Regular readers¹ will have noticed my not very hidden depressed mood these past few entries. Simply, I’ve been down. There was no external event that caused me to feel this way; I was just sad. I honestly don’t think I still suffer from depression, but this randomness is a common symptom of it. Actually, part of me thinks there is a reason for my sadness, but I’m not being introspective enough to really pinpoint the cause. It could be that I was lonely or tired of my routine or in need of a new routine or the food I did or didn’t eat or a combination of some or none of these. All I have to say is that fuck all of that. Life is too short for me to feel sad for no reason.

My moods are so fucking fickle, though. I had a great day, but it wasn’t that different from the past few days. I had a typical day at work, I had a great workout, had dinner, read, and watched some TV. The only thing different from today from most other days was that I made that girl I have a tiny crush on laugh, and it was amazing. But I truthfully don’t think that had anything to do with it because it happened early in the morning and my day was too busy to think about that later.

One thing I’m being a bit more active than before is with my food. I’m adding many recipes from the cookbooks that came with the various Insanity programs into my recipe app of choice, Paprika. Many of these recipes are very simple to make, cheap, and very nutritious. I bought some groceries these past few days that will help me make something new to eat, and that has me excited. I actually created a brand spanking new dessert that no one has ever tried and is super delicious and everyone will love me now for sharing this for free to you guys: grab a banana, grab a spoon, slather almond butter all over that banana, then drizzle some honey over all of it. Then eat it. It’s good. So so good. Oh my god it’s delicious. Tomorrow I’m going to add half an avocado to my protein shake and see what that tastes like. I may also make pancakes with my Primal Fuel, which sounds amazing, sometime this weekend. I might take pictures if they turn out pretty. Who cares if it tastes good, as long as it’s pretty, amirite?²

Hey guys, guess what? You know what happens next Saturday, the 7th of March? I finish Insanity Max: 30. Crazy, right? But you know what happens after that? Another 60 days of Insanity, this time a hybrid between the Asylum volume 1 and volume 2. That’s going to fun. Remember those 200+ days of Insanity I was bragging about way back when? Well shit’s getting done, you guys. Other than that week I missed because I was sick and literally couldn’t move, I’ve been working my ass off since September. Maybe that’s why I’ve been feeling down.

I haven’t given myself a god damn mother fucking break! Other than the time I drove down to San Diego and back and returned with a whole new home and all my books and other stuff and memories and credit card debt I’m still paying off. Yeah… I need to have some Fun. Capital F fun. Anyone wanna be my friend and do something with me?

Anyone?

Enough with the moody shit. Lets talk about something fun. How I’m using my pocket notebook!

Every man should carry a notebook and a pen with him at all times. That’s something I read somewhere and started believing immediately, because I’m a man and I wanted others to see me that way. Not that they wouldn’t think that once they saw me, but whatever. So I carry a Moleskine Cahier Notebook that’s covered up by this beautiful Hellbrand Leatherworks Field Notes Cover. My pen is a standard Pilot G2 pen, which I like because it writes well. Simple as that, really. I have been thinking about dipping my toes into the whole fountain pen craze that’s going on out there on the internet, but that’s a hobby I’m not yet ready for financially. So these are my tools. What do I actually do with them?

Simply, every morning, after planning out my day in OmniFocus, I grab my pen, I open up my notebook, and I write the date. Beneath that, I choose at least three tasks I want to have accomplished by the end of the day. If nothing else gets done but these three tasks, then I consider my day successful. That’s pretty much it. Sometimes I refer back to this list throughout the days; sometimes I don’t. The simple act of writing them down reinforces those tasks in my mind, so when I refer to my list in OmniFocus, I know to focus my attention on those tasks more so than the others. Has it actually helped me be more productive?

Writing tasks down has helped me develop and keep habits I thought would help my life in some way. For the past week or so, these three tasks has included the habit of working on my novel every day in the afternoon. It’s on my todo list, and it’s in my notebook, and it’s in my calendar. This is something I wanted to implement and incorporate into my daily routine, and I think I’m on my way toward fully integrating it into my life. I’m still learning how best to do this task in a way that satisfies me, but at least I’m actually trying it out and feeling it out and seeing what works for me. That’s a big deal because that’s the only way I know how to refine my habits and make them the best I possibly can.

Other than that, I don’t really use my notebook for anything else. Sometimes I would write down tasks or notes to my tasks as my day goes on, but it’s not a regular thing I do. When I complete one of those tasks, I grab my pen and cross that task off my list. It’s very satisfying. Sometimes, though, I don’t complete a task, and when that happens, I put a circle around the dash before the task. A circle means I didn’t do it. Over the course of a month or so, I can look back and see how many circles and how many crossed out tasks I have, and I could quickly see when I was most productive and when I wasn’t. That’s something a digital todo list app like OmniFocus doesn’t really provide.

My notebook complements OmniFocus. Before I started using my notebook this way, I would carry it around with me and never write in it. I think I liked the idea of carrying a pen and notebook with me everywhere, but I hated the fact that I never used it. Now I do, and I think this system works for me for now. There’s a lot more I want to do, like maybe writing more notes about each task or maybe even writing weekly and monthly goals in there to help me focus my tasks a bit better, but that’s something for a later day. Like Tomorrow. I’m thinking of doing this tomorrow. I wrote a note about that in my notebook.

That’s how I use my pocket notebook.

I’d really rather sleep right now than write. I don’t feel good. I’m not getting sick or anything. I’m just sad. I’m pushing myself too hard again, I think. Today was supposed to be a slow and fun day, which it was. I read a bunch of comics¹, played video games, and I even watched a movie². I ate popcorn and lied in bed all day and stuck to my schedule and checked stuff off my todo list and all I wanted to do was go out to a restaurant and have lunch with a friend. But I don’t have anyone in my contacts list I can just do that with anymore, and that sucks. Obviously it means I need to make new friends, and I’m trying, in my own way, to do that. I just have to deal with these times of unwanted solitude until I take charge of my life and change this.

I’m thinking of designating Sunday’s my I-can-go-out-to-eat-whatever-I-want day. My diet is pretty much “perfect” every day. I don’t eat shit, I do eat healthy food, and I cook most everything I eat. It’s getting to me, though. I’m so strict with myself sometimes that I don’t even allow myself a modicum of cheat foods. At work, if someone offers me a damn cookie or a piece of chocolate or anything sugary like that, I turn them down because I want to be “perfect.” I don’t know what the fuck that means, but what it’s turning out to mean is not having any fun. Every now and then, I want to go to the grocery store and buy some chocolate chip cookies or some candy or something like that. It’s not always. Maybe, at most, once a month. But I don’t because I have to “take care of myself.” At least that’s what I tell myself, but taking care of myself should be more than depriving myself of foods I’m craving. It should be allowing myself these simple luxuries every now and then because I both want them and deserve them.

I don’t know anyone else that’s as strict with everything about themselves as I am, and maybe there’s a good reason for that. People aren’t meant to live lives like this, except if your a monk or into asceticism or something. I can’t wait until dinner time to eat because I don’t have any snacks around when I’m feeling hungry. I want to satisfy that craving now. But everything’s connected. I don’t want to eat processed foods because I want to eat as healthily as I can because I want to feel great and look great and because buying healthy food is expensive as it is and adding to that bill unhealthy and “junk” food makes no logical sense since I’m trying to also save money and pay down my debt and live “better” than what I’ve lived so far.

I’m only burning myself out, and I’m going to have times like the one I’m having right now, where I’m sad, I’m weak, I’m irrational and dangerous. Sometimes I have to let myself be human.

Sometimes I approach these entries with the intention of writing something that would change my life. I would write something that should inspire me to do something amazing, something to lift me up from whatever is ailing me at the moment and toward somewhere better. Most of the time I fail, and that’s something I don’t internalize before starting these entries or while I’m in the middle of writing one. I truly believe that my words can change my life. In a sense, they have, but I’m still the same neurotic, narcissistic, and melancholy man I’ve always been. I try to be better because I always find something to hate about myself. My biggest enemy is me.

I’m baring my life out on a blog because I want people to see me for who I really am. I don’t want to hide behind silence, shyness, or dishonesty. I want to know that I fought for every day, that I earned all my good days and that I didn’t let the bad days bring me down. I want to know that I’ve been happy before and be reminded that I’ll be happy again. I want to see the progress I’ve made and be inspired to do even more. I want to know that my failures are just another form of growth. I want to know and I want to see that I tried to live a life of integrity, that I’ve been honest with myself and with others. That’s the only way I can truly grow and be better, and if I fail at that, I’ve failed at everything.

I hate hesitation and I hate compromise. Those are two qualities of myself that always seem to breed bad habits and bad days. Hesitation is lacking confidence and conviction to do what I know to be right or necessary. Compromise is relinquishing control over to the basest part of me. This one quality has been my biggest enemy my entire life, and when people may see me being too hard on myself, I see a road full of those bad habits and bad days I’ve travelled down too many times in the past. I try to prevent myself from even acknowledging this path, but every now and then I let my guard down, and I see that fork in the road, and I can hear those sirens singing to me to come over to them. It’s tough to resist their songs, but I have and I have to. The problem is that this is a continuous battle with no end in sight.

I want the best life for myself, and my biggest problem is trying to embark on this journey alone. I’ve accomplished so much on my own, but I’ve hit a plateau that I don’t think I’ll ever overcome alone. I think I hit it a long time ago, and I’m so used to living in it that I can’t even imagine a life without it. I’m running in place, and for the past few weeks, I’ve been running the fastest I’ve ever run, but I’m still not going anywhere. I’m deluding myself if I think that if I run just a bit faster I’ll actually go somewhere. I have to step outside of myself and accept myself for who I am if I want to actually go somewhere. The problem I’m faced with isn’t how to I can do that; it’s the fear that I know how but I just don’t want to. And that, to me, is scary.

One thing I don’t seem to allow myself to have is time. I have this drive to fill every minute of every day as productively as I can, and for the most part, I’ve succeeded in doing that. I do allow myself some time to play video games on my phone or to watch TV or some videos on YouTube or Vimeo or something. For the most part, though, my day is full with various activities that all add up toward me becoming a great writer — whatever that means. I’m really just working my ass off doing things that I want to do, which mostly involves writing. This commitment to this one goal has given me a focus I’ve never had before, but it’s also made me scared to do other things.

The other day I imagined being in a relationship with this girl that I have a bit of a crush on. She’s an amazing girl and one that I want to get to know more, but a few days ago, I gave myself a choice: would I rather ask her out, go on a few dates with her, maybe even have a relationship with her, or would I rather keep working on my novel, keep improving myself, keep filling up every minute of every day with tasks that fuel this fire within me? And I didn’t know how to answer that immediately. I do want to be in a relationship, but I think I want to see this whole journey through first. That’s how I feel right now, and it’s like I’m sacrificing my present happiness for a far greater time in the future. I’m taking a gamble here, and the only way to gamble is by going all-in. I’m all-in on my journey right now, and now I have to make sure I pay it off.

This is actually the first time I’m writing this all out, and I feel sad. My friend asked me if all this is maybe just a cop out. I told her that I didn’t know. Not really. She asked me that I’m going to have to adjust to having both a relationship and the time and focus to work on my writing eventually. This won’t be the only novel I’ll ever write. There will be more in the future, and I don’t want to be alone. But I think I need to focus as fully as I can now because I hope it’ll all become easier later. I’m forging that experience now. I’m learning what it takes, what I’m capable of, and how much of myself I need to give to produce the work I’m happiest and most proud of. Maybe it’ll be easier if I had someone with me helping me along, and encouraging me every day to do better than my best. But I don’t right now, so I don’t know what that’ll be like or feel like.

I really don’t know. Maybe I’m pushing myself too hard. Maybe I’m not pushing myself hard enough. Maybe I’m wound tight. Maybe I’m not wound tight enough. Maybe I’m right where I need to be. All I know is that I’m tired, I’ve exceeded my 500 words, and I’m ready to go to sleep. I’ll sleep on it, maybe for a few days, a week, or longer, and check back in later. Good night, dear readers.

I’m about half way through Month 2 of Insanity Max: 30, and I believe I hit a plateau this week. All of my times are improving from last week’s workouts, which is a good sign of progress, but I’m not pushing myself as hard as I should. My weight has remained steady for weeks now, and I seem to look about the same, too. I’ve plateaued, and I don’t know what it’ll take for me to move past this. That’s partly because I’m okay with where I am right now. I look good, I feel good, and all in all, I’m doing good in all facets of my life. I have no drive to push myself past the breaking point, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

I don’t want to slow down. I don’t feel like slowing down, and that’s a good thing. I don’t feel burnt out; in fact, I feel super motivated to keep pushing myself harder and harder. But that’s mostly toward my writing and not my health. My health has been a constant during this journey, and it’s one of those things that has outplayed its novelty factor and has turned into this thing I just do. Insanity is fun, and I love Shaun T¹ yelling at me to keep pushing myself, but I’m not. Not really. Again, I’m happy with where I am, and these workouts just feel like maintenance. My weight’s steady, my progress is steady, and my mood is content. Don’t know what to do.

I don’t want to stop working out, though, not even for a little bit. That week I took off last month when I was sick really showed me how much I need to work out. I remember feeling like working out the day after my first off-day, but since I was still sick, I didn’t. Working out fuels the rest of my life. If I didn’t work out, I don’t think I’d have this fire to make myself the best writer I can be. What might be happening is that this fire is a finite resource, and I’ve just shifted it over from working out toward writing. That’s actually a very comforting thought, and one I’m going to tell myself and believe now. Who knows? Maybe one day being the best writer I possibly can be will be one of those things I just do.

I don’t know what it’ll take for me to break through this plateau. I know the way I’ve beaten them before was by pushing harder until my progress returned and I could start seeing and feeling the results again. I don’t know if that’ll work this time. At least not as easily as “pushing harder.” That’s a given. I have to push harder. I also need to want it more than I want anything, and right now, I want to be the best writer I possibly can and not be in even greater shape because I’m already at the best shape of my life. It sucks, but it’s true.

I’m in don’t regress mode, and for now, I’m okay with that. I just know I won’t be forever. And that’s one thing I love and hate about myself. I have to keep moving my feet.

I’m reading Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose, and one of the many things I love about this book is the systematic detail she goes into. She has chapters with names like Words, Sentences, Paragraphs, Details, Gestures, and so on. Each chapter is devoted to these varied topics with fantastic examples from great writers and their novels, and I’ve learned so much. As a writer who, unfortunately, doesn’t read many classic novels, I’ve learned not only that I need to read a lot more, but also how I can improve my very own writing. Her chapter on Gestures, which I read today, was a revelation. I highlighted like half the chapter in my Kindle, and I most definitely want to re-read the whole book again soon after I finish it tomorrow. If anyone is interested at all, and I highly recommend this book, it’s only $10 on Amazon.

I cracked open my Confidant notebook again and started writing more notes about my novel in it. I’m really looking forward to simply pouring out all the thoughts I’m having about my novel and forcing myself to find the purpose in everything I’m doing. Why did this character do this? Why did I make this big event happen here and not later? How can I write this sentence, paragraph, chapter better? What can I cut? The work ahead of me seems endless, but boy am I having some fun.

The Charter technician came today and fixed my internet. He switched out a few filters from god knows where and traded my old modem with a new one. I’m sure it’s just a placebo effect, but everything seems faster now. And of course with my internet back, I reverted back to old habits of watching TV during dinner instead of listening to podcasts or doing something more productive. I should be asleep right now, but instead I’m writing this because I wanted to spend a half hour watching TV. This is really one of the only sore spots in my life right now. No internet means no TV, which means more time to write and read and learn. This is tough. Trying to spend every minute of every day doing something extremely productive all in an effort to make me the best writer I can possibly be right now is not a walk in the park.

No sane man does this, right? Not everyone breaks down their schedule by the minute with nothing but tasks that are productive and super focused on making them a better writer, right? People actually live their lives, right? I’m not sure when I became super focused on this, but I’m glad I did. I’m learning a lot about myself and what I can do. I’ve never been this focused on one thing before, but I’m really liking it. I really think I can produce the best work of my life right now, and all I need is more time and more consistency to prove it to myself.

I’m just not there yet.

I came home yesterday with my internet down. I called Charter, my ISP, and the customer rep tried a few tests, which all failed, and concluded that a technician would have to come to my house and check it out. This tech won’t come until tomorrow, so for the past two days I’ve been without internet at my home. For the most part, I’ve been totally fine without it, which completely surprised me. Well, for one, I do still have my cell phone, which I’ve used as a hotspot on my laptop. I’m not going to let a little internet downtime prevent me from blogging, but I do also have the means to get some internet when I need it. But second of all, I can’t do much of my usual web browsing on just a limited LTE connection. I can’t watch videos, for example, and videos were and will be soon my most time consuming unproductive activity that I do. So instead of watching TV, I’ve been listening to podcasts or music while I ate, or pulling out my Confidant notebook and writing notes about my novel, or going to bed a little earlier, or working out a little earlier, or reading a little more. In short, I feel like I’ve been more productive these past two days than I normally do, and that’s awesome.

A few years ago, when I first moved into my studio apartment, I consciously decided that I didn’t want to get internet for my home. I was in deep minimalist mode back then, so I tried to live with only the essentials, and the internet wasn’t one of them. I, again, did have my cell phone, which I used to create a hotspot, but back then, I only had 300 MB a month to use. Needless to say, I didn’t use the internet that much. I lasted about three months, and I sometimes miss those days because I read so much at that time. I read so much because I had the time to read. I wasn’t distracted by YouTube or Hulu or Netflix or a million different time-consuming distractions on the internet. It was a more peaceful time back then. Now, though? I need a constant internet connection to live my life. It’s insane.

I’ve been focusing more of my time toward my novel. My novel sucks. It has always sucked, and that’s something I really want to change. I feel I can produce something much better than what I have right now. I know I can. I can feel it in my bones. But, the problem is, I haven’t done that yet. That’s something I want to change, and I think I’m slowly building up a habit where I can spend more time on this that’ll actually stick in the long run. Today, I guess, is technically day 3 of this habit, so I don’t know for sure what I’ll be doing a week from now. I hope to still be doing all I can to produce the best damn work of my life, with or without the internet.

Sometime’s life’s little annoyances can reveal something beneficial and fortuitous. It all depends on my perspective. And what I want to do is get shit done, and that’s all I care about right now. That’s all I’m allowing myself to care about because life’s too short to worry about not having internet at home right now.

I learned how to disarm a guy today at school. You grab the barrel of the gun with one hand and pull it away from the perp, grab the barrel with the other hand and twist his arm toward your body while turning your back against him and pulling the gun away. I practiced this with trained police officers and a group of teachers from school, and I had a lot of fun. I learned four basic defensives moves: an overhead punch, with the meat of your hand and not your fist, sort of like swinging a hammer; elbow strikes, either straight on or coming from above; knee strikes, where you grab his shoulders and strike his body as hard as you can; and a kick, where you use the heel and not the toes of your foot, to push yourself away from him and get some distance. Put them all together and you have a very effective combo to disorient the perp that hopefully buys you time to get away or let others get away or to simply give others enough confidence to dog pile him and subdue him until the authorities come.

All this was a small section of a larger class about preparing ourselves in case of a school shooting. Not every school in the country wants to do this type of training because they feel that school should be a school, a place of learning and not of violence. But in an age where school shootings are increasingly common, it’s nice that our administrators deemed it necessary to train their staff in this. We examined a lot of school shootings from the past, from Columbine to Virginia Tech to Newton. It was all very enlightening, and our teacher, a big white guy with a beard and named after Levi’s, was very funny, very serious when he needed to be, and very clear in his message: school shootings are remarkably short, and police response times are just a bit longer, so the onus on protecting ourselves and our kids falls on us. Even just being told that hitting people is okay, which goes against everything we were taught and are teaching our students at school today, goes a long way toward saving lives.

When there’s a guy with a gun shooting people, you have three options: run, hide, or fight. We did drill after drill practicing different scenarios that incorporated all three options, and all of them were tough, enlightening, and scary. During our first scenario, all we heard was yelling and gunshots. Some of us tried barricading the door, but others started jumping out the windows in the back of the classroom. Unfortunately, they jumped right into the path of the shooter. Another scenario had us hear the shots and before we could do anything, the shooter burst into our classroom and started shooting at us. Our teacher was shot first, but luckily, we had a bunch of guys attack the shooter with desks and chairs and we were able to pin him down and dog pile him. And in another one, once we heard the shots, we had enough time to lock the door and barricade it with desks, tables, chairs, anything we could find, and we waited. We heard the shooter try to open the door, but since he couldn’t get in and all he wanted to do was rack up the body count, he left and didn’t bother wasting time on us.

These exercises were scary. We knew a shooting was going to happen. We knew the few things we needed to do to protect ourselves. But once those shots were fired and we heard screaming, a lot of us just froze. We were taught about the herd mentality. If we see everyone not doing anything, we’re all not doing anything waiting for someone to do something. If we see some people start running and jumping out of windows, then most of us are going to do the same thing, oblivious to the fact that maybe there’s another shooter back there waiting for us. And if some people start fighting, others start fighting, too. It’s amazing to think that this is how we operate, but it’s very true.

I’m very glad and very grateful I was asked to do participate in this class, considering I’m not really a teacher. In fact, I was the only non-teacher there, which was a little awkward, in a way. I guess I am teaching a class next quarter, so I guess that’s why the principal asked me to take the class. If something like this happens while I’m teaching a group of kids, I’m responsible for their lives. I have to be ready to tell them what to do because our lives depend on it. It sucks that these are the times we live in, but we do, and we have to prepare ourselves and our kids for it. Because a little bit of preparation, no matter how much it sucks, can save lives. Levi, our instructor, was in the Army, and in the Army they taught him to “Embrace the suck.” That’s what we did today, and I think we’re all better off for it.

I love having a job because it has helped me manage my time in a really productive and focused way. That’s something I realized this weekend. I couldn’t imagine trying to build a routine with, at most, 16 hours a day for 7 days a week. Instead, I just have the weekends to do that, and that’s something I prefer more because, for one, 2 days are easier to swallow than 7, and because these two days both follow and precede a 5 day workweek, where my hours for each of those days are eaten up by a job, forcing me to maximize¹ those few hours I do have for myself.

I spent most of my weekend² catching up on my web reading. Web reading is exactly what it sounds like: reading information that came from the web. That’s different than my more focused reading, which usually involves my Kindle or a real book. I love to do most of my web reading on my iPad because it’s the most comfortable device to use for this type of activity. The screen is beautiful, both crisp and clear, and the device is so simply made that it disappears into the background and the actual content comes forward in a very lucid way. My newish routine has really come into its own these past few weeks, and that’s given my weekends a new energy that I love. I’ve been designating them as my reading days, even though I read from a book every night. Because of my job and my other habits and routines, I don’t have much time to read recreationally. That’s why I love the weekends so much now: I get to catch up on the week’s articles that I couldn’t get to. It’s really made me feel not only more productive, but also more curious.

I grabbed my Confidant notebook, printed novel, Kuru Toga pencil, and red Pilot pen, and rethought and reworked my novel. I focused on just the first chapter because I didn’t know how exactly I was going to do this task. The task, as it appears on OmniFocus, is “Rewrite and revise novel.” It’s vague and open enough that I can do anything I want, as long as I do something. Today was the first trial run, and I think I was successful. I’m planning to throw away a lot of what I’ve already written and start over. I re-read the first chapter, crossed out a lot of paragraphs, wrote some notes, and rethought the whole purpose of the chapter. That set me down the path of finding the purpose of each chapter I’ve written so far, and when I brought in the main goal of the book and applied them to each chapter, I realized how off-track I went with a few of those chapters. I don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow, since I have to start on a new chapter³, but all I know is that I like the path I’ve set for myself. It means more work for me, but what else would I rather do than work at what I love?

It’s amazing how my mood changes when I’m not just productive, but when I’m productive in things that actually mean something to me. I feel that fire inside of me that wants to engulf everything in a majestic conflagration of joy and gratefulness. It’s a marvelous feeling that I know won’t last, but I’m glad when it’s here right now with me. It’s amazing and it makes me happy I’m alive.