In chess, there’s a stage in the game called the endgame. It’s when the players are left with very few pieces on the board. The good players are always thinking about the endgame and how they can turn it to their advantage. Every now and then I think about my own endgame. Not of life, even though I do think about that sometimes, but on this blog and this journey I’ve embarked upon. I’ve come a long way since day one, and I can’t really recall what life was like back then. I remember feeling hurt and sad and frustrated and angry, and I remember thinking that I needed to change and do something about my stagnant and unfulfilling life. So I started a blog and wrote about my frustrations and successes, wishes and experiments. I wrote about writing every morning, starting Insanity and eventually committing to over two hundred days of it, and reading every day. I wrote about a girl I don’t care about anymore, about my own wish to date and not doing it yet, and about a hundred other things. I’m left now with my own personal endgame.

Over the past few months, I’ve been slowly writing more and more every day, and it culminated to today, where I added another novel writing session in the afternoon. I really didn’t want to write because I was tired and annoyed after work, and I really wanted to watch the latest episode of the Walking Dead. But I made a plan, and I wrote down each small step I needed to take to ensure I complete this task, and I did it. I made my Primal Fuel shake, placed my laptop on my mStand, put my headphones on and picked some music, opened Scrivener in full-screen mode, and read the words I wrote this morning. It all seemed familiar. In the morning I usually have a cup of hot and tasty black coffee, but today I had a simple shake. I drank it all before I wrote one word, which was funny to me because I usually take a sip of the coffee in between thoughts. I didn’t have that this afternoon. Once I got started, though, the words came out just like they always do. I finished my words, crossed off the task from my list, and then started my workout. It all felt good.

I started another experiment today. I don’t know how it’ll evolve in the future because I haven’t had the time to feel it out yet. The new experiment was cooking various new recipes. I spent a good hour yesterday planning out the next two weeks worth of meals. I started off slow — many of the meals are familiar and I’ve done them many, may times before. I interspersed new meals, though, and one of those was a Western Omelet for breakfast this morning. It was simple, easy, and super delicious. I bought all the ingredients yesterday at Safeway¹, and it all came together with a very delicious, healthy, and filling breakfast. I need to do it more because I really need the practice. I need to add fewer veggies or else I won’t be able to fold the eggs in half well enough. I also need to play around with the right heat level on my stove because the directions asks for medium-low, but I think medium to medium-high works better for me. This breakfast really affected the rest of my day because I was full and very satisfied and energetic.

I’m piling up all these habits and routines, and I’m living the most fulfilling life I’ve ever lived, but like I’ve said many times before, I don’t really think this will last forever. It can’t, right? It’s too much for one man to handle, and I’m a man, and I can totally foresee myself not being able to handle this forever. What am I trying to do? What are my goals? I honestly don’t think I need an endgame or goals. I think the process is the point. The journey is everything, and I’m loving every minute it.

My life is a rough draft that I haven’t finished revising. I’m flirting with a bevy of things to do every day, and for the most part, I’ve automated many aspects of my life. It’s great! Except when I’m not in the mood to do something. Then life sucks, and I fight against all my natural urges and do the habit because I have to check it off my list to be happy. Or I have days like today, a day not very different than any other, and I love everything I’m doing that I’m going to do even more so I commit myself to one more habit while keeping all my other, more important habits, and removing one of my “unproductive” habits, a.k.a watching TV after work, just to have the time to do it. Will I succeed? Who knows! But I’m trying it anyway because I want to see this through.

The new habit is writing another 300 words every day at around 4:15 PM, or after I come home from work. It doesn’t take me very long to get started in the morning and get those 300 words written. I usually read what I wrote the previous day or two, and I simply continue the book. I can apply the same routine later in the day, right? I’m about to find out. I want to do this for many reasons. Writing 300 words a day isn’t that much in the grand scheme of things. I can double my output and pace if I double that. What I can produce in two months I can produce in one. That thought intrigues me. Another reason is that I’m on the first draft of the second draft of this story I’ve been working on since 2011. I threw away the first draft and started over with this new draft. First drafts are supposed to be shitty. Mine’s shitty, so that rule holds true. Let me just get this shitty draft over with, then I don’t have to stare at a blank page anymore. I can revise revise revise, and only then can I push my novel to the limits and produce some good work. In the end, that’s the goal.

I want to be published, yes, but I don’t want to publish shitty first drafts, even if they are good enough to be published (which they aren’t nor ever will be). I want to write well, and I want to write good novels. If I was the main character in some freshman screenwriter’s first screenplay, I want to be published, but I need to write well. To write well, I have to write every day. The best way to write every day is to set up a routine, and my routine is to get up at 5 fucking AM in the morning, brew a cup of coffee, sit down by my desk, open Scrivener, enter full screen mode, and start writing. I keep hitting ⌘⇧T to view my statistics, to see how close (or far) I am from 300 words. Eventually I get there, and then I start my morning routine and the rest of my day. For those of you taking notes, it’s all about consistency. I have this poster on my wall that says Slow and Steady Wins. That’s my philosophy with all this routine shit. Little by little we build the life we want by doing the things to get us there. And I figured I wasn’t doing enough, so I decided to write more every day because I don’t already write enough.

There’s this idea I learned today from Josh Waitzkin that he wrote about in his book, The Art of Learning, which I want to read. He describes this concept of making smaller circles. This is how he describes it:

In Making Smaller Circles we take a single technique or idea and practice it until we feel its essence. Then we gradually condense the movements while maintaining their power, until we are left with an extremely potent and nearly invisible arsenal.

Right now I’m doing all I can to see what works and what doesn’t. That’s really what I’ve been doing and documenting since September, which is when I started this blog. For the most part, most everything I’ve tried has stuck and has become ingrained into my life. I’ve found that I’m left with very little time for anything else, which sucks, and I’ve found that I don’t sleep as much as I would like, which doubly sucks, and I’ve found that I always want to do more, which doesn’t suck that much until I decide to actually follow through and do more, which then sucks when it inevitably eats away at my time and sleep. Which is why I found that Josh Waitzkin quote and concept so mind-blowing. If I keep working at my habits, keep focusing them and reducing them down to their essence, I may — just may — reclaim my time and my sleep and possibly do even more than I’m doing now. Maybe one day I can quickly get started on my tasks, do consistent and high quality work at a fraction of the time, and go on with my day. I’m not sure if that’s how Josh Waitzkin describes his concept since I haven’t read his book yet, but that idea alone excites me.

I need to focus, I need to be consistent, and I need to reduce my habits and routines to their essence so I have more time to live my life as happily as possible. That’s so easy I can do it in my sleep.

In the past few years, I’ve written over a thousand pages of my novel in a couple of drafts, hundreds, possibly thousands more pages in my various journals, and over 340 pages for this blog, and I’m still afraid I’m not supposed to be a writer. I read this article today by Ryan Boudinot for The Stranger that humbled, inspired, and frightened me. In it, he said:

Occasionally my students asked me about how I got published after I got my MFA, and the answer usually disappointed them. After I received my degree in 1999, I spent seven years writing work that no one has ever read—two novels and a book’s worth of stories totaling about 1,500 final draft pages. These unread pages are my most important work because they’re where I applied what I’d learned from my workshops and the books I read, one sentence at a time. Those seven years spent in obscurity, with no attempt to share my work with anyone, were my training, and they are what allowed me to eventually write books that got published.

I’ve been writing seriously since I was about 16 years old, and I really don’t think any of my stuff is any good. I was fortunate to be accepted to the USC School of Cinematic Arts Writing for Screen & Television when I was 18, and which I graduated from when I was 22. I turn 29 in a few months, and I don’t think I’m any closer to getting published. I just don’t think I’m good enough. I’m trying — god knows I’m trying — to be the best writer I can possibly be, but part of me feels like I’m not trying hard enough. I don’t write enough or read enough or read the right books enough or a million other reasons. I can toil away for 16 hours a day every day for years and I still don’t think I’ll be good enough to be published.

I signed up yesterday to Skillshare, which is this really cool service that bills itself as a place for creators to learn from other creators. Yesterday, I devoured Susan Orleans’ — yes, that Susan Orleans — class on Creative Nonfiction: Write Truth with Style. After watching the class, I felt super excited to write. I learned some useful techniques to implement into my workflow that I’m grateful I learned. Today, however, I went through Yiyun Li’s class on Writing Character-Driven Short Stories. I felt like I was learning a lot as the class progressed, but there was a comment she made that struck a chord. I won’t mention it here because the comment itself doesn’t matter; it was how it made me feel. It made me feel worthless. It made me feel like I should find something else to do.

I shouldn’t have felt that way. The easiest thing for me to do is to go through my writing and revise it. That’s really it. Revise and rewrite, revise and rewrite, revise and rewrite. Problem solved. But then I read Ryan Boudinot’s article after that, and he seemed to pile more doubt onto my mind all I’ve been thinking about and feeling is that I’m not supposed to be a writer.

You know what, though? Fuck that. You know those stats I rattled off in the beginning? That fucking inspired me. I’ve written thousands and thousands of pages, and I know that I’m a much better writer than I was yesterday. I suck as a proofreader because I just don’t do it, but as a writer? I know I’m good enough to be published. I know I can be published. And yes, it involves trying harder. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m trying hard already, but you know what? I’m not published. So I need to try harder. I need to finish my novel, and I need to write more stories, and I need to read more fiction books and fewer non-fiction books, and I need to not quit. I need to keep fucking pushing because nobody else can do this but me. Nobody else wants this as much as I do.

I love writing because it’s the purest and best form for me to express myself. As an introvert, I don’t get much of a chance to express myself in many other areas of my life. Writing is that outlet for me, and I love it. I love telling stories, and I love getting to know characters and empathizing with them, and I love telling the truth as I see it. This is my world, and I love exploring it through writing. Doubt sucks, and it makes me question everything, but I think I need that sometimes because it only reaffirms my commitments toward doing what I think is right for me. It’s all on me. Nobody else is worried about my happiness but myself. That’s the truth, and I need to get my ass off the damn floor and do the fucking work.

I’m an introvert, and I don’t like going out. I like staying in, reading and writing and living “a life of the mind”, a phrase I read in Susan Cain’s book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. I’m really, really enjoying this book, and I’m super glad I’m reading it at this time in my life. I gain a lot of energy by being alone. I love the solitude that writing and reading and meditating and simply bettering myself day by day brings. I don’t know if I would be able to do half of what I’m doing if I lived with people or was more of an extrovert. Conversely, I need some human contact, and I’m not giving myself much of it nowadays. I socialize at work, and I like most of my co-workers, but that’s all they are, co-workers. It’s hard to admit this but I really don’t have any friends here. I have friends, but they mostly live out-of-state and not here in Montana. I want to change that.

I’m scared of going somewhere to meet people by myself, but I think that’s something I have to do. Not just going to a bar or a nightclub¹ or something like that, but going to a class and learning something, like martial arts, cooking, art, or whatever. Logically, this all makes sense to me. If I want to meet people, I have to go somewhere where there are people. If I want to meet people who might be similar to me and/or I’ll like, I have to go do something that attracts those types of people. It’s tough, though, for an introvert like me. The thought of doing all that versus doing something like staying in by myself and reading always loses. I’d rather do the comfortable and familiar than the scary and unfamiliar.

I’ve definitely outgrown the shell I used to be entrapped in growing up. Hell, I don’t think I really outgrew it until my senior year of college, maybe even sooner than that, at around my junior year. I’m comfortable and confident with who I am. I like myself, and I like what I’m doing, and I think I’m a catch. It’s just showing that to someone and letting them get to know me that’s tough. I can’t wrap my head around that whole concept. Some people find it super easy to be around people and hitting it off with someone. I don’t, and I wish I did. No, that’s not true. I wish I gave myself more opportunities to be around people because I’m a cool guy and I know I can find at least one person in a crowd full of people I’d hit it off with.

The friends I’ve met here in Montana have all come from either work, firefighting, or through family. I don’t have a friend up here that I’ve met outside of that. I’ve seen people create goals for themselves like meet one new person a day, and that goal scares me. I’d be lucky if I met one new person a month let alone every day. But maybe I have to do something that scares me to be happier and live a more fulfilling life.

If it’s not hard, it’s not worth doing, right? Well… shit. Am I committing to meeting one new person a day? Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck. I should. I know I should. I’m scared. Oh shit. What does a day like that even look like? How the hell would I do that? Haha, I just thought of a new notebook idea: logging ever new person I met. Jeeze. I have a problem. But oh god. Oh god. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I should do this. I should definitely do this. A day, though? Jeeze. Oh jeeze. Where would I go? Oh god. What would I say? Knowing me, I’d probably get pepper sprayed the first day I do this. Hell, I got pulled over the first day I went out driving. But… shit. I have to do something like this. I have to. Well, okay. Okay. Okay.

Shit.

I need to sleep. I’m exhausted, and I’m pushing myself a little too hard. I’m excited that I have a lot of energy to do a lot of things, and I’m grateful that I’ve been having so many ideas on various things recently, but god fucking dammit I’m tired. I’m sore because the Asylum hybrid workout is no joke, and it’s kicking my ass. Physically, I’m in shape to do them; mentally, though, I’m somewhere else. It feels like I’m drugged, and I’m not acting like myself. It’s a frustrating feeling, and this is going to feel like a frustrating entry to read.

I’m pressuring myself to do more than I can realistically do. There are so many things I wan to do, and I’m trying to fit them all into a 24 hour period, and that’s impossible. I’ve been trying to slow down, and it works for like a day, but then I find the energy to do something else or come up with an idea to do something else and I’m back to where I was. It feels like I’m in a race, and I have to go as fast as possible to win. But I don’t know who I’m going up against or know what the prize is if I win. Does winning even apply here? I don’t win; I’ll never win. I’ll still be working up until the day I die. Then I guess I’ll finally get my sleep.

All I want to do is create and consume, create and consume, create and consume. I want to write my novel, write a journal about my novel, write a journal about my personal personal life, write a journal about the things I’m grateful, write a blog entry about how I’m trying to be better than I was 186 days ago, trying to start a drawing habit, trying to keep an analog commonplace book, trying to read a book a week, trying to keep up to date on the news of the world, trying to read my current and past comic books, trying to organize my digital information, from photos to text files to miscellaneous other data, trying to become as physically fit as I possibly can, trying to eat as healthily as I can, trying to meditate 15 minutes every day and be as centered as I possibly can, and I’m trying to do all of this while also getting sleep. There’s more, I’m sure of it, but this was all I could think of at the moment.

I’m also trying to find someone. This week, for some reason, I’ve been playing Sufjan Stevens on repeat. There’s a song he has called Arnika from his All Delighted People EP. There’s a lyric in there that gets me:

I’m tired of life; I’m tired of waiting for someone.

I’m tired. I need to take better care of myself and have some fun. I want to drink again. Some Pinot Noir. That was my favorite wine. I want to have dinner with friends. I want to have a long chat with a good friend. The simple things. I need to find time for that stuff in my life. It doesn’t matter if I create everything I’ve ever wanted; it doesn’t matter to me if I’m not happy. And right now? I don’t know if I’m happy. All I know is that I’m tired, and I’m going to bed.

I think those of you who have kept up with this blog for the past 185 days know me more than you’d ever thought you would. And if you have kept up for 185 days, then I’m glad I haven’t alienated or bored you. This blog started off as an experiment, turned into a necessary space for me to grow and improve, and now I’m not sure what it’s turning into. For the past few weeks, I’ve been writing a lot about technology, but I don’t want to write about that on a daily basis, especially when I have other things in my life that I would like to write about. I’m also gestating a lot of different ideas for posts in the future that involve technology, but those will be posted intermittently and not regularly. Recently, I started to journal in my classic Moleskine pocket notebook, and that’s become an outlet for my more rawer emotions. That really has taken a subject matter away from this blog, which is what I wanted.

I wanted to write more about things I don’t usually write about. Honestly, not for an audience but for myself. I wanted to push myself and explore new boundaries. But when I do so many things during the day, and I do want to go to bed at a reasonable hour, I don’t have the time to really spend thinking and researching and exploring these new areas I’m interested in. I don’t want to list excuses, even though that’s just what I did, but I’m bemoaning the fact that there just aren’t enough hours in the day. I even try to do personal projects while I’m at work, which isn’t wise or responsible, but I’ve been trying to wring out as much time as I possibly can on things I want to get done.

Yesterday, for example, I explored my desire to start an analog commonplace book. I came up with some more ideas about it today that excited me tremendously, but that’s just one more thing I want to add to my overflowing task list. And knowing me, once I commit to this and I buy the right notebook and I find the right workflow, I’m going to start writing in it immediately. I’ll push someone off of my list and it’ll be left undone and unchecked for however long it’ll take me to setup this commonplace book. At the back of my mind, I will think about that unfinished task, and that’ll eat at me, slowly but tenaciously, making me feel guilty and anxious until I figure out a way to do that plus my commonplace book plus every other task, habit, and routine already filling up my schedule that I’m going to burn myself out.

It’s one thing being productive, it’s entirely another thing being meaningfully productive. What should I be focusing on? How do I ensure I’m doing meaningful work and not work disguising itself as meaningful? How can I be wise enough to know the difference? I don’t know.

I’m journaling into four different tools, and they’re all different, all serving a singular purpose, and all very helpful and changing my life in their own way. Going in order of when in the day I journal in them: my Baron Fig Confidant notebook holds all my thoughts and notes about my novel; my Moleskine Classic Notebook serves as a private notebook for private thoughts; the Day One app helps me write down the three things I was most grateful for during the day; and finally, this blog serves as a record for whatever it is I’m trying to do nowadays.

I love journaling, and I love that I can express myself with all these various tools because they all serve the same purpose in very different and unique ways. For example, the pages on the Confidant notebook are blank and wider than most notebooks. That extra space emphasizes the horizontal axis more than the vertical, and that gels with how I see a novel being. Left to right, moving forward, like a timeline, expansive and with momentum. The classic Moleskine notebook has the band that keeps it shut, and that comforts me, especially with what I’m writing in it. Day One is always with me with its app on my phone, and not only is it super easy to start writing an entry, but it also captures metadata like the current weather and the music currently playing. So when I briefly write the three things I’m most grateful for, it also captures another tiny snapshot of my life that I can always reminisce about in the future. And then this blog has an audience, and all my thoughts are published on the internet for the world to stumble upon. That’s cool.

But there’s another notebook I want to start, and it’s one I’ve wanted to start for a long, long time. I’ve played around with it since I first started carrying a notebook, but it never stuck, and that’s the commonplace book. I won’t try to describe it; instead, I’ll let Ryan Holiday explain it:

A commonplace book is a central resource or depository for ideas, quotes, anecdotes, observations and information you come across during your life and didactic pursuits. The purpose of the book is to record and organize these gems for later use in your life, in your business, in your writing, speaking or whatever it is that you do.

Like I said, I’ve tried doing that with my first few notebooks but failed. I tried with the first four or so classic Moleskine notebooks I’ve owned, and I’ve even tried doing it digitally, and I’ve failed there, too. At first, I tried to make Evernote my commonplace book, but instead, it became this unwieldy, unorganized, and noisy repository for junk that I never referenced nor did the app make easy to peruse. I then tried creating text files for each book I’ve read and use those files as containers for all the sentences, passages, and thoughts I made and had, but that also became messy and impractical. Currently, this is what my books in my nvAlt database looks like:

As you can see, I appended the tag bookx in front of each book. The a-bookx tag just meant I needed to act on those notes, but really that tag seemed redundant to me since, in theory, I’m always supposed to act upon these notes in some way. The notes in the bottom of the app are the clippings generated from the Kindle, and those, as you can see, are messy and unreadable. I’ve tried developing workflows to clean them up, but I’ve found it’s easier and faster to clean them up manually. That’s still time consuming for a result that hasn’t really yielded me any results worth writing home about.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about buying yet another notebook or notebooks and using them as my commonplace book, a book whose sole purpose is to collect ideas, quotes, anecdotes, observations and information I come across during my life of reading. And because I’m crazy, if and when I start doing this, I planned to go back through all my physical books and transcribe all the passages I’ve read into these notebooks. I planned to even print out all my text files and transcribe those as well. I also planned to do all of this while also using the notebooks immediately with the books I’m reading now. It’ll forego organization altogether, which I’m totally okay with, and which I think is the point to begin with. Ideas are supposed to connect with other ideas in random and unexpected ways, and that thought intrigues me.

Also, I want this to be hard and fun and rewarding and a habit I’ll develop and nourish for the rest of my life. Why? Well, I’m still thinking about that. But here’s one last screenshot of where my thoughts are on this at the moment:

I never realized how much I missed beautifully sunny days until I moved up to Montana. Today was beautiful. It was sunny, it hovered over 50° F, and with the extra hour nowadays, I had the opportunity to enjoy it even more. I hope this means our winter is coming to an end because I’m getting a bit tired of it. Hell, a few weeks ago I almost crashed my car because of the ice on the road, and I did not appreciate that one bit. I was able to walk around campus at work without my sweater on, and the sun finally hit skin that hadn’t seen it in months. And then I got home and had to start the Asylum workouts.

I forgot how intense these workouts. I had to pull out my agility ladder, jump rope, fingerless gloves, and pull-up bar. I had to perform nine baseline workouts as part of the Athletic Performance Assessment, and compared to my times from the end of October, I improved on almost all of these workouts, and in some cases, by a considerable margin. I’ve said this many times, but I love saying it: I’m in the best shape of my life, and I love proving it. I thought I was in great shape back in October; I’m in even better shape now. Who knows what the hell is going to happen in 60 days, which is how long these next stretch is going to last. I also forgot how much longer these workouts are going to be. I’m running late tonight because everything was pushed up so I could accommodate today’s workout. That’s something I was afraid of yesterday, and today I saw it happen with my own eyes. Live and learn.

Apple also had an event today. I definitely did not watch it at work with my noise-canceling headphones and the lights to my office turned off and a big stupid grin on my face when everything was being unveiled.¹ The new MacBook looks interesting, and the entire idea of a single port intrigues me and excites me with the whole minimalism thing, but I love my MacBook Air. My AppleCare for this machine doesn’t expire until next year, and that’ll be when I’ll start thinking about getting a new machine. What I am thinking about getting is the Apple Watch. I didn’t think I’d want one when it was revealed last September, but over the past few weeks, I’ve been seriously considering one. I was waiting for the prices — like everyone else — and now we know that the sport one will cost $349-399, and the regular one will range from $549 to over a thousand, depending on the band. That’s expensive. I mostly want it for the health and fitness aspects of it, naturally, but the sport model doesn’t seem like something I want to wear all the time, especially not the 18 hours it purported to last without a charge. I want to wait until the reviews come out before I even consider budgeting for this. The one thing that gets me is that in a few years it’ll become obsolete and I’ll have to spend another $400 to whatever to get a new one. Damn capitalism.

This entry was very representative of my day. My routine has never been any more rock solid, my job has never been any more fun, and my life has never been this productive and exciting. I’m past the halfway point, and all I want to do is more. More writing, more habits, more projects, more fitness, more more more. I’m not getting burnt out over this attitude, and that’s new to me. I love all I’m doing, so maybe that explains that. And I try not to push myself too hard. All in all, I had a good, very sunny, very productive day.

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

So said Annie Dillard in the Writing Life. This is one of those few quotes I always come back to that give me hope and motivation to keep moving forward, to keep living life. And boy have I been living life these past six months. I’m halfway through completing my goal of writing an entry a day for a full year, and I’m amused at the fact that it landed on Daylight Savings. I lost an hour, but I didn’t lose my day.

I love the path I’m on. A girl kickstarted this whole journey, but she was just the MacGuffin hiding the path I was always going to embark upon in the end. I’m not a big believer in destiny because of the simple fact that I want to feel like I control my life, not some outside force, be it intelligent or mindless. I want to live my days spent doing what I want so that I could live the life I want. The path I’ve travelled has had its ups and downs, its exciting days and long days. I’ve accomplished a lot, and I’ve worked hard, and I’ve documented it all as best and as honestly as I could, and I’m grateful for all of it.

I began it by starting my novel. I forced myself to wake up at 5 AM so that I could write at least 300 words every morning, and I haven’t deviated from that routine in 182 days. As of today, I’m 56,769 words into my novel. I recently started journalling about my novel in my beautiful Confidant notebook, and that has only increased my resilience and excitement toward this story. I’m using as many tools as I can to help me handle this project, and I’m loving every minute of it. As long as those 300 words get written, though, I’m happy. The rest is gravy.

I then focused on my health and fitness. I stopped eating out. Except for that week I went out firefighting and that other week I vacationed in San Diego, I’ve cooked every single meal I’ve consumed in the past six months. Every breakfast, every dinner, every lunch or snack has not only been prepared by me, but has also been Paleo approved. Since October 1st, I’ve been doing one Insanity program after another. From doing Insanity: the Asylum Volume 1 again in October, to the hybrid Insanity/Insanity: the Asylum Volume 1 workout in November, to Insanity: the Asylum Volume 2 in December, and to Insanity Max: 30 in January, February, and March, I’ve been as physically active and fit as I possibly could be.

And to complete the big three areas of my life — mental, physical, and spiritual — I re-developed the habit of meditating 15 minutes every morning. As of this morning, I’ve meditated for 15 minutes every morning for 162 consecutive days. To me, these three habits dictated how the rest of my day went, and colored how I live my life in a very beautiful way.

Speaking of color, I began to focus on my home during this journey. Here’s a picture of the main area of my small studio apartment. It’s colorful and pleasing and it makes me happy. I thought about every gadget, every poster, every book that is in that picture, and in the end, they all make me super happy and comfortable. I love my little studio apartment. It’s my home.

I was able to afford most of what is in that picture from the new job I got a few weeks after starting this blog. A few months before, I had quit my job of two years, and I was unemployed for two months. Luckily, I found my current job — an IT guy at a K-12 school — and the rest is history. I’m getting paid more than I’ve ever been paid in my life, and I love my job, I love my co-workers, and I love working with students. It’s really a dream job, and I’m so grateful to have it.

Finally, I started and continued to maintain this blog. I write every entry for this blog at the end of the day, after I’ve completed every single task on my todo list, after working for eight hours at work, after completing one, sometimes two, Insanity workouts, after writing my novel, after transcribing the Great Gatsby by hand, after shopping for and preparing my own food, after reading every night, after all of that, I get to write as honestly and as frankly about my day to an audience of friends and family. Sometimes all of that tires me out, so I write something really quickly, leaving typos and awkwardly constructed sentences and grammatical errors that I’m too tired to correct, but in the end, I write something, and that’s what matters. I have a collection of entries that I will cherish for the rest of my life.

And I get to spend the next six months, the next 183 days, to do it all over again. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know what I’m going to accomplish, what I won’t be able to accomplish, who I might meet, or what I might do, but I’m super excited to find out. I hope to have all of you along for the ride. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

I used to be fat. I used to weigh over 230 lbs at my heaviest. I couldn’t walk outside for more than a few minutes without breaking into a sweat and losing my breath. I used to drink a couple of cans of soda a day for weeks at a time. I used to eat two bowls of cereal every morning, a bowl of cereal and a bowl of ice cream at night as a before-bed snack. The only veggies I ate were melted into the cheese of a fattening pizza. I used to look at my overweight body in the mirror and hate myself. I hated everything about how I looked, and I was constantly sad, and to feel better, I ate more. I ate when I wasn’t even hungry. I would go to the fridge between commercial breaks because I had nothing else to do. I had no control over my impulses, and I just ate because it felt good, and I just wanted to feel good.

Today I finished Insanity Max: 30, the fourth Insanity program I’ve accomplished. I went from Insanity, to Insanity: the Asylum Volume 1, to Insanity: the Asylum Volume 2, and now to Insanity Max: 30. I’m in the best shape of my life, and I feel great. I hated feeling so helpless back then that I decided to do something about it, and I’m glad I did. My resting heart rate hovers between 45 to 50 beats per minute. It used to hover between 65 to 70 beats per minute when I was overweight, and that was a resting heart rate. My heart was doing more work to keep me alive because I wasn’t treating my body right, and now it’s doing less and I’m doing more. I’m doing more than I’ve ever done in my life, and it feels like I’ve been given a second chance.

I used to regularly feel chest pains. They hurt and they lasted for minutes at a time, but I grew so used to them that I just let it become a part of my life. These lasted for years. I haven’t had a chest pain in a very, very long time that I completely forgot about them until just now. I never thought I’d live past 27. I’m not sure why I felt that, but it was just one of those things I believed. There was no reason for me to believe that, but I did, and for years I used that as an excuse to not do anything. Why do anything when I expected to die at 27? I wasn’t motivated to do anything, I didn’t have anyone that I could talk to, and I really felt like I had nothing to live for. I tried ending it all in college once, but I failed at that. I started seeing a therapist, and she helped me stay alive. It wasn’t until I was back home, three years after graduating college and still living with my mom, when I decided enough was enough. I needed to get my fucking life back on fucking track.

I’m now weighing in the low 170s on a regular basis. I can do ten minutes of Insanity without breaking a sweat, and I’ve noticed that when I finally do start breaking a sweat, my whole body’s burning. I know that I’m pushing myself harder and harder each time, and that just makes me stronger. The stronger I get, the more I want to do, and the more I can do. You guys who read this blog regularly know all that I’m doing. This wasn’t possible for me just three years ago. I feel like I’m making up for lost time, and now I simply want to be great. Not compared to somebody else, but great in the sense of actualizing myself to the greatest extent possible.

On Monday I start my 60 day Insanity: the Asylum hybrid workout. The toughest part of this workout isn’t going to be the actual work, but readjusting my schedule to accommodate the longer workout times. Today also marks day 181 of this blog. Tomorrow will mark the (rough) halfway point of my 365 straight days entries goal. That means I’ve kept this up for six months. I’ll have more thoughts about that tomorrow.

I can’t stop looking at myself in the mirror nowadays. I’m so different than I was just a few years ago. This was something I always wished for but never thought I’d actually accomplish. Now I feel like I can do anything, and I am, and I’m eternally grateful for that, and that I’m still here, still alive, getting the chance to do this. Life is short, and I want to live it as fully as I can.