I’m struggling to be a more consistent writer. I want to be a better writer, and I know to become better, I have to write every day. I have to work on my craft as much as I can. I write a lot, but I don’t know how much or if my writing is improving. I don’t give myself enough time to revise my words or think through a concept and develop it organically. I force myself to write 500 words because that’s the only way I know how to measure progress. That might be the problem. Writing 500 words every day is a tangible goal, but what I’m yearning for isn’t something tangible. I’m yearning for something I can’t measure, and I think that’s called art.

I’ve been measuring my progress in many areas of my life that I think have helped me. For example, this is my 200th entry. I rattled off a bunch of stats for my 100th entry, which I can do again: I’m over 65,000 words in my novel. I’m over 124,000 words in this blog. I’m hovering around 170 lbs, but I’ve become more cut in the past few months than ever before. My job is great and still paying well. My car is running great. All my stuff from California is still making me happy. My habits and routines are vast and stronger than ever. My life feels like it’s on cruise control, and I think that’s because I’m so concerned with numbers and not on quality. Numbers measuring my progress have kept me in check, and I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for them, but I believe I’ve outgrown them. My desire isn’t to do something every day anymore because I trust myself to show up and do the work; instead, my desire is to use what I’ve built and improve upon it in a very intangible way, but I don’t know what that looks like yet.

I’m struggling to find something meaningful and enjoyable to write after six months of doing this every day. It’s easier keeping a journal and writing in it every day because those words are just for me. I try not to let this happen, but writing publicly changes what I think I should write about. I want to at least leave my readers somewhat informed on something. Sometimes I don’t know what I want to write about and other times I do. I’m just not consistent. Once I complete my goal of 365 entries, I’m definitely relaxing my daily goal. I’ll continue to write in my journal on a daily basis, but I’ll try to limit by blog output to an entry a week. I hope that’ll give me more time to produce something meaningful. But these are easy plans for the future when I’m more concerned with now.

The only way to improve is to keep producing work that I can evaluate. I need to learn from my mistakes and grow. I need to surround myself with writers better than me and learn from them. I need to do more than just write. I have to live, and that’s the real challenge, isn’t?

I love technology. Specifically, I love my MacBook Air, iPhone 6, and iPad Air. I love the feel of the keyboard on my laptop, especially when I’m writing. I love the look of many of the apps I use, like Ulysses, Scrivener, and OmniFocus. I love how LaunchBar helps me move around my Mac very quickly, and I love how TextExpander helps me type faster by typing less.¹ I love how so much of my administrative life can be done on my phone. For example, a friend of mine emailed me a document that I needed to sign, scan, and email back. From my phone, I opened the attachment, a .docx file, in the free Microsoft Word app, edited it, saved it, and printed it. I then signed the document, printed my phone number and the date on it, and scanned it using Scanbot. I then emailed the resulting PDF to my friend. All this was done in minutes, and that fact still blows my mind. Imagine doing that a few years ago.

As a Technology Coordinator², I spend all my time around technology. From Windows laptops and desktops, to iPads and iPod Touch’s, to my own Apple products, I’m surrounded by it all. I spend most of my time troubleshooting and fixing these devices, but that hasn’t stopped me from loving and appreciating the amazingness these devices can do. Like the above example, technology can help us do and accomplish so much. I really don’t think I can be as productive as I am today if it weren’t for my devices. I’m writing this not too long after finishing dinner, and I’m more glad that I’m worried about having to write in a couple more journals and read a few more chapters of Don Quixote than fighting with the technology I have or worse, living in a world without these devices.

Staring into all these screens for most of the day isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, though. I’ve definitelynitely noticed spending less and less time outside or with other people, especially when I’m focused on some task on one of my devices. For the past few weeks, I’ve been having trouble getting to bed early because of all the things I want to do on my computer. I do need to be more conscious about limiting my screen time. I need to go outside more often, and I’m glad I get to go firefighting this summer, but that’s just a month or two out of the whole year. I live in Montana, home to nine national parks, and I haven’t visited any of them yet. I have hiking gear but I don’t use it outside of firefighting. Taking a walk just to take a walk seems so foreign to me that I don’t remember all the times I walked when I didn’t have a car and enjoying it.

This entry took a strange turn. It went from loving technology to scolding myself for using technology too much. Don’t listen to me you guys. I don’t know what I’m talking about.

It’s harder getting up in the mornings because I’m sleeping later and still waking up at five. I’m drinking more coffee than normal, but it’s simply making things worse, causing me to crash in the afternoon, which then makes writing and working out very difficult. I somehow manage to use my willpower to push through, but I can feel my reserves running on low. Last month, I scheduled an 8:30 PM bedtime, along with tasks filling up every minute of my week. I’ve not adhered to this schedule very well. Before starting this entry, I went and tweaked my schedule so I get to my blog entry first thing after dinner, write in my two journals after, and finish up my night with some reading. I particularly enjoy the reading right before bedtime part because it’ll give my eyes a rest from the blue light emanating from all my digital devices, which I hope will help me fall asleep faster. I need all the energy I can get because I’m working harder than ever.

Last week, I started to write another 300 words every day in the afternoon, and I’ve been successful at it for nine straight days. That means I’ve doubled my usual output, moving up the date I expected to finish my novel from late July to the middle of May. This new habit was easy to implement and sustain because of my experience building and nurturing habits. My trigger to start was getting home from work or sometime after four in the afternoon. Before I begin writing, I’ve been blending a smoothie for me to drink during the session, which mimics my morning coffee. This little act has helped me more than I thought it would because I’ve developed this tic where I need to drink something in between breaks in the writing. Even when the cup is empty, I find myself whipping my neck back and holding the cup to my mouth, trying to taste that last drop sitting at the bottom of the cup. It’s ridiculous, and it might be a superstitious ritual, but it helps.

If we look back at the previous 197 days of my life, we might see the progression from one habit to another habit to another habit. If I remember correctly, the very first habit I tried to build was writing 300 words in the morning. I remember sitting by my desk at five in the morning, my apartment engulfed in darkness, and staring at my laptop screen with the blank page of my word processor waiting for me to write something. I remember sitting there for 45 minutes before I started writing something. I remember trying to work out again but failing because of how sore I felt the next day. Eventually, I started Day 1 of Insanity: the Asylum Volume 1 on October 1st, and I really haven’t looked back since. Since September, I’ve read sixteen books. That’s almost three books a month, which is more than I read the previous year. I’ve meditated for 178 days straight, and I really believe that has helped me to focus and relax. Other than this blog, I’ve started and kept three other journals, and along with the additional 300 words every afternoon, I’m writing more than I’ve ever written in my life.

All this is why I’m tired, but I believe I’m earning my rest. How many people can say that?

I sometimes write my personal essays and journal entries with the understanding that I’m going to re-read them in the future; therefore, I try to write about what I wish to do or hope to become as a way to force myself to do those things. For example, when I first started to journal seriously six years ago, I wrote a lot about my weight and diet. I didn’t like how I looked or felt about myself, and I remember re-reading some of those entries a year or two later and still feeling the same. Eventually I decided that enough was enough and I forced myself to lose the weight and to eat better, and now I’ve never felt or looked better in my life. I’ve written about my lack of a dating life, my wish to become a better writer, and my relentless pursuit to be better. By writing all this down, I hope to set the proper gears in motion wherein I execute everything I want to accomplish.

In an effort to become a better writer, I’m trying to become a better reader. Last week, I began to read Don Quixote. We all know the story of Don Quixote, but one thing I didn’t know before I started reading it was that it was written by a narrator who’s retelling the stories he’s picked up from random books of Don Quixote, who in turn became a knight because of the many histories about knights and chivalry he read. It’s this modern and highly entertaining meta-narrative that was written back in the 1500s that I’m falling in love with. It was this meta-narrative that sparked the thought that eventually produced the opening paragraph of this entry.

Am I living inside a narrative world of my own creation? I don’t mean it to seem as ostentatious or as grandiose as it sounds, but I’m interested in this thought because it makes me reconsider and rethink the whole purpose of journaling, which is what these personal essays are, in the end. Am a journaling to improve myself? Or am I journaling as a cathartic experience, as a way to get everything out of me? I don’t think one answer is more right or wrong than the other, but I believe it’s both because I don’t think I can have one without the other. The only way to improve myself is to expel all my thoughts and emotions into words, and by doing all that, I’m improving myself.

Now that I know this, though, am I going to start writing about all my desires and wishes since I know that by writing it all I have a good chance I’ll execute in all of them? Since I don’t want to find out, I’m not going to do that. Like I wrote about a few days ago, I believe limits help me thrive, and by limiting my entries to just a few desires, then I might have a better time focusing on them and actually executing them well.

Don Quixote went all in¹. I should, too.

Since the day I first started writing a blog, I’ve always yearned to write really good personal essays, but I never gave myself the time to grow enough to accomplish this. Instead, when I sit down to write an entry, I go into it unprepared. I have no idea what I’m going to write about, and what I do end up writing is published unedited and sometimes not proofread. I’m not always proud of everything I write, and I’ve sometimes felt ashamed that I didn’t spend more time with an entry to improve it. My name is emblazoned everywhere, tying me to each and every word I write, and I know I should be more mindful about keeping stock of my name, but I don’t.

One of the biggest issues I’m battling with myself is spending money I’ve not budgeted for on things I want. I have to be careful not to overload my life with tools because they’re new and desirable and instead use the tools I actually have. It’s tough when that new app or notebook or other tool comes out and it looks life-changing, and all I want to do is buy it. Today, for example, my Maker Confidant notebook from Baron Fig arrived. Of course it’s beautiful and well-crafted and I can’t wait to use it, but I didn’t need it. I had their other limited edition Confidant, the three-legged juggler, that I’ve yet to use. Things aren’t different on the digital side.

I’ve been keeping all of my blog entries in their own Scrivener project file since almost the beginning of my blog’s existence. For a while, Scrivener served its purpose really well. It organized and contained all my writings in one place without worry, and all I had to focus on were the words. Recently, though, I’ve felt that I needed another tool that could handle my blog a little differently. Scrivener is great for my novel because I use many of its features, and I can’t imagine using anything else for it. Yet that power is more than I need for my blog. Scrivener handles Markdown fine, but I’ve been using Byword to write all my entries in Markdown and sync that back into Scrivener, but that just made Scrivener a container for all my entries and not really a tool I actively used.

A little over a week ago, Ulysses came out for both the Mac and iPad. I’ve heard of Ulysses tangentially from some Mac sites and podcasts I consume, but I never looked into it. Last week, it was everywhere. Conveniently, the developers offered a demo version of it, which I downloaded and tried out. I fell in love with it immediately. It looks and feels a lot like Scrivener, but it’s a bit simpler and more focused on writing in plain text (aka Markdown) than Scrivener. I love that I can easily and quickly break down one essay into multiple “sheets”, rearrange them at will, and then merge them all back together. I did that with this entry, and it changed my entire view on how I can write in the future that I’m simply excited to keep writing.

I appreciate tools that make me excited to create something with them. I love writing in my Confidant notebook, and that’s a big reason why I have three of them. I love writing my novel in Scrivener, which is why I wanted to write my blog with it, but it absolutely was the wrong tool for the job. Ulysses is the right tool for this particular job. I used the demo version to write this entire entry, and all I have left to say is, “I’m sorry future Mario for the financial debt I’ve put you in, but you have to admit, it was worth it, right?” I’m confident the answer is yes.

For the past few weeks, as I’ve been doing more and more, I’ve been sleeping less and less because I’m still waking up at 5 AM every morning. I’ve been wanting to sleep in, but my desire to stay on schedule and show up to do my work is stronger than my desire to stay in my warm bed longer than I have to. I love what I’m doing, and I want to be awake to do as much of it as possible, but at the same time, I feel like I should give myself some sort of break every once in a while.

When I first started this blog, I gave myself strict limits on what I could and couldn’t do so I can focus on bettering myself as much as possible. I made huge mistakes that I hated myself for, and all I wanted to do was get away from that person and toward someone else. I’m definitely not the same person I was when I made those mistakes, but instead of relaxing those limits I set on my self, I’ve added to and increased those limits. I don’t know if I can function as productively and as focused as I am today without limits.

I am afraid of falling back to my old ways. Even if I don’t consciously think about it on a daily basis, every now and then, whenever I’m at the grocery store or whenever I’m feeling lonely or for some other reason, I think about relaxing and doing something I’ve been depriving myself of. That fear exists, and I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t think I’m being hard on myself, even though that’s what it may sound like. I’m thriving with these self-imposed limits, and I love everything I’m doing.

The challenge that I’m having is not caring what other people think. Other than those who read this blog, nobody I know knows what I do every day, and I’m afraid they might find me boring if they find out. I’ve been especially thinking about this as I’ve slowly built up a few friendships at work. I’ve told a few people a rough sketch of what I do after work, and I’m always afraid of revealing more for fear of being seen as boring. That fear is real and strong and very, very stupid.

No matter what anyone else thinks, I’m not boring. I’m focused. I’m showing up every day and doing my job. Every limit I’ve imposed on myself has been imposed for a reason, and I’m thriving because of them. I’m a writer who writes thousands of words a day now. I’m in the best shape of my life, and I’m only getting better every day. I started reading Don Quixote this week, and soon, I’m going to read more fiction from authors I’ve never read before all in an effort to be a better writer. In the end, that’s all I want to be.

By giving myself limits, I’ve been able to focus myself on the essentials, and I’m living the best life I’ve ever lived in my life. It’s hard, and I don’t get as much sleep as I used to, but I’m happy and loving every minute of every day I’m alive. That, to me, is a sign of success.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been learning about and setting up a piece of software called System Center Configuration Manager 2012 R2. How Microsoft chooses to name these things is beyond me, but most everyone on the internet chooses to refer to it by SCCM 2012, so that’s how I’ve come to refer to it. What it does, in a very uninformed (because I’m still learning it) and simplistic way, is help me deploy software across all my Windows machines, including a way to deploy Windows 8.1 sometime in the future. It helps me build a library of approved software for teachers and students to download from either a piece of software I’ve pushed out to everyone or by following a link to a page on our server. It’s super cool, super useful, super complicated, and super fun. I’m still learning all the little intricacies of a very small piece of what it can do, but even just that makes me happy and satisfied.

One of my favorite teachers at work told me about a problem she was having with her SMART Board. These boards have touch capabilities, and she likes writing stuff with her pen on it and manipulating Windows and whatever else on it, which is cool and it should just work™, but it wasn’t working. I checked a few settings and tested out what was going on with it. Everything worked for me. She saw me doing everything she wanted to be doing, and she was frustrated. A running joke with everyone at school is that whatever problem staff members and teachers are having is automatically solved by me just showing up. Like my presence fixes everything. And that’s what seemed to be going on. I told her to try to recreate everything that led up to the issues as much as possible, but it seemed like stuff she wasn’t able to do yesterday was working with me just standing there. What made this whole situation really funny and really fun was that her class was super amazed that everything was working. They were all telling me that the computers like me and that it’s only working because I’m there, and the teacher also was joining in on the teasing, and I laughed because I didn’t know what I could do. I told her to call me as soon as it starts acting up again because I want to see what’s going on.

This has happened a bunch of times to me since I’ve been here. There are problems teachers seem to be having, but once I come to take a look, those problems disappear. It’s frustrating because I believe that they are having problems, but I can’t fix it because they don’t know how to explain themselves fully and correctly and because I can’t recreate the issues myself. Another teacher today has been complaining about his wifi the entire time I’ve been working here, but every time I go into his room and check it out, it works just fine. Today he wanted me to check out a few of his laptops because they were having issues. I tested them and they all seemed to be working fine. I took them into my office and did some routine maintenance to appease him and brought them back in time for a few of his students to test them out. They all worked just fine. They were all stumped, and all I could think was that maybe I do have some superpowers. Maybe I’m like Aquaman but with technology. Technoman. Digiman. Netman.

I feel more confident at work, and I look forward to coming to work every day, and I love what I do there and what I want to do, and I love joking around and getting to know all the students and teachers and staff members, and a big reason why I’m able to do all that I want to do is because work doesn’t tire me out. I don’t come home stressed and tired and irritated. I come home energized, and that energy is important because I need to write, work out, read, and write some more. I wouldn’t be able to do this if I was unhappy, and I’m the complete opposite of that. I’m lucky and grateful.

I’m going to try something different with my blog. For months, my blog has felt like a place where I had to try to say something important, in a sense. Something that could maybe attract readers beyond my group of Facebook friends. It didn’t work. Instead, I lost interest in writing here every night, and that felt unfair to me. Every morning I would pour through my Metrics and feel great when my subscribers went up or really sad when they went down. Sorry, but my blog isn’t really for my (lack of) readers. It’s for me. It’s for me to try things, to succeed, to fail, to learn, and to write better.

I don’t care if my posts aren’t coherent or well-structured or well-written or proofread to shit. I don’t think short-term with many things, but I was thinking about the short-term with this blog. Like I wrote above, every entry had to be good, and that meant sacrificing sleep and in the end, quality and honesty. I’ve been writing in here on a nightly basis for 193 days straight. I honestly don’t know if I’ve improved as a writer or just got really good at writing bullshit. But 193 days from now? One year from now?

I want to look back at all these entries and see my progress. I want to get better. That’s been a big theme of this blog since the very beginning. I’m writing more now than I’ve ever written in my life. Just to restate my habits: write my novel in the morning, write my novel after work, journal about my novel, journal about some personal things, journal about three things I was grateful for today, and write a blog post. All that is over 2,000 words spread across six different sessions. And I still don’t think I write enough and I still want to write more.

I really believe the work I’m doing now on this blog will produce something really good down the line. I’m learning by writing these entries every night. I’m showing up and doing the work. I really want to write well-written and very personal essays. That seems really fun to me. That seems like I something I know I can do and that I want to do. I like writing about myself. I like writing about my life. I like learning something new about myself through writing. At the same time, I don’t spend any time really trying to produce something that I spent my time on. All these entries are written in about an hour, most times less than that. A lot of that time was spent thinking about what to write about, and the longer I took, the worse the product seemed to be.

I gave myself an arbitrary limit of 500 words because that seemed to me like enough time for me to say something about my day. Sometimes I go way over that when I really shouldn’t have. Other times I could’ve cut out a lot and not have reached it. Those are the times when I wished I could go back and add and revise and improve my product. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to do that while I’m on this path toward 365 daily entries. One missed night will kill me.

Another thing about all these entries are the titles. Sometimes I copy/paste a line or a word that I wrote about in the entry and move on. Other times the title just comes to me, and I like those. Most of the time, though, I just toss something up there without much thought. Fewer entries will definitely help me out there. Not today, though.

For the longest time I didn’t know if I wanted to continue paying for a blog past the one year mark. Now I really think like I should. I really want to, and I’m going to. This is my place. My name is up at the very top for the world to see because I’m not afraid of who I am. This is me and this is my life. I don’t need validation. I need to revise and make my shit better.

Not tonight, though. Tonight I want to sleep.

Take nothing for granted. Life is short and anything that impedes your ability to live it as fully as possible should be excised immediately.

When somebody smiles at you, smile back. Somebody had a pleasant thought of you in their minds when they saw you and smiled as a result; it’s very special to have this connection with someone else.

Don’t repress your emotions. It causes more harm than good because going against the self is restrictive and harmful to your soul. You are who you are and you should be you as freely and as much as possible.

Stop projecting what you think other people think of you toward your actions or inactions. It’s harmful toward your self and to the world around you. Be free and be as true to yourself as possible.

Stop wishing you were different. If you don’t like something, change it. Otherwise, accept who you are. It’s okay to be who you are. No one else will ever get to be you.

Focus your actions toward something beneficial. Don’t waste your time doing something unimportant. Life is too short.

Do what you love and love what you do. As long as everything you do falls under that philosophy, then you are doing all you can do to live the best life possible. If what you’re doing doesn’t fall under that philosophy, change it or cut it out immediately. It’s not worth it.

Treat your friends and family fairly and with love. At the end of the day, they are the ones that truly make life worthwhile. They help you understand the world in ways you can’t even imagine. They help you when you’re down and need help. Their love is unconditional, and you must honor and respect that and reciprocate it as much as possible.

Don’t let writing beat you up. Even when your writing isn’t going well, just remember how nothing else in the world is as fun as writing. Also, don’t worry if it’s not good the first time. You can always revise.

Have fun. Sometimes all you need is a moment of pure joy. Laugh. Play games. Joke with friends. Go running. Dance. Life is too short to not have fun.

Don’t be hard on yourself. Don’t let work interfere with sleep and with fun. But don’t slack off, either. You’re not where you want to be yet, and the only way to get there is through work. Write every day. Read every day. Get better every day. That’s the only way to get better. There are no shortcuts. Show up every day and work.

Above all, sleep. Don’t let work or fun or people interfere with your sleep. Rising early is beautiful and amazing and quiet and starting the day with a good hour of work is awe-inspiring. Don’t let distractions keep you from sleep. We sleep for a third of our lives for a reason: to make us energized and inspired enough for the other two-thirds of our lives.

A week or so ago, I decided to ignore the girl I developed a crush on at school. I’m not speaking to her, smiling at her, looking at her. I’m moving on because she’s only 18, and I’m a full ten years older than her. The age difference doesn’t bother me; it’s the fact that she’s 18 that bothers me. She hasn’t lived yet. She doesn’t know what life has to offer her yet. I’m trying to reserve one day a month to being social. That means going out somewhere and meeting people. Novel idea, right?

A few entries ago, I somewhat committed myself to meeting one new person a day. I haven’t started that yet, but I did put it in my OmniFocus app and am awaiting the time when I muster up the courage to actually try to do it. Don’t know when that’ll be, and I know for sure I’m holding off on it because it makes me uncomfortable. I’m an introvert, and I just finished this book about introversion that is really, really good. Every aspect of introversion that Susan Cain, the author, described rang true to me so much that it hurt and felt good at the same time. I think I can attribute most, if not all, of my depression when I was younger to my introversion. I believed that something was wrong with me because I wasn’t more social or that I didn’t have many friends. I would try very hard to be more extroverted, but I almost always failed, and I was aggrieved by that failure.

Failure is one of those things that depends completely on the person going through it. As a younger man, failure paralyzed me. I would hate myself every time I failed, and my subconscious would berate me constantly, telling me I didn’t deserve to live, that I should just end it because I’m just a waste of oxygen. This happened every day, from morning to night. It happened so much that I became numb to it all, even though it kept happening. I had zero confidence in myself, and I always felt defeated. Like nothing I did mattered. Which is why suicide felt like the most natural thing to do. What’s the point? Nobody cared about me and I didn’t care about me so who would miss me if I was gone?

The man I am today thrives on failure. I expect failure to teach me where I went wrong so I can refine and improve myself so I won’t fail next time. I’m able to do so much today because I’ve committed to this dance for six years. It took me years before I realized how to develop habits, more years after that to string together a series of different habits that stuck, and about 191 days to choose the right habits, string them together with other right habits, and live as fulfilling and productive a life I’ve ever have before.

Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and talk to my old self. I will tell him that things will get better. If I had someone back then to tell me that, then I think I wouldn’t have attempted suicide the one and only time I ever tried. But at the same time, I wouldn’t be the man I am right now if I didn’t go through all that. Maybe all I needed was a friend. I had friends, but not many who wanted to listen to my problems. I still don’t really have that person in my life, except anyone who reads this. This blog is my friend, my sounding board, my therapist, and I’m grateful for all of it.