I had my first writer’s group since college, and it was nice reading my stuff aloud and getting feedback for something I wrote. It was fun and invigorating and I want to do it again. I realized I’m also very vulgar, and that’s something I might need to change, especially if I want to attract women readers.

I’m about to finish watching Gilmore Girls. I have two episodes left, and I’m going to watch them right after this entry. I don’t know what to say about it except that I really really liked this show, and I know I’m going to rewatch it again in a few years. I’m going to miss Stars Hollow and Lorelei and Rory Gilmore.

I went to the park and read a little bit of White Teeth by Zadie Smith. It was such a beautiful day, but the park benches are uncomfortable and there were seagulls everywhere. I was afraid they were going to shit on me or something. I miss the USC campus. That place had beautiful scenery with very comfy benches. I remember lying down on one and talking to a friend for hours and hours and not moving one bit. I haven’t had that thought in years. Wow.

Before I start writing each entry, I write the number of the day since starting this blog, which is also the number of consecutive days I’ve kept it up to date, and today it’s Day 280. I started this blog 280 days ago, and I’m closer to the end than I am to the beginning. I don’t know if I’m going to miss updating it every day. I won’t stop writing, but there’s a difference when it’s online than when it’s private. I’ll see later, right?

This was a very long status update, wasn’t it? Not much is happening in life. And today, I’m okay with that.

I went to Missoula today, exchanged a bunch of books for store credit at the Book Exchange and came away with On Beauty by Zadie Smith and Ulysses by James Joyce, then went to Hastings, looked around a bit and came away with just the Complete Stories by Franz Kafka, and finally I went to Shakespeare & Co. and bought NW by Zadie Smith, Herzog by Saul Bellow, Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, two books by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun. When I’ll have the time to read these books I don’t know, but I like the little collection I’ve amassed over the past few weeks. I have about $20 in credit at the Book Exchange, which comes out to about 2-3 paperback books, so that’s cool. My favorite place by far is Shakespeare & Co. The other two stores are too big and less personable and I didn’t like them so much.

I’m restless. I want to go somewhere to just hang out. Ronan has nothing. I want to go to a coffee shop or some well-lit place with a couch and a bustling nightlife where I can go with my laptop and a few books and just hang out for a few hours. Even though I’m an introvert, people give me energy. I don’t need that energy all the time — god knows I can get tired of people pretty quickly — but when it’s just me 24/7 for weeks at a time, I can get pretty close to losing my mind. I know a solution to this problem is finding friends and hanging out with them, either at my place or theirs or somewhere else I don’t know exists yet, but… there is no but. I’m simply not trying hard enough. I’m still clinging to the past and want to fix those relationships I used to have that gave me this, but holy shit that’s a bad idea. I’m 29 years old and making new friends isn’t easy.

Ronan has a park. I can walk there with a book or two, sit on a swing, and read for a few hours. Maybe someone I used to know will recognize me and we can start a conversation and maybe start hanging out later. Or maybe I’ll see somebody interesting and I’ll approach this person, strike a conversation, and hang out with this person later. Who knows. Maybe I need to write again, to keep my mind occupied. Write and read and work out and write and read and work out and write and read and work out. Live my days like some lab rat in a cage. Or maybe I need to move. I’m still dreaming about grad school. Grad school could be an option. I could move to New York or Boston or even back to California. Life is limitless. All I have to do is get up off my ass and do what I need to do to ensure my happiness. I wish it was easy.

Today marks the end of a pretty good week. I didn’t work out or write or do that much reading, but I still consider it a good week because I made some great progress at work. I finally went ahead and started upgrading all the Elementary school netbooks, and out of the 30 I tried, it looks — looks! — like only three of them failed. I won’t know until next week, but I’m optimistic. If this worked, then that means I can upgrade the 60 more netbooks next week and hopefully be done with the hard part. The desktops should be easy.

I started the seventh and final season of Gilmore Girls today on Netflix, and I’m so sad that this show will be ending soon. It’s so good and it inspired me to do some great things and learn about things I never knew to be interested in before. My list of things to learn has increased by a kazillion things since starting this show a few weeks ago. I’m glad I started watching this show because I really really liked it and it gave me dozens of hours of entertainment.

I have a packed weekend up ahead. I’m planning to go to Missoula tomorrow, buy some more books, hopefully exchange a lot of unwanted books into credit and buy more books, go shopping for new shirts, and maybe watch a movie in a proper theater. Then on Sunday I’m meeting my sister and her writer’s group at her place, and we’ll be hopefully reading the first chapter of my novel. I’m nervous but not nervous. (Great writer, right?) I’m used to writer’s groups, but it’s always nerve-wracking when it’s something new. We’ll see.

I’m really excited for this weekend. I love driving, I want to get to know Missoula more, and I need to get out of the house. Here’s to me trying to fix my life.

I’m 76% of the way through my year. I have three more months of this, just through the summer, and I’m done. If I didn’t have this nightly ritual right now, I don’t know if this project of mine would have taught me anything or solidified any good habits to last a lifetime. The summer makes me lazy. It’s summer, it’s hot, and all I want to do is laze around. In the last two weeks, I think I’ve only worked out once. I haven’t written since finishing my novel weeks ago, and I spend most of my time in bed watching TV. The one thing I’m most looking forward to this week is going back to the bookstore in Missoula and buying more books I won’t get around to reading for months, maybe years.

I’m not bitching or anything. It is what it is, and I’m doing it by my own volition. I’m consciously not working out or writing because I don’t want to. Not really. I’m living with my new system and trying to see how it works and how it feels, and so far, it’s going okay. I don’t know if I should be any harder on myself, but since I was so hard for months, I’m going to relax and let myself be who I want to be right now.

I do want to do things, though, and these things have been occupying my thoughts lately. I want to go outside, sit by a tree somewhere, and read for a few hours. Maybe even get a tan in the process. I want to work out in the mornings, but I want to find or design a workout that doesn’t last too long and will keep me in semi-good shape until I feel the need to work out harder. And I want to write fiction, but not that much. I feel the need to read more and just try to become a better reader. I’ve always felt my skill as a reader was lacking, and the only way to get better is by doing it.

And, obviously, I want to hang out with people, even if just once a week. I simply miss talking to someone. Talking intimately, getting to know someone, telling them about me and learning more about them. I miss that. I miss inside jokes and adorable quirks and making each other laugh by simply making a stupid face. That mostly sounds like a girlfriend, and I think that’s very true. I need a girlfriend.

I have a quarter of a year left and I want to really make that time count. I don’t know how or what I’ll do, but I’ll try to figure it out. Maybe it starts with Missoula.

I have to write. I’m paraphrasing here, but I watched this talk today with Zadie Smith, and she said there are two types of writers: there’s the writer who writes from all the stuff she’s read, and a writer who writes from experience. She said she’s a writer who writes because she reads a lot. I’m a writer who writes from experience. I don’t read that much. She quoted Nabokov or somebody who said all writers are influenced by the stuff they read when they were between the ages of seven to eleven or seven to fourteen, or something like that. I barely read at that time. I don’t know what I did. Played video games, I guess. I did most of my reading in my mid twenties when I lived with my mom with no job and nothing to do. I love reading, but it’s not one of those things I grew up with like some of these other writers. I write because I have to. I have to get it out, whatever it is. I don’t care about what’s been written before, what’s been said before, because who cares? I don’t know. I write because I have to. That’s all there is to it for me.

One of the biggest reasons why I want to close down my blog is because of how lasting and public it is. These aren’t essays. I’m not spending days and weeks on my words for each entry. I’m writing this entry half-drunk on Pinot Noir while lying down in bed with my head barely lifted up by my pillows to see the screen. It’s hot and I’m in my underwear and I would rather sleep or watch more TV than write right now, and I know that ambivalence shows through. I’m not respecting my readers, and I’m not respecting my craft by doing this. I’m doing it because I need to check it off from my todo list. Instead of promising to write something on a daily basis for a full year, I should focus on quality over quantity next time. Even something like an essay a month seems much more doable, even if I write each entry on the second to last day of the month. It’ll be a burden twelve times out of the year other than a daily thing for a full year.

Zadie Smith also said that it’s good, even essential, to take months, even a year, off from your novel if you can. She said she wishes she could be able to do that with her stuff. I don’t know if I want to take a year off from it, but I have taken a few weeks off from it, and I feel good. It’s not the end of the world. I do like thinking about starting some short stories, but I like thinking about it more than actually doing it. At least I’m still writing these entries, right? These entries are like appetizers before the main course if I dreaded the main course.

I wish I had more money. I want to buy a TV, a Playstation 4 to play all my DVDs, a soundbar and some Sonos speakers to play music out loud, a couch or a reading chair, and more stuff to hang on my walls. This will cost me at least a grand, and I just don’t have that kind of money right now. Well, I kind of do but it needs to go toward bills and debt. I want to make my place more exciting to live in and more inviting for others to visit. Oh, also a fan. It’s been so hot these last few days, and a fan would do me wonders. I’ve been in my underwear all day. It feels good not to wear pants. Off with pants!

I watched hours of Zadie Smith interviews on YouTube today while I deployed Windows 8 to a few netbooks at work. She’s brilliant, and she intimidates me. I think I like women who intimidate me. I just need to find the courage to approach them. Not Zadie Smith, obviously, but ladies like her. They’re beautiful and so interesting. I’m going back to the bookstore this weekend and stocking up on more Zadie Smith novels, as well as Joyce, Kafka, and a Nigerian writer named Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Zadie interviewed her and I really liked her. She was funny and smart and amazing.

What do you guys think of me simply dropping a grand to buy this shit I want? Except for the furniture. That can wait. The electronics, though… A TV with a good sound system is all I’m yearning for now. I have so much good music that needs to be played aloud and my laptop speakers just aren’t cutting it. And a TV to spend hours in front of instead of my MacBook seems like a great American pastime. I’ve been yearning for a couch since last year when I wrote about how I wanted to simply plop down on it after work with a good book and read for hours and hours. I spend way too much time in bed; I need (want?) someplace else to spend my time on. Hey, what about outside??

I’m simply thinking out loud here. None of this will probably happen, and I’m okay with that. There’s too much to do anyways than watch TV. Like read. I like reading. I hate intellectuals. I don’t like people who quote other people verbatim. How the hell do you have the time to memorize that? Have you ever met people who can regurgitate scenes from movies word for word? Why? Why do that? I’m too selfish to do that. I’m too concerned with my own thoughts and feelings to invade my mind with other people’s quotes and whatnot. Maybe that’s why I’m me.

I’m looking for a new workout regimen. Something I can do in the mornings, that doesn’t take too long, and can still give me a good workout. I’m looking for a “maintenance” type of regimen, which I know doesn’t really exist. I’m only planning to do this for a few months until the heat dies down and I’m eager to do something more intense later on. If anybody has any ideas, let me know!

It’s hot. Summer doesn’t begin for another two weeks, and it was 99 degrees in my car after work today. I have no A/C and there is little respite from the heat in my home. But I’ve had a couple cups of wine tonight, and I began to read an amazing novel in White Teeth by the unbelievably beautiful and talented Zadie Smith and I love it, and I worked out for the first time since last month, and I feel good and great and amazing.

I missed Missoula today. I wanted to go out for a brief moment today, to hang out with people I don’t know, to buy books I really want, to read in the park and work out with people in a hot and sweaty gym. I forgot what good fiction does to me. It excites me tremendously. I want to write and read and explore the depths of this craft I love so much.

I did something with my OmniFocus setup today, and I kind of like the end result. I created a few new contexts since my main list has moved from the Today one to the Next one I wrote about a few weeks ago. I hated seeing my long list of tasks broken up by a few contexts, so I thought I should break it up a bit more, just to make them a bit more specific and easier for me to see as I scroll through the list. I pulled out my trusty Field Notes notebook and started thinking through how I can break it down and I like the system I came up with. Organization is fun when I think it’ll benefit me in the long run, and I think today was one of those days.

I got rid of my routines. Habits and routines are essential but not when you’re forcing them more than allowing them to naturally fit into your life. I’ve been forcing them, and I’ve been dreading them, and I’ve been running away from them. They’re gone. I know what I need to do and when to do them. These are tasks and not appointments. I can do them whenever I want throughout the day, and that’s something that’s freeing. I do what I want to do when I want to do them, and I’m having a lot more fun doing it this way. I do have to be careful that I get complacent and not get anything done, so that’s something I’m being cautious about.

Life is so much more fun and tolerable when it’s simpler, when it’s not filled to the brim with tasks scheduled and thought about days, even weeks, beforehand, and when it’s simply lived the way it’s calling to be lived at that moment. That’s a lesson I learned the hard way, but I think (I hope) it sticks around for the long run. I don’t want to crash and burn because I was too hard or too easy on myself. I want to smile because I lived my days well, and I lived my day well today.

I want to give everyone I see a hug because it’s such a beautiful day, and I had such a beautiful week, and I have great hopes for the upcoming week and all the weeks after that for as long as I can see, and I feel good because I have books and music and a home of my own and ideas I’ve implemented or will implement, and I’m simplifying my life as much as I can in an attempt to be less rigid and structured and a bit more spontaneous and creative and it’s working. It’s working because I’m striving for balance, and even though I’m tipping from extreme to the other, I feel life balancing out, and that has given me a sense of calm and clarity I didn’t know I was lacking until that fog lifted from my eyes and I could simply see my life and what it was.

My life was a string that I was pulling on too tightly until it snapped. I snapped and I gave up and fell into an extreme depression that involved alcohol and gluttony and self-loathing that seeped horribly onto all areas of my life, and that’s exactly what I wanted to run away from last year but I didn’t — I couldn’t — because I was doing it all wrong. Nothing I did was ever going to last. I wrote about that a lot, and I tried to convince myself that it was going to be okay, but I never envisioned the ending and what that would mean to me and my life. Every ending is a new beginning, and that’s where I am right now.

I’m not going to continue my blog after this year is up, at least not in its current form. If it still exists, it won’t be daily. I miss writing in my journal by hand, and that’s what I’ll be returning to come September. I want to see what a year in my life looks like, and I want to see what I did, how I felt, and everything else I can’t even think of. I’m in the process of moving away from nervously and habitually checking my todo list for help living my life, and instead I’m going to live my life as productively and as happily as I can. I will still have my todo list as a capture system and a way to organize my life when I need it, but I will try to no longer be a slave to it. My life is easy to figure out: I need to read, write, and work out/eat relatively well. I don’t need a todo list to tell me that. I need a todo list to tell me what I would like to get done when I have the time and energy enough to do it; otherwise, I’m going to spend my time the way I want to.

It’s the summer. One glaring hole in my life is my lack of friends. I’m going to try this summer to make some friends, even if it’s just one person. All it takes is one person. Like the Holstee manifesto states:

If you are looking for the love of your life, stop; they will be waiting for you when you start doing things you love.

It’s time to start.

I think I found my new favorite place in Montana, and that’s the Shakespeare & Co. bookstore in Missoula. I drove the 60 miles to get there, perused their fiction section for about half an hour, and came home with five brand-spanking new books. I didn’t care how much money I spent or what books I bought. I wanted to be spontaneous. I wanted to just pretend that I had zero worries in the world and that all I wanted to do was read. I bought books by Eudora Welty, Zadie Smith, Joan Didion, Thomas Pynchon, and John Cheever. They’re all sitting beside me in bed, and I can’t wait to start reading them. A man can get used to spending less time online and more time in books and even outside.

Today’s trip was a small baby step toward something I hope will bear tasty fruit. I love driving. My drive down there reminded me of my drive to California. I hadn’t spent that long in a car driving since then, and I missed it. I miss the open road. I know it was just a trip to Missoula, but it was such a beautiful day, and Missoula was lively today, with so many people riding their bikes or taking walks and simply enjoying the beautiful weather. I might seriously consider finding an apartment down there for me. The commute to work will suck, but who knows, maybe I can find a tech job down there I can do.

I liked not being held down by anything today. I woke up when I felt like it (which was still early, at around 6:15 AM), I drank my copious amounts of coffee, and I even read (shocker!). I think I’m getting closer to wanting to work out and write again. I think I’ve been away from it for too long. I’m changing so many little habits that it’s making me think about what I do and how I think and that’s helping me reevaluate how I do things. I find myself checking my phone less since I removed some of those annoying and time-sucking tics I used to have, like checking my RSS feeds and Twitter and Instagram feeds. Instead, I’m watching TV and reading. The watching TV part isn’t as bad as I thought I’d take it, but the reading part is super welcome and exciting.

Next week I might go back to that bookstore and buy a few more books. One of the workers there was a really cute blonde girl with thick black-framed glasses, and she liked my selection of books. I was too shy to say anything back, but who knows, maybe if I just focus on the baby steps, I can make some progress in this area of my life. I drove for two hours, and only hung out at the bookstore for maybe 30 minutes. That’s kinda sad and crazy, isn’t it? I’m happy, though, and I love bookstores. Here’s to next week, yeah?

My eyelids are heavy and my vision is blurry because I’m tired and I’ve been drinking too much Pinot Noir this evening. I don’t know what to write about because nothing eventful happened today. I’ve been on this path of regression for a few months now, and nothing seems new or eventful anymore. Gluttony and laziness are my new normal, and my old routines seem so far away and mythical right now. I don’t even want to go back to that life. I want a different life. I want to be different. I want to be happier.

I’m unhappy, if you couldn’t tell, and it’s not caused my one thing. It’s a combination of things, some my doing, and others my doing, too. It’s all on me, and that’s just an added pressure I don’t need right now. I’m mostly unhappy because it’s Friday night and I have no one to hang out with, and I really want to hang out with somebody tonight. I don’t want to drink alone even though that’s what I’ve been doing for the past month or so. I need to not drink alone and instead with other people. That won’t happen soon, unfortunately, and meh. That’s what I think about it: meh.

I’m motivated to change my life, and I’m slowly doing what I can to change it. I know it’s out there, and I can taste it, but since I’m not there yet, it’s frustrating me. I’m really surprised I’m writing right now considering how tired and drunk I am right now. I’m listening to Depeche Mode, and I really like it, and I’m looking at my progress bar in Ulysses and it’s not yet green so I have to keep writing. I want to be more spontaneous, but not too spontaneous. I need to get out of my house more. I’m passing out in bed after drinking too much red wine by myself and that fact alone saddens me.

I bought books a few days ago and now they’re here and I’m excited to start reading them. I want to start reading more, that’s why I’m cutting my time on the internet reading trivial shit down to a minimum. Today was the first day without my usual news “fix,” and I was bored. All my tics were left unsatisfied, and I had to try to read, and I did a little bit, but I didn’t for most of them. It’s only day one, so I have more time to figure this out. Maybe it’ll work in the long run! I really would like to have that time to read books instead of trivial shit.

I’m going to have this weekend to myself, and it’s going to be fun and relaxing and maybe I’ll go to Missoula and buy some books at some bookstores and socks at Target and maybe I’ll find some places to hang out in in later weekends. I really need some friends, and I need to date, and I need to not be so alone anymore. Wish me luck, yeah?