All I needed was a change in attitude. I’m doing many of the same things as I did during the days leading up to my burn out, but I feel more relaxed. I think a big reason for that is that I’m finished with my novel, but even though I haven’t written anything new since finishing it on Monday, I’m still working on it. My morning routine is the same, I’m still working out and reading in the afternoons, and these entries are still getting written. Yet I feel more relaxed. It’s awesome and I don’t want to ruin it, but I’m always curious as to why I feel certain ways in an effort to better understand myself. I doubt I’ll be successful tonight, but for lack of anything else to write, lets see what I can come up with.

I’m letting myself have more fun than in the past. Mostly that just means watching more TV. I’m watching the Gilmore Girls on Netflix, and I’m in love with everything about this show, especially Lauren Graham, the lead actress, and the incredible writing. It’s so good. I like coming home from work, lying in bed, and hitting play on something to watch. It’s a great way to unwind, and I didn’t realize how much I needed it. It was nice to spend that time writing since I was able to finish my novel two months ahead of schedule, but man, at what cost? So I like this time for myself after spending eight hours at work, especially since I have to work out right after. So TV has been great. What else?

One thing I’ve mentioned before is my revamped OmniFocus perspectives. My Today list, which is my main list and the one I live off of every day, has been simplified. Simply seeing fewer tasks on this list has made me feel freer and less burdened to do more. It’s great feeling this way, and I really believe this has affected my mood more than I would have thought. Of course, I have a new list called Next where I have some of those tasks that used to be in my Today perspective, plus a helluva lot more, but this list doesn’t hold much, if any, mental weight. It’s actually great seeing everything that’s still “open” in one place. I have been going through it, reading my tasks, and choosing one or two to do each day, and it’s nice. I’m choosing to do these rather than having to do them, and that difference is everything. My Today list has things I must do because those are the things that are most important to me and adhere to my principles. The other stuff would be great to do and make me happy if they’re done, but they’re not essential and there isn’t a time limit on any of them.

Having fun and reducing my daily burden has helped me be happier and still get stuff done. I don’t know how long this will last — nothing lasts forever, unfortunately — but for now, I’m happy and that’s my main focus right now.

It feels good to be back. The routine is sound, except I’m still figuring out how to properly implement my novel rewrite into my day because I’m not too sure how I’m going to approach the rewrite yet. I came up with some good ideas today that I hope to implement in the coming days and weeks and just see how they feel and work. I’ve never rewritten a novel before. This current version of my novel was supposed to be a rewrite of my last novel, but I started it from scratch and in doing so, it became something completely new. Now I like this draft a lot, and I want to make it better. It’s fun but difficult and a little bit overwhelming.

If there’s one thing today taught me is that it’s good to give yourself a break when you need it. I didn’t write 300 words this morning (for obvious reasons), and I didn’t beat myself at all for not having a plan already in place and me implementing it as much as possible. I should be okay with simply letting myself think, and that’s what I did, and I feel good about it. I’ve been relying too much on quantifying everything, and that has setup unmanageable expectations for myself. I need to relax, get my work done, and have some fun. I can see the progress I’ve made in the past eight months with all 470 pages of my novel printed out and ready to be worked on. I know the work I do now can be used as a template for all future rewrites. I should take it slow and make sure I do it right. No rush.

Here are the few ideas I had about my rewrite plan: outline my novel so I can see what I have and see where I can improve it; write new scenes and put them in where I think they should go; and rewrite one or two scenes a day. This last one seems super attractive to me because that’s something I can easily quantify, but it’s last on my list because I don’t want to do something if it’s not right for my project yet. I really think I should outline my novel first and work on the structure, the pacing, the beats, everything like that before I go in and fiddle with the revision phase. The plot needs work, the characters need work, my sentences need work, it all needs work. Again, I’m excited but overwhelmed.

The past few weeks have also been unkind to my weight. Yesterday I weighed myself, and I gained three pounds from the previous week. I weighed myself again this morning and I weighed 2.2 lbs less than yesterday. Overall, I’m up about three pounds since April, and this has made me feel guilty. I shouldn’t be, though. I’ll lose this weight within the next few weeks, but even if I don’t, I still look great. I feel slower, though, but that’s just because I haven’t been working out as much as I used to. Again, I shouldn’t let a quantified life interfere with my mood or progress. It’s going to be hard since I’m so used to doing it, but if my goal is to find a balance that will keep me productive but extremely happy, it’s worth doing, and it’s worth doing right.

It only took me 260 days, but I finished my novel today. The first draft at least, and now comes the fun part: the rewrite. I’m actually afraid to start it because I don’t know where to start. It’s not as easy as sitting down every morning and writing 300 words and calling it a day. There’s no easy way to quantify a rewrite, is there? I only want it to be quantifiable because I want to keep myself accountable on a daily basis, but I won’t be able to, and that’s okay. I have to figure out a good workflow for me to use for rewrites since I’ve never built one for myself. At least not one that was any good. I’m excited, though. There’s a lot of work to do — which has felt paralyzing — but I know I can do it and I know the end result will be worth it.

I’m back to my regular routine, and I missed it. I missed it a lot. I loved having something to do during the mornings, the afternoons, and right now at night. Since I didn’t go to work today because of Memorial Day, I had more free time than I would normally have on a Monday, and I used that to read and watch Man of Steel. I’m reading the revised edition of Getting Things Done, and it inspired me to create a new perspective in OmniFocus that I hope will help me feel less overwhelmed and burnt out yet more motivated to check stuff off. I normally had just one perspective, my Today perspective, which showed everything due or deferred today and was flagged. Most of the tasks there repeated every day as part of my routines, and those are the easiest for me to do and check off. It was the other tasks, those I would have liked to get done today but wouldn’t feel too bad about if I didn’t. At least that’s what I hoped in theory. In fact, every day I would postpone a task to tomorrow was another sliver of guilt I felt. After days of this, those slivers added up to real mental weight that made me feel overwhelmed and guilty. So now I’m using my Today perspective as my list of most important tasks, which just includes my routines: my morning routine with writing, transcribing, learning, meditating, etc., my nightly routine with more writing, reading, etc., and those other routines like working out and journalling. Those all covered my three areas of living, and those are the tasks I really want to focus on and get done on a daily basis. Sometimes, though, I have time to do something else, but since it either wasn’t flagged or I simply wasn’t feeling it at that moment, I wouldn’t do it. Now, though, I can just look at this Next perspective and just see what’s available for me to do since this perspective simply shows every unflagged and available task I can do right now. Granted, I just started doing this today so I don’t know what it looks like in the long run, but I think this will help me out, at least at first.

I don’t want to burn out again, but I also don’t want to be such a workaholic. For this next stretch of time, from now to Day 365, I’m hoping I make great strides toward finding that balance that has been evading me thus far. I’m confident I can at least get close, but only time will tell. I feel good about it, and I haven’t been able to say that for at least a month. God, it feels good to be back.

I’m going back to my regular routine tomorrow, and by regular I mean my scheduled-to-the-minute, intense, and rigorous one. I had this epiphany today where the past few weeks have just been a vacation, that I needed to let go and have some fun for a little bit to recharge for my next run of days. I didn’t like feeling like this lazy and angst-ridden lifestyle I had been living was going to be my new normal, so I decided to go back to what worked. I’m making a change, though. I’m going to be more cognizant about listening to myself and my body and taking those breaks when I know it’ll do me some good. I’m thinking of taking half-days every now and then, and maybe one weekend a month to sleep in and have a lot of fun. But for the most part, I need to be working. I need to be fighting for something every day; otherwise, I feel bad, and I don’t want to feel bad.

I don’t want to live a life of mediocrity. I know I can accomplish some amazing things if I simply hunker down and do my work. Half of that is simply showing up, and I haven’t been. Tomorrow, though, I’m jumping right back on that saddle and doing all that I used to do with such ease. I reconfigured my OmniFocus task list, so I will have all those familiar reminders throughout the day to keep me in line. I’m excited, to be honest, but also a little bit scared. I gave in so easily when I didn’t want to, and I’m worried I may do the same thing tomorrow. It’s that voice in my head that tries its best to convince me to not do what I know I need to do. I had overcome it for so long, and I can do it again. I know I can.

I spent a bit of time today clarifying my goals in my pocket notebook, and I kept coming back to my three big rocks: writing, reading, and working out and eating well. These are my three pillars of living, my mind (reading), body (working out and eating well), and spirit (writing). This triangle, when done every day or as regularly as I can, makes me happy and excited to be alive. I’ve been sorely missing both emotions lately, and I’m ready to get them back. That means I’m done drinking and eating out and sleeping in and finding excuses not to do what I love. These things, in the long run, make me unhappy, and you know what? Fuck that. Fuck anything that makes me not feel good. Life’s too short for that shit.

Life’s too short to live it in mediocrity. We all know what we need to do, but we don’t do it. We find excuses. We tell ourselves that we don’t have time or that life’s getting in the way or this bullshit reason or that bullshit reason. Fuck all of that. We find the time and the willpower and we do what we need to do because anything less than that is mediocre, and who wants to live a mediocre life?

It’s past ten o’clock, and I haven’t written a word all day. I’m on my sixth beer, and I think I use drinking as an excuse to do things I’ve forbidden myself to do. Does anyone else do that? I recognize that this behavior is unacceptable, but I don’t want to do anything about it. I want to be bad, and I want to do things I forbade myself from doing. I think I’m done, though. I’m tired of not doing my work. Work was so fulfilling, and I miss feeling fulfilled. I don’t miss feeling desirous for more, though, where my soul yearned for something that I wasn’t giving myself. Which brings me back to square one.

How do we get back on that road we’re supposed to be on? Why do we fall, Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up. That quote just came to my head. I’ve been on a Batman kick the past few weeks. It seems like I need Batman every few months. He’s great. If anything, he’s the closest thing to a role model I had growing up. He’s the quintessential self-made man. He doesn’t need superpowers to be a superhero. I need to feel like a superhero. How do we do that?

First thing first: find your Alfred. Alfred kept Batman in check. He kept him grounded and human, and whenever Batman needed to talk, Alfred was always there. They’re best friends and the closest thing they have to family. How many times have I yearned for something like that in these entries? A lot.

Second: fight for something. Batman fights crime. He trained his whole life to be the best he could be at doing that. He’s both strong and smart, and he’s committed to seeing this goal through. I know what I’m fighting for: to be the best writer I can be. Not the best writer ever, but the best I can be. There are a lot of things I think I need to do to get there, like reading voraciously and working out regularly, but it’s hard, especially when I don’t have my Alfred right now.

Last but not least: never give up. Do we ever see Batman give up? No! He gets into trouble, sure, but he always finds a way out of whatever predicament he’s in. He keeps fighting. This entry is a victory for me, even though I shat all over my regular routine and goals today. I could have drowned in booze and wallowed in self-pity, but I knew I needed to write. It’s not kicking some Joker ass or anything, but in my own way, it’s a victory. I’ve been fighting for 258 days, and that’s kind of amazing in and of itself.

Find your Alfred. Fight for something. Never give up. That’s how I think you become a superhero.

We never learned how to live well, did we? It’s not something we learned in school, and honestly, I don’t think many of us had role models we could have looked up to who lived or were living a great life. I at least didn’t. Do any of us know how to recover from our mistakes? Or know what the worst part of ourselves is? Do we know when it comes out and how to live with it in a positive and productive way? How many of us even ask ourselves these questions? If you’re anything like me, then I’m sure you rarely if ever asked yourselves these questions. I think that’s more normal than not, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing. Shouldn’t we know these things? Shouldn’t we have at least broached these subjects in school in some manner?

There’s more to life than knowing mathematical formulas and grammar. I’ve always believed in that, and that’s why I’ve always tended to gravitate toward expressing myself and self-improvement. The unexamined life is not worth living, as Socrates said, one of the best examples of a man whose life was lived well I’ve ever come across. I always loved Philosophy. I wanted to minor in it when I went to USC, but I would have had to pay for another year of school, and I just didn’t want to. I’ve been delving into it off and on since I graduated, and I’ve discovered some great philosophers, like Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Confucius and Buddha, and Seneca. I’ve always been a fan of Leonardo da Vinci, and even Bruce Lee has taught me a lot. One thing I’ve learned from all this is that living life is hard. Big revelation, right?

When you live alone and there’s no one there to push you, it’s hard to find the motivation and willpower to fight for a well-lived life. Modern life has too many distractions and things to do to make things easy. I can see why people want to live an eremitic life in the mountains or in monasteries. A well lived life is simple and fulfilling. That’s why I gravitated so much toward Minimalism. It forced me to focus on what was important, to throw away the unessential and be left with only those things that bring me joy. The things that don’t bring me joy aren’t physical possessions but choices I’ve made that haven’t contributed toward a joyful life.

What’s the worst thing about myself? I’m too arrogant to learn from my mistakes, I think. It seems that I repeat the same mistakes over and over and over again, and then I beat myself up about it again and again and again. I’m stuck in that cycle again, and I need to get out of it. I need to fight for the life I want, and I gotta do it every day. The question I need to ask myself now, though, is what kind of life do I want?

I hate to admit this, but a big part of my evening routine now includes more than a couple of beers. I crave it after work, in fact, but I don’t drink any until after I workout and shower. A big motivator for me to workout has been the promise of an ice cold beer. I don’t know if that’s sad or if it’s simply a necessary action during this stage of my life. I’m unsure of what to do next. I have no immediate plans to do anything other than go to work, do my three big rocks, and do whatever else in between those actions. The only thing I have to look forward to is fire season, and that will offer a nice respite to my current lifestyle, one that I’m eager for. But it’s temporary.

I haven’t been sleeping as much as I need to be, and a big reason for that is that I’m not going to bed at a reasonable hour. Sometimes I’m mindlessly browsing the internet with no rhyme or reason to it other than anxiousness. I don’t know what to do right now, and I hate not knowing what to do. I’m maybe two to three thousand words away from finishing my book, and then I could start on the rewrite, which may provide some structure to my days. I officially finish week one of Max: 30 tomorrow (if I do it), so I have another two months of workouts planned. Now, I could go back to my old routine since it did give my days a strict structure, with something to do most every hour of the day. But that burnt me out, which has led me here, to right now.

What does strength mean and do I have it? Am I strong enough right now to do what I need to do? What do I need to do? What do I want to do? How should I be spending my days? Am I happy? Am I sad? Am I asking myself too many questions? Are these questions too obvious to ask? Do some people just know the answers and never ask themselves these questions? These aren’t mind blowing questions, and they took zero effort from me to think about them, so does that mean I’m dumb or something? That I can’t answer them right now? I have been drinking, but not that much. I’m super clear headed right now. I was procrastinating earlier, but that shouldn’t matter, right? I don’t know. I’m just throwing shit out there to see what sticks. So far, nothing.

This is a stupid thought, but I hate it when people tell me what to do. I don’t like it. I like to do my own thing, but then here I am restricting myself harder than I would let anyone restrict me. No wonder I burned out, right? I said it’s a stupid thought because of the consequences I wanted to justify for myself. I want to let loose and be gluttonous for a little bit. Maybe that’s dumb and potentially dangerous and definitely recidivistic. But I don’t care tonight.

I’m slowly settling down into my new routine, and I’m enjoying it, mostly because of the weather. There’s something about sunny days where it makes me relax more than work; whereas winter makes me want to settle down and get to work. I’ve never been one to take much stock in the seasons, but I’ve recently noticed how they have affected me during the past few years and I find that fascinating. I think that’s mostly a sign of my navel-gazing ignoring everything outside of myself, and that’s one of the biggest issues I’m trying to see how to change. I’m not too sure how to change that or even just improve it, but that’s all part of the journey.

I need something to fight for, and I think I create an imaginary world of sorts in my head where I have something to fight for. The only problem is that it’s not real, and since it’s not real, it’s fragile. When it inevitable breaks and falls apart, I lose that thing that kept me going. When I first started this blog, my main motivation to keep going was the hope that one day she would come back into my life, and I could show her how much I’ve changed. That never happened, but I was able to replace her with someone else. Unfortunately, that someone else wasn’t a wise choice, so I’ve moved on from that idea. Now I don’t have anyone to pretend to fight for. Now that I’ve written all this out, I feel like doing what I can to move away from some external source, especially if it’s a girl, and try to find my own internal reasons to fight.

I’m going to repeat myself because I need to reiterate these things to myself again. I’m fighting for a writer’s life, where I earn my living writing stories. That’s what I want to do, that’s what I think I’m good at, and that’s what I need to fight for, for that life. I’m also fighting for a healthy lifestyle. I’ve sung the praises for how working out makes me feel really good, and that hasn’t changed. What I’ve always struggled with is eating well, and that’s something I want to fight harder for. Unfortunately, none of these things are earning me any money. I do have a good job that pays me well, and I love the groove and responsibility I have at work, but it’s not work I truly love. I want to fight for a life I love, and sometimes that life seems far away and other times it feels within my grasp. It’s like waves crashing onto shore and then receding back into ocean. It’s there and then it’s not.

We all know this isn’t easy, but we fight anyways because we have to. We must fight because we know that if we don’t fight, we might as well stop living. We fight because we love it. We love fighting for something, and even if we never get what we want, we will at least know that we fought for something. That, in the end, is all that matters.

Are you still there? The world hasn’t ended? I can drink and have fun and not fill every minute with something to do? Good.

What does a successful day mean to me? I don’t know if I’ve ever asked myself that question. Before, I probably would have said that I needed to do something productive for most of the hours I was awake. I might have even counted the hours I slept, which meant I would have tried to optimize my sleep as much as possible. All of which is to say that a successful day to me would have been one where I worked hard from the moment I opened my eyes and woke up to the moment I closed my eyes and slept. For a long time this was all true, but I don’t know if I feel the same way about that anymore. I know for a fact I don’t feel that way anymore.

I’m content with spending a few hours working on accomplishing my three big rocks for the day and spending the rest of the day either being productive or not, playing games or not, drinking or not. I’m going more by how I feel at the time and having those feeling determine the outcome of my day. That’s how I’ve been living my days for the past few weeks, and I don’t hate it, but I’m also not convinced I like it yet. There’s something missing, and I don’t know what that is, but I don’t care that much about finding it out yet. I’m still in vacation mode and taking a break from the past few months of work.

I’m having trouble staying awake right now because I’m tired. I wanted to write that because I wanted to let future me know how, no matter how unmotivated and uncaring these days may have seemed to me in my memories, I still found that something to push through and get this entry written. I need to remind myself that there’s something incredible in that. There’s nothing stopping me from ending this entry right now other than some force inside of me, and that force, whatever it is, will always be inside of me. I can always tap into it, no matter where I am or how I’m feeling. I need to remember that for those times I’m feeling down or frustrated or annoyed.

I’m still new to this blogging thing. I’m used to keeping a journal, where I write my private thoughts to a private audience, but with a blog, I’m writing to more than just myself. I’m writing for other people, too, and you know what? I kind of hate that. I definitely care about my audience when I’m writing a screenplay or a novel, but my journal? I don’t give a fuck about who reads this. If they’re not entertained, I don’t give a fuck. I have zero ads here, I don’t make any money, and traffic doesn’t matter to me. It’s very easy to not read my blog, and it’s easier to write when I know I’m writing just for myself. That’s what I call living a successful day.

Be prepared, everyone: You are about to read the greatest thing ever written by man on the internet, hell, on anything. This entry will be so great that your mind will simply be blown and all you want to do is read more of my shit because I’m like a drug, the best and most addicting drug you’ve ever had in your life. Your life that is mediocre compared to mine because oh my god I’m the most interesting man who has ever lived. The Dos Equis guy has nothing on me. Rip Hunter came from the fucking future just to tell me how legendary I am for all the future children of earth. I single-handedly saved the world from invading aliens while also curing fucking cancer. Mankind has a future because of me. I brought down governments with just my smile and we all live happily ever after.

Is that something we should aspire to? To be great? It’s all about attitude. How you view the world determines how you live it, how you conquer what life has to offer, what the universe decides to throw at you at any given day. We don’t always feel like this, at least I don’t. But we’ve all had days where we do, and we should all try to remember those feelings — that attitude — and try as best we can to manifest it during those days when we don’t feel that way, when we feel low and sad and unmotivated to live life outside of a self-created bubble of doubt and pity.

I’m definitely more keen to live this way because of how crappy my life has been the past few weeks. Shit went to hell, and I had to figure out if what I wanted was really what I wanted. I’m not a fucking robot, but I tried to live like one. Same monotonous routines at the same time every day like clockwork. And it worked. It worked for eight months. Then I realized I was human and I couldn’t possibly live like that forever. No one can. So I drank a lot and played a lot of video games and I simplified my days to just three big rocks, but lets be real, most days I just did the one big rock: these blog entries. A broken streak doesn’t mean a broken life. It just means I was human.

I know I’m not anything like I wrote about in the first paragraph. How cool would it be if I defeated invading aliens? But I know exactly how that attitude makes me feel, and I felt that today, and I loved it. I got back on my horse today and returned to my big rocks, and it felt good crossing those tasks off my todo list.

Life should be fun and should be lived in the present. If what you’re doing isn’t fun, even if it’s productive, don’t do it. Try to do things that are both fun and productive. That’s when you know you got something special. But take a break every now and then. Be human. Relax. Drink. Get out. These are all things I need to do more of, but when I do, man, it makes me feel like the most interesting man in the world and that’s how we should all feel all the time.