pinot Noir bottle and in no shape in going out. Maybe we’ll go out some other time. She did tell me of a few cool spots to go hiking, so that’s what I’ll be focusing on in the coming months.

Will you guys actually miss me writing this blog? If there’s enough interest (and judging by my stats, there isn’t), I’ll consider switching over to a WordPress site or something and keeping a blog there.

I’ll be honest, there are times when I do like my blog. It’s the burden of the daily entry that has tainted it, though. Live and learn, right?

This is more of a freewrite than anything. I used to do a lot of those back in high school and college. God did I do a lot of them in high school. I thought I was the shit back then, that every word I wrote was golden and heavenly and the whole world should bow at my feet and worship me. Not much has changed. Ha.

It’s the last day of August, and god damn did this month go by fast. I was out fighting fires for most of it, but damn, still went by fast. Tomorrow is a new month, and I’m supposed to get my life back on track. Shit… didn’t I say the exact same thing last September? So I guess not much has changed in the past year.

That’s not entirely true. Remember her? Yeah, me neither. She still overshadows this blog as she was the purpose of it in the beginning, but the blog became its own thing and I grew a lot as a person. What do you guys think? Have I?

Today went by too fast because I actually did what I set out to do.

I cleaned my house. Boy, did my house need a good cleaning. The bathroom is clean, the kitchen is clean, the living room is clean, everything is clean. I cleaned the fridge and that funky smell from all that expired food is gone. It actually smells amazing in there now that I have fresh food in there. I made homemade guacamole and salsa roja, and their fragrance is very welcome in my life. I made chicken salad with the guacamole, and oh god, I missed fresh and tasty and healthy food. No more fast food. Blech.

I also read a lot today. I’m nowhere near getting caught up with what I missed when I was gone, but I made a big dent in it. I should, hopefully, catch up this week before the new issue of the New Yorker arrives on Thursday. Then I can finally read some of the books I bought while I was gone. Oh, I don’t think I’ve mentioned that yet: I bought four books while I was out firefighting, and I want to read them. One in particular is called Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes, and that’s one I really want to read. Maybe sometime this week.

So I cleaned, I read, and I made some good food. I also watched a lot of YouTube videos. I’m not sure when I discovered him, but I’ve been watching and enjoying the ComicsExplained YouTube channel. He goes into great detail on various comics-related topics and characters and events, and it’s so much fun to go through many of his videos. I’m learning a lot. One thing I haven’t lost progress on are all my email newsletters. The thing about these newsletters is that they’re so easy to consume, and I know how far behind I am by simply looking at my inbox. And since I love to have zero emails in my inbox, I make it a priority to consume them as quickly as possible. In that regards, I’m caught up and I feel good about it.

I have a little over a week left before my one year project comes to an end. I don’t think this next week is going to inspire my best content, but I will try to write some good shit. We’ll see. It’s no surprise that I really just want to end this and maybe — maybe — continue my blog but in a different light, with a different angle. Who knows.

Anyways, tomorrow I hope to reboot my workout regiment and to continue making good food. I also hope to start writing again, at least the early stages of it. It’s time to rewrite my novel, and that’s something I really want to focus on completely. So maybe it’s good that my blog is ending now. My novel should take all my writing focus anyway.

I’ll see you guys later. One more week.

I need to get back on track.

I updated my blog, and I added pictures to it without much context but it’s fine. I intended to revise or at least read through the entries I wrote while out firefighting, but I didn’t want to. I simply didn’t feel like doing it at the moment. I think it’s better this way anyway as each entry reflects honestly on the moment I wrote it. I’ve yet to read through all of them, but I think I will eventually. It was a fun three weeks that I was out there saving the world, and a hectic and unfavorable past week getting back to my regular routine.

The regular routine is fucked. I plan to do a lot of work tomorrow but planning and doing are two very different things. Also, like I mentioned in another post, I don’t care about 500 words anymore. I’ll write what I write and that’ll be that. I have a little over a week left, anyway. I can’t wait.

I’ve been drinking beer and eating out and not cleaning my house or showering or even shaving, even though I’m intentionally growing out my beard for now. I like it. I’ll see if I still feel that way once it grows out more. My fingernails are long. I feel bloated. Everything feels disorganized. I don’t like it. Fire season is over, so it’s time to regroup.

This will matter to no one but me: I tweaked YNAB, removing my Credit Cards category and instead having my categories show their true debt load. I thought this would help me see which category has the most debt, in which case I won’t spend any of my money on it once I get paid. This mostly means I don’t have money to spend on anything I want. I might break this rule and buy a few things, but I’ll see once all my money comes in. This means I probably won’t buy a TV this time around. I might not have a big purchase this year with my fire money. Hmm…

I’ll shower tomorrow and get my OmniFocus tasks back under control. Then it’s time to consume what I need to consume, create what I need to create, and lose the fat I need to lose. I love September.

So I’m still trying to get my life back on track again. Fire season seems to do that. I know it does it and I know to expect it, but it’s still very tough to steer the ship back to where it used to be. I’ll get there.

Tomorrow I will finally have a day off in almost 4 weeks. It’s been a long time coming and I can’t wait to sleep in and finally go grocery shopping, but I wished to be out firefighting this weekend. It won’t happen. My crew looks like they will demobilize this weekend, giving me zero chance to fight with them.

I still haven’t added all my past entries on my blog. It’s been a long week. I will do that this weekend for sure. It’ll be good to do that then since I only have ten days left on this year. Holy shit you guys. I’m going to make it to a full year of daily entries. So much has happened that I don’t even know where to begin.

Good thing I don’t have to since I’ll have a few future entries to reminisce on that. What’s really on my mind is the fact that I don’t want to spend my money on anything. I’m wishy-washy about it. There are so many things I wouldn’t mind having, but at the same time, I feel like I have enough. I also haven’t received all my firefighting money yet, so my thoughts might change once it does. I also have to wait until my school checks stabilize, and I can get my budget back on track.

So I removed Apple Music from my Apple devices and am going back to buying music. I didn’t like it. I don’t like streaming music. I like owning it. I wrote about this already, but just thought I’d mention it again, if anybody was curious.

I have a lot of work ahead of me still.

So I still haven’t added my entries to my blog. I’ll do it soon. Tomorrow is Friday, which means I may have a chance this weekend to do it, only if I’m not allowed to go back to firefighting this weekend. I haven’t had a day off since August 2nd, but who cares, right? I’m making money.

I felt better today, but still very very tired. I took it easy, today, though, and nobody seemed to notice. I did my job when it was required of me to do it, but I did the absolute minimum. I have a running list of teachers who need my help, but I, for the most part, ignored it. I checked off a few teachers, but it was hardly a dent.

I totally don’t care about hitting 500 words an entry anymore. I have 11 more days before I close the books on this blog, and I can’t wait. I love writing and I love journalling but I hate blogging. Especially daily blogging. I get less joy out of it than if I wrote in my moleskine. Sorry to be a debbie-downer.

I’m growing my beard out. I haven’t shaved in almost 4 weeks, and I really really missed having a beard. I missed scratching it and petting it and the way I look with it. I’ve been thinking of simply growing it out as far as I could, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to stomach that. We’ll see.

I’ve been making plans in my head for what to do with all this money coming in, but for the most part, I don’t really want to spend it on anything extravagant. There’s kitchen supplies and a new TV and books and a few electronics, but all that stuff can wait for now, I feel. Who knows. Maybe I’ll feel different when all my money comes in.

I’m behind on TV and New Yorker issues and my Instapaper queue is filled to the brim. I love fire season.

Today was awful because I woke up with a runny nose, and I drank two Cold Smokes, which caused me to take a nap for about 2-3 hours just now, and I really didn’t want to write this entry, but here I am writing what I can.

It looks like I have less than 2 weeks before I’m done with all these entries. I have nothing planned for the end other than finishing. I don’t think I’m going to do this for another year. I’m going to write in my moleskine journal as often as possible, but I won’t be bound by word count or consistency. At least not daily consistency.

Today was the first day of school, and god dammit, I didn’t feel good for it. I was so irritated with everyone by the end that it came out during my interactions with people. At least I think so, nobody seemed to have any conflict with me. I think they knew I wasn’t feeling any good.

It’s almost 10, and I don’t know how much sleep I’ll get. I’m not that tired right now, so we’ll see.

I still haven’t posted the last three weeks’ worth of entries. Ugh. I have to do that soon.

School starts tomorrow, and I’m totally not ready for that.

Work the past two days has been very, very busy, which is good because it’s already almost Wednesday, and I’m still getting paid. I haven’t had a day off since August 2nd, which was the last weekend I had to myself, too. That means I’ve been earning money since then, which is pretty fantastic once you start thinking about it. And nothing below $17.80 an hour, to boot.

We have a lot of new faces at work, and yesterday we had this meeting in the cafeteria with everyone employed by the school, and we were all introduced to one another. All the work I did before leaving to firefight is paying off because it has made my days this week a little bit easier. A lot of the work I’ve had to do has been little things that add up because everyone has needed my help for something. I still need to do a few more big things tomorrow and maybe Thursday, but I think (hope?) that by Friday things will start to slow down. At least by next week I should have my routine back… again, I hope.

I’m still writing this entry in Day One because the thought of adding all the entries I’ve written since August 4th is making me procrastinate. It’s not an easy task, something i can accomplish in a few minutes. I hope by the weekend things start to settle down and my routine will return. I at least cleaned my house a bit today. No more expired food in the fridge, clean dishes, and everything put back in its place. Even my firefighting gear.

I miss firefighting.

One of the saddest things about the end of fire season is the hard crash that comes from the monotony of a slower routine. Firefighting has a predictable and somewhat harsh routine: wake up early, sleep deprived, and exhausted, have a few minutes to brush teeth and put boots on, attend briefing, have breakfast, and finally go to the fire, catching up with micro-naps here and there. Then there’s the long hike into the fire, the few hours of work before lunch, lunch time, a few more hours of work, and the long hike out of the fire. Then dinner. Sprinkled in-between all of that, though, is the fact that you’re doing something you love with people who love it just as much as you do. These people are also all so different, and you learn so much from them and them from you, and there’s a camaraderie that builds up so quickly and feels like it’s lasted so long that when it’s over, there’s no way to replace it.

Time seems to work. This is my fourth fire season, so I know that time works, but I also know that I’ve fallen into a depression after each fire season, too. I drink more, I eat more, I try my hardest to be more social in an attempt to recreate the social life of firefighters while out on a fire, but it hasn’t worked. I’m going to give myself tonight to drink and sleep and feel what I feel, but I can’t let it linger forever. I’m even going to try to come back and fight fires during the weekends, but that’s not guaranteed in stone or anything.

I just miss it. There’s still a lot of work to be done, and I forgot to mention how beautiful Montana is, even when it’s on fire. The best part of all of this is being able to see places a lot of people have never seen before. God, I need to go hiking again.

I’m back home.

My 2015 fire season is over, and I go back to work tomorrow. Back to the daily grind. It sucks that I have to leave my fire family now when there’s so much more work to be done, but I have a good job that I can’t abandon for a few weeks of work and fun.

School starts on Wednesday, and there’s still a lot of shit yet to be done. People have told me this first week of school is super stressful, so we’ll see what happens.

I’ve already had a couple of beers, and I’m tired. Tomorrow I’ll edit and post all the entries I’ve written since going on fires almost 3 weeks ago. It should be fun reading through them again. I know I didn’t write super long entries, but it should hopefully trigger some awesome memories.

This was a great summer. I really loved it, and it made me so proud to be a firefighter.

The penultimate day of my 2015 fire season is over, and it went well. We did a bit more than yesterday because the weather was a bit better. Cold, but better. The lightning storm from last night didn’t do much damage on the reservation, which was good, and the rain actually helped our fire a lot. The section my squad was in charge of had a few big smokes but very few overall smokes. We easily spent our time and took out all the troublesome heat from my section. The higher-ups were impressed with all of our work, so that’s something we’re all proud of.

Tomorrow will be my last day, and I’m not too sure what we’ll be doing there. There’s still a lot of heat in the interior, and it looks like the line around our division has been secured really well, so I don’t know. It’s been fun.

One more day and my 2015 season is done. I don’t know how to feel about that. For one thing, I’m happy to be coming back home and getting back into my routine. I’ve also enjoyed all the new friendships I’ve made that may or may not extend into my personal life outside of fire. But on the other hand, I’m going to miss all the work still left to do this fire season, and I’m going to miss all my fire friends. They’re really a second family, and I’m going to miss that.

I’m sure I’ll have some more words to say about this tomorrow. In the meantime, good night everyone.