After 250 days, I’m going to give myself permission to slow down and not write 500 words an entry every night. Tonight will be one of those nights. I just came back from watching the new Mad Max movie, and I thought it was amazing. George Miller’s visual style and kinetic editing is so interesting and entertaining that I loved the movie more than I thought I would. I knew I was going into a nice summer popcorn movie, and that’s what I wanted today, but he took it to a whole other level I wasn’t expecting. Highly recommended if you haven’t seen it yet.

I bought more beer today, and I didn’t work out today. I bought beer, and I’ve been drinking beer since coming home from work, and all I want to do right now is play some video games. I don’t know what exactly is happening to me, but I know I just want to relax and have some fun. So that’s what I’m going to do. Good night everyone!

I gave in and bought beer today. I don’t feel as bad as I thought I would back when I decided not to drink at all, so progress, I guess. I knew I just wanted to play more video games after my workout, and since I knew that, I wanted to drink because it’s even more fun to play while a little bit buzzed. I’m slightly buzzed now, but three beers, regardless of how long it’s been since I’ve drank anything, isn’t going to do too much to me, unfortunately. All I really want to do is get this entry over with so I can get back to playing my games. What the fuck, right?

I almost didn’t work out today. I really really didn’t want to. I wanted to buy said beer, eat, and then spend the rest of the night playing video games. But I did workout. I don’t know how I did it other than just doing it. I just did it because it needed to be done. I remembered the entry a wrote a few days ago where I said how working out simply helps me feel better. And it did today. I feel good. Sore and really tired, but I feel good, and I’m glad I moved my body. I also didn’t want to write this entry tonight, but here I am writing it. I don’t know what exactly is motivating me right now. I think it’s the fact that I don’t want to break this streak I’ve got going. This is day 249, and tomorrow will be day 250. That’s quite the streak, no?

The school year is almost over, and I’m really glad about that. The students are getting on my nerves, a bit, mostly in drama class. They’ve all just checked out, and here I am trying to have them do something fun but they don’t really care. I don’t know if I would want to help teach anything next school year. Maybe it’s not my thing. Besides, there’s always something to do with the technology we have, especially since we’ll be getting a lot more new computers this summer. I had to ask for a bunch of quotes from a few vendors to give to my bosses so they could all have a meeting about it and see what they have in their budget to determine their purchasing decisions. If we get all that I’ve asked for, I would be setting up 22 new computers and about 9 new laptops. That’ll take me a few days to get all set up for sure. Can’t wait.

I’m sorry these entries suck. I think they suck, but I don’t care enough to make them better. I feel like I’ve stopped caring about a lot of things. I’ve felt like this before and it usually passes after some time. So I’m going to enjoy not caring and drink and play some more video games. Because I don’t want to think about my life right now and how unhappy I seem to be with it.

My days, now that they’re simpler than before, feel good. That guilt I was feeling the past few days over not doing things I used to do no longer make me feel guilty. In fact, I feel more relaxed. Where I would feel slightly stressed and pressed to write after work, for example, I now feel relieved and relaxed when I don’t have to, when I can lie in bed and watch some TV and simply relax. I really needed to venture away from extremism and more toward a balanced lifestyle. I’m still trying to find the right balance for me, but for now, I feel good about it.

That’s a big thing I need to pay attention to, my feelings. I was feeling burnt out for weeks, maybe months, but I ignored it because I needed to get this stuff done, and I needed to fill my days with work. I told myself, and I’ve even written about it before, that I needed to be hard on myself because I hated who I was before. I hated it so much that I ran to the complete other side of the spectrum and lived a life of extremes. No drinking. No eating unhealthily. Working out for over 200 days. Write write write every day. Read voraciously. No fun, pretty much. Now I need to swing back to the other side of the spectrum, but stop before reaching the other side. Balance. That’s what I need to find.

I’m still learning. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just trying to do something so that I can be happy and get work done. I want to be a writer, and I know I won’t get there if I don’t write. I also don’t want to be unhealthy. I remember that life, and I don’t want to go back there. So I need to workout and I need to eat well. But it’s okay to drink booze every now and then. I definitely needed it. It made playing video games that much more fun. And I need to journal. I just need to. Even if it’s uninteresting to read to anyone else, I need to get it out.

There are so many holes in my life that I’m struggling to fill, and I notice when I don’t write about it. That tells me I’m either afraid or embarrassed or ashamed about it. One of those things is finding and making friends. I know simply talking to someone about this stuff will help me feel a lot better instead of keeping it all inside. I also need to get out of my house, and in turn, my head, every now and then. I need to laugh more. I used to laugh a lot with friends I lost and with friends that are in other states. I miss that a lot. I miss having fun with people. I hate bitching about it, but I need to in order to make me do something about it. It won’t immediately, but I can always hope.

I worked out for the first time since Thursday, and I feel fantastic. I can’t believe I don’t do this when I’m feeling low. I understand that when I’m sad I don’t want to do anything, but if I just stand my ass up and hit play to some Insanity, my world will be much brighter. It’s ridiculous how effective physical activity is on my mood, but it is and I have to remember that. I started over yesterday, but in truth, today was really the day I started over because I didn’t work out yesterday. I mentioned yesterday my three big rocks: writing in the morning, working out in the afternoon, and blogging at night. I like the simplicity of that, so I’m going to keep this to structure my days for the foreseeable future.

I need to not get burned out anymore. I’m not sure how to do that while still being productive and living a fulfilling life, but it is something I want and need to figure out. I love what I’m doing now, which is simplifying my days and letting myself drink and play video games every now and then. I started Batman: Arkham City today, and I’m having so much fun playing it. I feel relaxed and not as guilty as I felt yesterday. Again, as long as I do my three big rocks, I’m happy. I have had to temporarily postpone some of my old habits, such as transcribing A Farewell to Arms, writing my novel in the afternoon, and journalling in my Confidant notebook. I think I’m going to slowly start adding some of these back into my routine, but I don’t think I can add all of them. I don’t know if I want to write in the afternoons anymore, especially since I’m so close to finishing my novel. It’ll take me a twice as longer now to finish it, but once I do, I would have had to rethink this habit anyway. I do feel guilty about not writing in the afternoon, though.

One thing I wanted to focus on was how I felt about things, like feeling guilty yesterday about not working out and feeling guilty now about not writing in the afternoons. My body is telling me that I should write in the afternoons. I did have that urge to do that today, but I wanted to work out first because I felt that to be more important. I will see how I feel tomorrow after work. All the other dropped tasks don’t make me feel guilty, so those were adding to my burn out, I think. I’m rediscovering myself, in a way, and it’s fun.

I learned a lot about myself the past eight months, and I crashed and burned. Now I’m picking up the pieces and seeing what worked and what didn’t work, and I’m putting it back together in a way that hopefully works out in the long run. This is all an experiment, one I’m glad I’m doing. So, it’s back to basics. I have to take it one day at a time and adjust when necessary. Lets keep those feet moving.

I’m starting over. I’m throwing away everything I’ve done on a near daily basis since starting this blog and rethinking everything before starting over. I burned out and in quite spectacular a fashion, too. I’ve noticed that I’ve hit this cycle a few times already in the past, and I could feel myself entering this cycle again a few months ago or so, but I didn’t know how to course correct. I had committed myself to so many things, and I loved the progress I was making during this productivity flow, but I was completely ignoring all the signs that were pointing toward burn out. So, I’m starting over.

I don’t know what my new days will look like, but I know I can’t commit myself to so many things anymore. I wrote in the morning, but I didn’t in the afternoon. I stopped transcribing A Farewell to Arms for now¹, and I’m thinking of reading in the mornings instead. It won’t be a long session, thirty to forty-five minutes tops, but it’ll be better for me as I can the evening to relax and have some fun. One thing I didn’t do today is workout. I didn’t do it as a sort of test because I wanted to see how I felt by not doing it, and I felt guilty and sad. I need to work out, even if I don’t feel like it. So one idea I had was working out immediately after coming home from work. That way I won’t let my mind interfere and possibly stop me. I just do it. But, I’m not sure. Just thinking out loud.

I played more Batman: Arkham Asylum today. I finished the game yesterday, and now I’m trying to get to 100% completion by finding all the puzzles and hidden areas of the game. I’m a completionist that way. I would love to spend more time playing video games because they’re fun and they really do help me relax. The danger is playing more than I should, especially if it interferes with my other tasks. Like with anything, it’s finding a balance, and that’s the struggle for me. It has been since the early days of this blog when I was trying to find the right balance then.

One thing I need to do is write every night, and that’s where this blog comes in handy. I love that I have this blog. It’s an outlet for me to simply express myself and document the journey I’m on. That’s all it does, but it means a lot to me, and I’m so grateful to have it. I’m still giving myself 500 words an entry, but that’s more out of habit than anything else. I’m not sure if that will change anytime soon. Maybe I’ll allow myself fewer words if the entry asks for it, but I have to be careful about that. I could convince myself that every entry I write deserves fewer than 500 words, and then I start becoming lazy and then I might just stop writing all together. So I need limits.

To recap: I need to write my novel in the morning, I need to workout in the afternoons, and I need to write my blog at night. Everything else is secondary. That means I’m giving reading and playing video games the same weight in relation to each other. Put another way, my three big rocks are writing, working out, and writing again. The rest is simply pebbles and gravel. I can live with that.

I turn 29 today, and I’m giving myself the day off. Some people may not count this as an entry, but I do, and I will. All I’ve done this weekend is drink a lot, eat a lot of junk food, and play Batman. I even bought myself volume 1 of the Batman Animated Series TV show on iTunes. Batman Batman Batman. Happy birthday to me!

(Update: 08:58 PM) This has been the best weekend I’ve had in a long time, and it’s exactly because I allowed myself not to do my regularly scheduled tasks. I drank again and a lot. I ate shit, and I loved it. I didn’t write today, and I think everything will be better off from it.

I’m starting over. I’m wiping the slate clean and recreating my life. It’s time for me to realize how alone I am right now, and how freeing that is (except for my family, okay?). I can do whatever I want, and I can be who I know I can be. Everything happens for a reason, right? Then there’s a reason why my journey led me right here right now.

I needed to be uncaged. I needed to allow myself that to actually see the cage I locked myself inside of to finally feel how constricted a life that was. I’m not going to ruin my life; I’m better than that, and this journey has showed me that and proved that to me. I can be okay with not adhering so strictly to my overwhelming schedule and task list. Hell, it’s necessary that I do because I’d crack otherwise.

I turned 29 today. That means I have one year before my twenties end. I’m free to do whatever the hell I want. And that’s amazing.

This entry will be short. I’ve been playing Batman Arkham Asylum in Steam today, and I drank a full bottle of Pinot Noir without breaking a sweat. I just recently bought four cans of Cold Smoke, which is this really strong beer that I haven’t had since last summer. I bought some Hot Cheetos because I wanted something to snack on while I played and drank. I didn’t work out. I didn’t write my second set of 300 words for my novel. I didn’t do anything on my task list; hell, I deferred everything until Monday. This weekend is going to be simple and fun, and I’m going to be drinking for most of it.

I’ve come to the realization that I’m starting over in many areas of my life. It’s like I’m moving back to Montana all over again. I have this clean slate to work with now. Regardless of what has happened this past week and what will happen this weekend, I’m at my best right now. I’m in the best shape of my life. I’m writing my best stuff right now. I’m the most disciplined I’ve ever been in my life. I needed to let loose. I simply needed it. So I’m not going to write 500 words. I’m going to finish up this entry and get back to drinking, eating, and playing Batman. Because I feel like Batman right now.

So I don’t know if I’m going to make it to 500 words today. I will stop writing when I think I should stop. I bought another two bottles of wine today, and I’m a cup away from finishing the first bottle. I woke up really tired, but not as hungover as I thought I’d be. Wine is better than beer that way (and a bottle of wine isn’t that much alcohol). I really just gave up my no alcohol streak, didn’t I?

I turn 29 on Sunday. I think I’ve grown more bitter since moving to Montana. I’m not blaming Montana for that at all. I think it’s just me. I haven’t been the best person since moving here, I guess. I think that’s part of who I am. I’m not a good person, I think. I don’t think I’m emotionally stable for most people, whatever that means. I’m an extremely emotional person, and since most people can’t handle their own emotions, they don’t know what to do with a guy who knows how to express his. I don’t need anybody to carry any of my weight. I just need somebody to understand how capable I am of expressing myself and handling my own shit but unafraid to just listen.

I’m going to be alone this weekend, like I have been for most weekends since starting this blog and losing my friends. There have been some weekends where that wasn’t true, but those are more rare than regular, unfortunately. I don’t really “care,” in a sense. I just thought I’d write the truth as I see it now. The truth I want to change. Drinking has reminded me of all the times I used to not drink alone, and how much I miss those days now. There’s no one I can call to come over and have a drink with me. C’est la fucking vie.

I think I’m going to grow my beard out. I miss my beard. I think I’m just looking for a change. I’m going to spend this weekend to recharge, regroup, and redefine my life. The past eight months have been great, but I burned myself out. This past week has been a great evidence of that. I’m just pivoting. I’m hoping this weekend will be fun and relaxing and energizing, so when Monday rolls around, I’ll be able to get back into my usual grind with a fresh mind and body and maybe even some fresh ideas that I can use to tweak my days in a very positive way. For now, though, I’m going to relax. Good night, everybody.

I’m a few sips away from finishing a full bottle of Pinot Noir. I feel good. Woozy. Buzzed. I’m listening to Outkast’s Stankonia, and god dammit I love this album. It’s so good. I don’t know what I’m going to write about today. I don’t know anything right now, and that’s exactly what I wanted to feel when I bought that bottle of wine today. I’m actually wondering why I didn’t buy two bottles of wine and some unhealthy snacks. My dirty dishes are in the sink, and I’m not going to wash them tonight. That’s how out of it I am tonight! That’s how sad my life is right now.

I really miss drinking. I know why I stopped, but dammit, I missed it. I don’t think anything bad will happen now that I’m almost done drinking this bottle of wine because there’s no relationship I can hurt anymore. I don’t have any to hurt. So maybe it’s okay that I’m drinking again. I wonder how I’m going to feel tomorrow when I wake up. Will I be hungover? I’m wearing my Superman t-shirt because I wanted to feel like Superman tonight. I finished my fourth day of Insanity Max: 30 today, and I finished the second to last chapter in my novel today, too. One more chapter and I’m done. At the moment, I’m at 90,600 words and 450 pages. Incredible, no?

I’m going to take a week off from some of my non-essential habits. My essential ones will be writing 300 words in the morning, 300 words in the afternoon, working out, and writing my blog entry. Those are really my core habits. I can maybe cut away that second 300 day session, but since I’m so close to finishing my book, I decided to keep it. That means no transcribing A Farewell to Arms, no meditation, and no reading. I’m okay with that. I’m tired, and I want to sleep early tonight. It’s getting somewhat late, so it makes sense to go to sleep.

I need to recharge and have some fun. I’ve been watching these The Last of Us walkthrough videos on YouTube, and holy shit do I miss playing video games. I even considered buying a Playstation 4 and a new TV today, but I thought against it for now since I don’t want to spend that much money on anything yet. Maybe after fire season? I don’t know.

I think I’m doing more than I can realistically do. Writing a novel is more than enough, I think. Working out on top of that should be my limit. Anything more than that and I’m risking failure. Writing and working out — that sounds super reasonable. And when I’m not doing either? That’s when I just have some fun! Play video games, watch TV, and maybe start making new friends somewhere. The sky’s the limit, right?

Maybe this is all a dream. An alcohol-infused dream. I’ll probably forget I wrote this tomorrow. Ah well. Farewell, May 7th. I will never see you again. Good riddance.

Day 241. Everything seems to be calming down and getting back to normal. My desire to drink has diminished, which is a good thing for now. I really don’t want to drink if I’m not confident I’m in complete control of my faculties, and right now I’m not. Something’s off. I’m not enjoying my days anymore. My routines are annoying me. I want to do less after work than what I have been doing. I want to do less in the morning than what I have been doing. I want to focus on this upcoming fire season and the end of the current school year. I have a lot of projects to start this summer, and I hope they all go well. I’m almost done with the first draft of my novel, and that might have something to do with my recent bad mood.

I feel homeless. I don’t want to go back to California and I don’t want to live in Montana anymore. I’m hoping grad school pans out, but if it does, I won’t be going anywhere for over a year. That’ll be after I turn thirty years old. I’m twenty-nine in four days. My twenties will only survive for one more year and then they’re done forever. I can’t wait for my thirties; maybe they’ll be a better decade than my twenties were. I’ll be spending the last year of my twenties in Montana, and that just means I have to make the most of it, even if I might dislike it. It’s just the way it’s gotta be.

Most, if not all, of my best times and memories have been with friends. I miss those times.

The past few weeks worth of entries have been horrible. This has become a chore more than anything. That’s a lie. There have been a few entries where I was so grateful to be writing them because I just needed to get that stuff out. But other times, when all I want to do is go to sleep or watch some TV to relax right before falling asleep, I write bullshit. It’s all bullshit, and I really hate it. What if I never made this 365 day promise to myself? Would my life be that much different? What if I just stop? Would anybody care? Would anybody notice? I stopped posting these entries to Facebook almost two months ago, and nobody has said anything about it. And looking through my logs, it doesn’t seem like anybody has even cared to visit my site on their own. So I’m writing into some void with almost no one reading. So I could just stop and nobody would know…

I would know, though. This isn’t for them. This is for me. Even if this entry and other entries are bullshit, it doesn’t matter because I took out the time in my night to lay my fingers on my keyboard and start writing about my life. I’m showing up and doing the work, even when I don’t want to. That has to count for something, right?