I write to help me think, and I’ve been sitting here thinking for the past 30-40 minutes about what to write about tonight, but the only thing worth writing about, I thought, was about what I was thinking. No rhyme or reason to it. Just random thoughts.

I’ve been thinking about my Commonplace Books again, and a few days ago I had a strong desire to start one after reading a paragraph on a website from an author talking about another author’s book, and I copied it down because I thought it was brilliant. The writer compared the Commonplace Book to Sampling, which is common in Hip-Hop music. That analogy blew my mind. That’s exactly what’s going on, and I really wanted to start that because that’s something I understood completely. Alas, I haven’t done anything like that, but I think my thoughts and actions are pointed in that direction. Thirty-five days to go.

I finished reading Inherent Vice yesterday, and I began to read Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion, and I only read the first 30 pages or so, but I already love the writing style. It’s beautiful. Sordid. Harsh. Blunt. It’s beautiful. In fact, I’ve been doing a lot more reading recently, enough to compel me to leave my Mac on my desk and far away from my couch, where I’ve been snuggling up with my iPad and the most recent copy of the New Yorker. And during commercial breaks on Hulu, I’ve been reading snippets of saved Instapaper articles, sorta how people do pushups during commercial breaks to get into shape, but for my mind instead. I’m doing Insanity; I don’t need to get into shape. Which reminds me, I’ve lost a pound in the past week, putting me at 176.4 lbs, which is just a pound away from where I think I should be. If I continue to lose weight, a few more pounds at least, I’ll be happy.

Another thing that has made me happy is meditation, and today, I finished the ten day Headspace trial, and I don’t think I’m going to pay the $95 yearly membership fee to continue with it. I’ve been meditating for years, and all I needed was a jolt to get me back into it. I will try meditating like I used to tomorrow, and if after a month or so I feel compelled to return to Headspace, then I’ll consider paying that fee. Until then, I’m focused on saving money, paying down my debt, and enjoying all that I have now.

Which is going to be hard since I want to buy a lot more kitchen supplies. Individually, they’re not that much. $8-12 a piece for most of the tools I want, but I want a bunch of them, so all together, it’s going to be expensive. But I had my regular dinner tonight, one that I’ve always found tasty and wholesome, and I found it boring. I like cooking and trying new things and mastering simple recipes. A little effort is better than no effort because of the rewards, and isn’t that a good metaphor for life?

I had nothing really to write about (again) until I got out of the shower and checked my phone and saw that the Division of Fire called me, so I called them back and found out that there’s a fire in Arlee, but since I was a measly 7 minutes late in returning the call, they filled my spot with someone else. Part of me is relieved, but the other part of me isn’t, and I don’t know which feeling is the strongest.

The only reason why I want to fight fires right now is because of the money. The last fire I was on was a very bad experience, one I don’t think will repeat itself, but one that left a bad taste in my mouth nonetheless. I don’t feel like being pulled away from my life right now, especially when things are going relatively well for me. I’m cooking so much more now, and I love that. I’m working out again, and I can notice the changes in me. I’m reading a lot more, especially since I’m more disciplined when it comes to my time wasted on the internet. And I’m about a month away from starting the rewrite on my novel, and I’m just now beginning to plan for it. I’m also meditating again, which has helped out a ton, in both my focus and well-being. All these things are good and beneficial, and I don’t want to leave it. Hell, today was strange in that I actually loved living where I live, mostly for the things I’m discovering I can do but haven’t yet done.

But then again, I need the money. I really need a quick influx of a few thousand dollars. It won’t pay off my debts, but it’ll help me get started, especially after all the repairs to my car I’ve had to pay this year. And I love firefighting and camping and hanging out with my bros. It’s fun. The whole experience of it is fun, and no matter how well my life seems to be going now, I know I can’t provide it the level of fun firefighting brings. So I’m sitting on my couch, my phone next to me, hoping that someone drops out or something, and that the Division of Fire calls me and asks me if I would like to go out on a fire. But I doubt it.

So I need to take my mind off of it and write the rest of this entry. Other than a few random visitors that found my blog on Google, no one has read my blog in a few weeks. Nobody has read my tech-y articles or those few posts on my cooking endeavors, and I feel alone over here. Part of me can’t wait until I have to stop worrying about that, about readers, or how many stats my site is getting. It’s all a distraction. I have my pocket moleskine on my desk waiting to be opened up and written in once all this ends in a month. This blog was a godsend when I started it last year, but now, it seems to have both outgrown me and that I’ve outgrown it. 36 more days to go.

I’m having fun in the kitchen again. This is a dish called Chicken Prosciutto Involtini, and I found it on the Nom Nom Paleo blog a few weeks ago. It was probably the tastiest thing I’ve ever made for myself in my life. I loved every bite. The prosciutto, which I think was the very first time I’ve ever had it, is making my mouth water just thinking about it. It was orgasmic.

Other than that, I had a normal, slightly unproductive day. I slept for over nine hours, which felt good, but sleeping that much makes me groggy and a bit apathetic. I had my alarm set for 5 AM, and it did go off, but it wasn’t enough to get my ass out of bed.

It’s the first day of August, which means I’m on my last month of my one year project. This project ends about a week into September, and this streak seems a little easier now because I’ve only been called out on one fire. I expected to be busier this summer, but I haven’t been, and that sucks. Nothing I can do about it, though.

And that’s kind of all I have for today. I guess I’ll have to proclaim this picture to be worth 300 words or so.

One of my favorite apps of all time, even before I had any device that could actually run it as an app, is Instapaper. Instapaper made reading on the web easier and more comfortable than anything that came before it, and, I would argue, since. Instapaper strips all the unnecessary cruft and clutter present in most all modern websites — shit like ads and sidebar crap and whatnot — and returns only the text, which is the most important part of any article anyways. Instapaper provides a very easy way to add content into it by providing a bookmarklet and browser extensions if you’re on a computer, and iOS extensions if you have the app installed on an iOS device. Ever since I quit RSS feeds a while back ago, I seem to be adding even more content into my Instapaper queue, and this is why: I’ve changed my Information Diet to what I think is for the better.

I use to subscribe to dozens of RSS feeds, and I’ve used more than a handful of different services to read through them all. It began with the late Google Reader, expanded to Feedly, and then when I purchased my first iPhone, Reeder. From Reeder, I experimented with Unread and Mr. Reader and a few other apps I can’t remember now, but I stuck with Reeder because it had a great Mac app, and I liked that I could have this seamless experience from one device to another. For a few years, this workflow worked for me. It was easy to read through my feeds, add stuff to Instapaper, share stuff on my social networks, and bookmark stuff in Pinboard. Before I quit, though, I was growing tired of this monotonous routine. Everything seemed the same, and that’s because it was. RSS readers provide just one theme to every article websites publish. One second you could be reading a tech article, and the next you could be reading about some massacre in some part of the world, and the next second you could be laughing at a funny video about a spider. There was no break to things, and if you followed many similar blogs (like I did), you would see the same story covered over and over and over again, all linking back to each other like some cocksucking human centipede. I grew tired of all that, so I quit, and I replaced it with, what I think (so far), better sources.

One of the first things I did was subscribe to the New Yorker. I’ve been reading through each issue I get from them in about a week’s time, which seems right since it’s a weekly magazine. From there, I subscribed to multiple email newsletters. Instead of me sifting through hundreds of shitty headlines to get to that one that I may want to read, I let humans, multiple humans that are much smarter than me and with better taste, curate the shit for me, so when I get their newsletters in my email, I’m left with some really great content with multiple links. These are the links I then save to Instapaper, which provides me a great interface for me to consume all this great content.

But, you may ask, isn’t Instapaper providing the same unified style for everything you add into just like any RSS reader? Well, inquisitive reader, yes, yes it does, but here’s the difference: Instapaper is meant for longform content. It’s meant to be a temporary storage place for you to come back to later and consume. RSS feeds keep increasing in number the longer you neglect it. Instapaper stays the same, especially if you neglect it. And I know my Instapaper queue is full of only good content, whereas RSS feeds feed me crap like 90% of the time. Not everything my favorite websites publish is good.

Another benefit quitting RSS feeds has given me is more time to read. With RSS feeds, something new is published literally every second, and with this knowledge, your body develops this tic where you need to keep checking it to see if something amazing had been published somewhere. You’re addicted to checking the news, and when there’s nothing, you take a few minutes to breath, and then you check again. With Instapaper, newsletter, and the New Yorker, I make the time to simply read. I get one newsletter a day at least, sometimes more, and I go through it, adding links I may want to read later into Instapaper, and then I’m done. I go on with whatever it was I was doing. Then, when I feel like reading, I open Instapaper, open an article, and start reading. From there, I can do the same thing I did with Reeder: bookmark stuff into Pinboard with notes, share it on Facebook or Twitter, or even text message it to someone if I’d like.

Instapaper makes my life simpler and provides me the opportunity to be a better consumer of content, and that, in the end, is what I wanted to be with RSS feeds but failed.

Day 18 of Insanity Max:30 went very well. Since starting this workout again, I’ve lost 2 lbs and I’m on track to get back to my ideal weight that I lost during the dark months of May and June. I worked out a bit too excitedly, though, because I hurt my right knee doing the X-Jumps/Burpee combo. It popped or something, and it feels uncomfortable if I move my leg wrong. My last workout of the week is tomorrow, so maybe I can push through that and have a nice two day break to rest and recover.

My days have regained a nice rhythm from my slower, but more stable, routine. I’m still watching more TV than I should be, but I think I need to simply to balance the work part of my life from the play, and watching TV is play. I’ve been struggling with balance my whole life, and I doubt I’ll ever find the answer during the remaining 40 days of this blog. Life is never steady. My life now can be completely upended tomorrow by forces outside of my control, or completely in my control. Nothing remains stable for long, so maybe my quest to find balance is pointless? I can always strive to find an internal balance, but I think I’m mostly thinking about balancing my professional and personal lives. And by professional, I’m mostly thinking about my professional development as a writer, which involves writing and reading and living, while personal means staying healthy and fit and happy. Once all of these forces are moving forward at a steady clip, my happiness seems to be abundant. But once things start slowing down and one or more of these forces stop, my mood darkens.

It’s this constant up and down that I know exists in my life, yet I can’t seem to take control of it. Maybe I shouldn’t? A rollercoaster wouldn’t be a rollercoaster if it didn’t have its ups and downs, and maybe life is just like a rollercoaster, and trying to control it is nothing more than an exercise in futility. There’s this thing that the Headspace app has taught me while meditating, and this image of sitting on the side of the road and watching the traffic drive by. Your thoughts and feelings are the cars, and you should simply sit and watch them go by. You don’t want to run into the middle of traffic and start chasing one or more of these cars. You simply want to watch them go by. You acknowledge their existence but you let them be. Maybe we should let our rollercoaster of a life simply be and accept it for what it is without fuss. We should accept the fact that our lives will have its ups and its downs, and we should be grateful for all of it because it’s all part of the spectrum of life.

In totality, life, especially when it’s messy, is beautiful and we shouldn’t feel burdened by it. We should embrace it and love it and live it to the fullest because it’s the only thing worth anything during our brief time on Earth.

I slept in about an hour and a half this morning, which felt amazing, but once I woke up and started my day, I remembered that I had set up an appointment with the mechanics at 8 AM and I really didn’t want to honor it. Once eight o’clock rolled around, though, I decided that I have to take my car in because of the issues I’ve been having with it. So I get dressed, pack my bag with my laptop and the New Yorker, and I go outside.

A Sheriff’s car was parked in our parking lot, perpendicular to my parked car. I could still pull out if I backed up, pulled forward, backed up, pulled forward, backed up, pulled forward. It was the Sheriff’s, but I was still pissed. So I walk up to my car, and I see two officers get out of the car. They had just pulled in, apparently, and when I see the main sheriff walk out and we see each other, I saw that I recognized him. He’s the cop in charge of my school where I work. He makes fun of me for living where I do, and he tells me he’s here to kick one of my neighbors out because someone has a restraining order on them and their home is inside the unauthorized distance of the victim or something. He goes up to talk to them and I go into my car.

I turn the ignition and nothing happens. This happened yesterday, so I thought I’d repeat what I did then. I let the car cool a bit, a few seconds, then I tried again. Nothing. No lights turned on and there simply wasn’t any sign of life. I keep trying for the next few minutes, pumping the gas, pumping the brakes, trying everything I could to get it to run. Nothing. At this point, the Sheriff walks out of the apartment, his partner still inside, and he comes over to talk to me. “What’s going on?” he asks. “Don’t know,” I say. He takes a look at my car, notices that nothing happens when I turn the ignition, and tells me it could be the battery. So he pulls around and parks his car near my hood, pulls out some jumper cables, and we hook them up to my battery and his battery.

After letting it idle for a few minutes, I try the ignition again and stuff starts happening. Lights turn on, the car seems like it wants to start but doesn’t. The sheriff tells me to wait about 5 minutes so the battery can charge. We do and still nothing. All my lights are on, and I can play radio and whatnot, but the car won’t start. During all this time, I noticed this solid red light at the top right of my dashboard every time I go to turn on the car. I call the mechanics and tell them that I had an appointment but that I wasn’t able to make it yet because I can’t get my car started. They tell me it could be the security system.

When this happened to me yesterday, I noticed everything in my car was reset. The clock on the radio read 12:00, so I assumed something was up, but I, for some reason, assumed it was the computer system and not the battery. This morning the same thing happened, the clock on the radio read 12:00. Maybe, the mechanic said, when the battery shut off and reset everything, it reset the security system, too. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do anything about it because my car fob doesn’t work, which I bitched about all way back in December. I told the sheriff what the mechanic told me, and he thought we should disconnect the battery cables and then try it again. By this point, we both noticed that the cables looked really corroded, and it took a bit of effort to disconnect them, but once he did, we waited. After about 20 seconds, he connected them back, pinned the jumper cables back onto the battery, and I tried again.

The car started beautifully. I thanked the Sheriff profusely for helping me out. He said it was fine for all the times I helped him out with his computer at school. We said our goodbyes, I drove to the mechanics, and I dropped my car off. About 4-5 hours later, I returned with a working car. Sure enough, the thing they had to do was replace those battery cables because they were too corroded to work well anymore. It cost me $86, which is a far cry from the $690 I paid a few weeks ago to get my power steering pump and switch replaced.

I hope this really is the last time I have to take my car into the mechanics this year. First California in January, then Montana in January, then two more times in July. I’m done with these car problems. It has motivated me, though, to do regular maintenance on my car. If I simply popped the hood and looked at the battery, I could’ve noticed the corrosion. I didn’t. I need to learn more about this. I’m tired of feeling so helpless when it comes to my car.

I’m taking the next two days off from work because the floors outside of my office are being redone, which means I can’t use my office until they’re done, which won’t be until Friday.

A few updates:

Insanity Max: 30 is still going strong. I finished Day 16 today. Tabata Strength. It was fun and hard and sweaty. I seem to be stuck around the 177 pound mark for the past few weeks, which I don’t like. On the bright side, my weight’s not going up.

I’m still cooking, even if I haven’t posted any pictures or anything about what I’m eating. To be honest, the meals I’ve made haven’t looked too pretty or anything. Maybe when I make something new, or when I make my next thing, I’ll take a picture of it and post it. I like the few pictures I took a few weeks ago of my food, so it’s just a matter of trying and doing it.

My Headspace meditation went well today, but I’m a bit disappointed that the sessions are only ten minutes, but then again, I’m not. I could definitely go for longer, but then I like that they’re short because it’s easier to stick with it. I’ll reconsider my options once the ten days are finished. Will I subscribe to Headspace at $95/year? Or will I simply use a timer and meditate on my own? Don’t know.

My car is having more issues. This morning, I stuck the key in the ignition and turned it, but nothing happened. All the lights on the dash flashed but they disappeared quickly. I turned off the ignition, tried again, and still nothing happened. So I turned the key to off again and just waited. While I did, my radio turned on. None of the lights were lit on the radio, but my radio was able to play music from my phone. It freaked me out. After this, I turned on the ignition again, held it for a few seconds, and the car finally started. The drive to work was a little scary but I was able to make it safely. I’m probably going to take it to the shop tomorrow (again) and have them diagnose the issues. I really want this fixed. I daydreamed on the drive to work that my car would stall or roll or turn off somehow and I would get into a crash and that would be the end of my story. It was morbid, but it was a valid fear. I’m in debt, but I don’t care: I want my car fixed if it means I’ll still be alive. Don’t want it to end just yet.

Other than the time spent at work and the half hour of so of playing games on my phone and reading the New Yorker in the morning, that was my day, in a nutshell. Windows 10 comes out tomorrow, and when I get back to work, I’m going to see if I can install it on my work laptop and dual boot it with Windows 8. Fun times.

It’s raining, and that pisses me off because my fire season is almost over and all this rain isn’t doing me any favors.

Week 3 of Insanity Max: 30 started off without a hitch, and I feel good right now. Yesterday I made guacamole from my Nom Nom Paleo cookbook, and it has to be the best thing I’ve ever made in my life because OH. MY. GOD. was it tasty. The flavors just exploded in my mouth and it made life totally worth living, and it was a little bit chunky, which I love, and damn, my mouth is salivating just thinking about it. I’m really enjoying these new recipes, especially when it comes to using my food processor because it’s easy to make some really healthy and delicious dishes. Sometimes this week I’m going to try to make this recipe, which looks amazingly delicious but kind of involved to make. We’ll see what happens.

The end of yesterday’s post made me think about my routines again. The original plan a few months ago was to “start over,” in a sense, by removing my regular routines and slowly introducing things back, just to see what it was that I felt I needed back into my life. I’ve been reading a lot more, and that just came naturally. I didn’t have to force it or anything. Then working out came back, and that I did have to force because I knew that I wouldn’t want to work out until I was 50 pounds overweight and feeling sorry for myself. So I worked out again, and I’ve written before about the pleasures of that. And a few days ago I reintroduced meditation into my routine, and I’ve already started noticing the changes in my attitude. What hasn’t left is writing, in a sense, considering I haven’t written my novel since finishing it in May. Some old routines that I used to do that haven’t come back are transcribing A Farewell to Arms, writing three things I’m most grateful for, writing the top three things I want to get done in my notebook, and a few other things. Will they ever return? Only if they naturally come back.

As things stand now, I’m happy with my habits and routines. I don’t feel too overwhelmed, which is good because I don’t feel like I’ll burn out soon, but I also don’t feel like I’m producing a lot like I did when I had a novel to work on. Granted, I did want to take the summer off to regroup and come back at it with some amount of time away from it. I used to write my novel in the morning, in the afternoon, and then journal about it right after working out. That all might come back later, but I doubt it. I don’t think I want to write in the morning. I’ll try doing it in the evening, during the time I used to write these entries. By that point, I hope to rethink my whole journaling habit. Read some books, some journals, and see what happens.

The countdown continues: a little over 40 days left until my one year project ends.

One of the few things I started to do when I first began this blog was to meditate every morning. I had been meditating off and on for a few years up to that point, and I’ve racked up some pretty impressive streaks. A couple of hundred days here, another hundred there. So when I knew I wanted to build my new life with a bunch of habits and routines, I knew meditation had to be a part of that. For months and months and months, I woke up every morning, did my daily routines, and I ended it with 15 minutes of meditation. Sometimes I had good days, and sometimes I had bad days, but for the most part, I enjoyed the process of slowing down and trying to quiet my mind for 15 minutes out of the day. So when I stopped meditating last month, I found myself with more time to do less. In fact, I’ve been trying to find all the time in the world so I could do less that I’ve been cutting out habits and routines left and right.

For a while, I felt fine. I can watch TV in the morning again! Oh, how I missed that. I missed drinking a cup of coffee with something to watch. It was one of those old routines that I did so much when I lived with my mom that it reeks of comfort and relaxation. Recently, I tried to sneak in some reading every morning, but that’s been more hit and miss than a solid foundation to rely upon. Sensing the futility of it all, I decided to start meditating again yesterday. One of the new things I learned by reading the New Yorker was about this new app called Headspace. The New Yorker did a profile on the founder, and I found it super interesting because it’s been able to grow to a pretty big user base by word of mouth alone. It offers a subscription service after a free 10 day trial, which I wanted so much to scoff at, but a paid meditation service intrigued me for some reason, so I downloaded the app.

The app sat unused for about two weeks before I finally launched it for real yesterday. The app offers a free 10 day introductory course of 10 sessions of 10 minutes each. So I put on my noise-canceling Bose headphones, sat on my meditation cushion, and opened myself up to be guided by the British founder of Headspace. It didn’t hurt that he had a very soothing voice. The exercise contained nothing new to me. I’ve been a part of real guided meditations before, not to mention all the audio files I’ve downloaded over the years of expert meditation teachers guiding me along with their soothing voices and relaxing sessions. But after finishing the first session, I felt a familiar feeling that I hadn’t felt since quitting last month: that of peace and confidence. I felt confident in my skin like I hadn’t felt in a long time. So I started session two today just to see what that would be like, and this session was even better. It was still only 10 minutes, but there’s something new he does at the end of each session that I’ve never done or learned before, and that’s to let my mind do whatever it wants. So much of meditation is noticing when your mind wanders and having the discipline to focus it back onto your breath. There’s a lot of that in the first 80-90% of the session, but he understands that meditation is an exercise, and exercise depletes willpower. So this little act of letting go helped me feel better and even more confident than before.

And now I’m seriously scared that after I complete the free 10 day trial that I’m going to want to spend the $95 yearly membership fee just to get exclusive content and hundreds of hours of content that is broken up into specific categories, like Focus and Stress and Sleep. Meditation is important to me, and it’s one of those things I’m glad I cut out of my life, if only for it to teach me how much I need it. As I’m slowly reintroducing a lot of these old habits and routines and beginning entirely new ones, I’m learning a lot about myself, and that’s the whole point, isn’t it?

For the past few days, I’ve been writing a lot about technology, from Apple Music to why I don’t like Windows to why I love Apple’s devices. I’ve written about how much technology has changed my life, ever since I was a little boy, but I haven’t really written about how technology has sometimes made my life worse. In fact, how technology has made modern life a little worse for wear.

Technology can blind us from some practical realities. Yesterday I watched this video on YouTube about kids reacting to the first ever iPod. I was in high school when the first iPod came out, and I thought it was the most magical device ever created. At this point in my life, I was super deep into Napster and downloading as much music as possible, but hating the fact that I had to burn them onto a CD to listen to them outside of my computer. So the iPod was an excellent solution to a very real problem. Cut to over a decade later, and we’re living in a society where people feel obligated to have access to all the music they would ever want to listen to. If there’s one little problem, people start bitching. I’m with Taylor Swift: artists should get paid for the work/art they produce, and people should in no way feel obligated to their work, especially through free streaming tiers that sites like Spotify and Pandora offer.

Technology has made us crying, obligated little bitches. God forbid we have to read a very tangible and very real map when our GPS isn’t working. Hell, we shouldn’t be pissed off when we’re out in the middle of nowhere and our phones don’t have any cellular service. These are the very definition of first world problems. There are kids today who have no idea how to write in cursive. They’re being taught how to type on a fucking touchscreen instead of being taught cursive. What kind of fucking shit is that? People are falling too quickly and too willingly into the shrine of technology. They think technology can cure all of society’s ills, and if only they’re always connected and always plugged into the grid that their lives will mean more to them than some lumberjack living alone in a cabin he built at the top of some fucking mountain.

A big part of this rant is directed at me. A big reason why I started moving away from third-party apps and toward Apple’s stock apps was because I didn’t want to care so much about the apps I used. I really don’t want to be so dependent on technology when deep down I know am. I don’t want to care about where I type my notes into since I love writing in my paper notebooks more, but I know that the best notepad is the one that’s right there, available to take whatever input you want it to. I spent so many hours of my life in front of various sized screens doing nothing close to finding the cure of cancer, but instead consuming consuming consuming and doing nothing that will move humanity forward. I can wax rhapsodic about how much I love my Mac, iPhone, and iPad, but at the end of the day, they’re technological devices, run by circuits and processors and designed by humans and built by machines in order for one company or another to make money. As humans, all we have is ourselves. By ourselves I mean our singular selves. I have myself, you have yourself, he has himself. We’re all alone in this.

I’m also kinda buzzed on some Pinot Noir and I have no idea if any of this makes sense.