It’s been 90 days since I started this blog, and I feel good. I’ve been consistently spending every night for the past 90 days dusting off my word processor and typing away until I’ve written an entry I’m happy with. Sometimes my editorial side tells me to keep improving what I’ve written, that this sentence here doesn’t flow or sound right, so I rewrite it until I’m happy. But then there’s the lazier side of me that just regurgitates an entry and calls it a night. I’ve been consistently writing every night but I haven’t been consistently hitting that level of quality I know I can achieve. Am I being hard on myself? Maybe. But that’s the only way I know how to not be complacent and be more motivated to be better.

One area I know I’m being hard on myself is my body. I’m going to get real personal now, so if you’re weirded out by that, run away now. For the past week, ever since I started Insanity: the Asylum volume 2 on Monday, I’ve noticed my body getting harder. My biceps are harder, my chest is harder, and my abs are harder. I’ve never been in this good of shape before in my life, so this is all new to me. It’s my abs, though, that I’m more hard on myself than I should be. I still don’t have a visible six pack because I still have some belly fat around my waist, and those lower abs are tough as hell to work out. But the top half of my potential eight pack is visible, and that’s the part I keep feeling and checking out. I should be happy that I have that, but I feel unaccomplished. It feels like I made it half way to my goal, and I should not be happy with that. I should be happy by achieving my goals. I never looked better in my life and yet I’m still unsatisfied.

If I ever accomplish all my goals, if I look the way I want to look, if I write the way I want to write, if I become published and forever have a job as a writer, if I ever accomplish all of this, will I feel unsatisfied still? Will I always be reaching for the unreachable? Is there no peak to that mountain? Will I be cursed to forever roll that boulder up the hill and never ever reach the top? Or am I just thinking too much? I’ve been told I think too much. But I feel like I don’t think enough. Funny, right?

Sixty days ago I gave myself three goals I wanted to accomplish in thirty days. I never did accomplish them fully the way I thought I wanted to. Part of me forgot about that. I don’t always accomplish my goals because I’m always evolving. I’m always changing what I think I want, and then when I get it, I come up with new ways to be even better. I’m always trying to improve, and I think that blinds me sometimes from other areas of my life that I could or should be focusing on. I know family and friends who know me can tell me of a few things. But I live alone and I spend most of my time alone and all I have is me, and these are the things I think I need to be better. I don’t know. I’m happy, and I feel good, but I also feel unsatisfied. Something’s missing.

One of my favorite snacks that I just recently started making is to take a banana, remove the entire peel, and drizzle honey on top of it. It’s so good, and it feels like an indulgence, but since it’s essentially healthy for me, I didn’t feel guilty after eating two of them tonight. Another one of my favorite snacks is homemade popcorn. Since I don’t own a microwave — nor do I ever plan to own one — I buy the stovetop type. It tastes better than the microwave kind, I think. Another one of my indulgences is my love for hot sauce. I love Tapatio and Sriracha, and I put them on everything. Before a few months ago, my fridge wouldn’t be caught near harboring these two hot sauces, nor would my pantry ever harbor popcorn. I would have felt too guilty if I let myself indulge in these simple pleasures. Now I don’t, though, and I’m wondering what’s changed.

I can’t be perfect, and I can’t pretend I’ll ever get there. Hell, I don’t want to be, even though that is what I used to feel. I would feel like I broke some promise with myself if I let myself indulge in something that wasn’t healthy and nutritious. I’m happier, though, with these indulgences, and I think I need to allow myself that sometimes. If I’m laser focused 100% of the time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, then I’m eventually going to crack much sooner than later than if I cut myself some slack and let myself break some rules and have some fun.

Today I could’ve read for maybe an hour longer than I did, and I could’ve transcribed more pages from the Great Gatsby, and I could’ve focused on maybe one or two more difficult tasks on my todo list, but I didn’t. I popped some popcorn, grabbed my laptop, lied down on my bed, and watched some TV. I had a good day at work, I had a 30 minute stretching workout for Insanity, I read for maybe 15 minutes, and I didn’t transcribe any page of the Great Gatsby because I wanted to relax. It’s Friday. I get to sleep in tomorrow. I have my snacks, my free time, and my night all to myself. Why not celebrate a great week with some fun?

At least that’s what I’m telling myself today. Tomorrow I could feel guilty and push myself harder to make up for the failures of today. It’s happened before, and I’m confident it’ll happen again. How can I let myself let go of that? Why can’t I just be sometimes? Maybe this is one of those things I need to focus on as part of my journey to get better. Maybe I get to be better by letting myself have days like today, where I can relax, regroup, and refocus my energies on another day. Maybe I need days like today so I can just breathe, not realize it’s been exactly 90 days since I last talked to her¹, and instead spend some time with some fictional people and indulge on other people’s problems and their attempts to make their lives better.

Or maybe I’m deluding myself and just being lazy because I wanted to be lazy today. It could be as simple as that.

I’m having fun right now. I’ve hit this groove and everything feels fantastic. My job is going great, my novel is moving forward, my body is looking better and better, and my life feels good. All this means is that I have no idea what to write about. I’ve been lying in bed staring at my screen for close to thirty minutes, and I have not been able to focus on a topic or an idea to write about. So I just thought I’d write about what I’m feeling at this moment, and that’s simply joy.

I realize how ridiculous it may seem that I can’t write if I’m feeling good, and for the most part, I’d agree with you. But I know I didn’t start to love writing because I was a happy person. I wasn’t. I started treating writing seriously when I wasn’t happy. It was my escape route toward releasing all the emotions I tended to keep bottled up inside of me. They used to leak out in angry outbursts that hurt my family and my friends, but the more I wrote about my feelings, the calmer I became. Some people have told me they like my company because of how chill and relaxed I am. Hell, one of my college professors told me in front of our class one day that he liked my presence because he always felt calmer around me. I think that’s because of writing.

I love this blog, and I love that I get to write in it every day. For the majority of it, though, my mood has been low. There have been many times where I’ve written some incredibly happy pieces, but I started this blog during a very low place in my life, an event I still haven’t recovered from fully. Many of my entries were written when I’ve been sad. I’m way better than I was when I first started, but I’m not cured, sort to speak. But then there’s days like today where everything just clicked, and I get to go to bed in a good mood. I’m not as tired as I was last week, and that’s a great thing to celebrate.

I don’t know where I’m going with this. I don’t even know what I’m trying to say with this entry except that it seems my goals that I set for myself when I started this blog are finally showing themselves. Every little habit and routine that has built up over the past 88 days has come together to form this state of being I’m living through right now. And that’s plain happiness.

Maybe the secret to being better is focusing on the things that make me happy since happiness is one of those emotions I covet more than any other because it used to be rare for me. Now I want to lie here and experience the pleasures of it and focus on living a better life with this amazing feeling coursing through my veins.

I’m driven by an internal conflict raging between cautiousness and carelessness. If I’m too cautious, I never do anything of value or worth remembering. I’ll be living my life too scared to take any steps forward because the familiar is comfortable. I’m used to people walking all over me or I’m used to living alone and never asking that girl out or I’m used to being overweight, so why bother eating right and working out. On the other hand, if I’m too careless, then I’m never taking the time to stop and think about what effects my actions will have to myself and to others. I could be so excited to jump out of that airplane that I forget to check if I even remembered to put on my parachute.¹ I could be eager to ask the first attractive girl I see and not realize her boyfriend standing right next to her. Next thing I know I’m on my ass with a broken nose.

I don’t think anyone knows what the right thing to do is in most of the situations they encounter during life. I think we’re all struggling with knowing what the right to do is, so we’re all battling between being too cautious and not doing anything or being too careless and doing something we will regret later. Trying to find that balance is something I’m struggling with all the time. When should I do this or when should I do that? Should I just do it? Should I step back and wait for a bit, think it through, and then do it? How can I know to do the right thing at the right time? Is that even possible? How much should my gut play into this? Is that the best measure to base all my decisions off of? I don’t know, obviously, but I like asking all these questions.

I don’t like it when I spend my free time dwelling on my past mistakes and fantasizing about ways I could’ve made those situations better. The reason I’m no longer friends with her is because of my carelessness. But the reason I haven’t moved on yet is because of my cautiousness.² I’ve lost friendships in the past because of my carelessness, and I truly believe I could have more and deeper friendships with other people if I was just less cautious and more active about it. I guess another way to view this conflict is between extraversion vs. introversion. I like spending time alone, and sometimes spending time with people for a long period of time is exhausting. On the other hand, I come alive whenever I’m with good friends. I love talking and listening and having fun. Again, there’s a balance missing in my life, and I just need to find it.

How? I don’t know, but I think vigilance and commitment to see this through are required. What do you guys think? What do you guys do? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I try to keep myself accountable with both my actions and words. When I work out, I try to have some integrity by pushing myself as hard as I can. That’s the only way I’ll earn both the body I want and the sweat that drips onto the floor. Whenever I say something, either to myself or to someone else, I try to make sure I do whatever it is I said I was going to do. I’ve rarely said I’ll keep my word to someone else aloud because I try to be a man defined by my actions when dealing with people, and a man of words through my writing. Am I perfect at this? No. Am I consciously thinking about this all the time? Again, no. This is one area I’d love to improve upon, and one of those things I’ve thought about on and off since I was a kid, when I first started thinking about becoming a man.

To me, my todo list is an extension of keeping my word with myself. It has everything I’ve promised myself I’d do at one point in my life or another. In my todo list app of choice¹, I can set both due dates and start dates. Tasks with due dates are due today. For me, I mostly use due dates for my routines and workouts. These are the tasks I promised myself I’d due today. If I skip these and fail to accomplish them, then I broke that promise to myself. The world does not end and I will not cease to exist, but that’s how I try to treat it if and when I fail to keep my word with myself. Dramatic? Maybe. But it works. Start dates are those tasks that will only appear on my todo list on the day I asked it to start appearing in my todo list. OmniFocus allows me to create Perspectives, which are customizable views inside the program that shows what I want it to show. In this case, I have one called Today that shows me all my due items and deferred items with a date of today. This is my main list, and the one that shows me everything I need to worry about. A list with thousands of tasks is reduced to just a dozen or so. That’s powerful, and one of those tools I love to use every day.

Currently, whenever I tell someone something that I’m personally accountable for, I keep that memory in my head. I don’t write it down and I don’t repeat it to myself over and over until I’ve memorized it. I don’t have a system in place where I ensure I don’t forget this promise in the future until the obligation has been fulfilled. I’m not sure why I don’t. I’ve occasionally written some promises in OmniFocus, but those times have been rare. I’m not sure how to remember the times I give somebody my word other than relying on my memory. If I tell somebody I’ll never lie to them², I’ll try my damndest to never lie to them. I could use a notebook, either analog or digital, to do this, but is that the best way to do this? Shouldn’t I just know to keep my word? I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.

This is one of those entries I’d wish I’d spent a bit more time on to think about more fully. On the other hand, this feels like one of those subjects that I’ll be thinking about for the rest of my life. I do have to ask myself, though, why I want to be a man known for keeping his word. Is it because I want people to trust me? Is it because it’s the right and honorable thing to do? Is it because I’ll feel really good about myself? A bit of everything? I don’t know. I’ll need to spend some quality time reflecting on this. I’ll try to keep myself accountable with myself by making sure I keep my word to myself.³ I would also like to ask my three readers to try to keep me accountable, as well. So if you can, ask me how this is going a few weeks from now. Maybe add it to your todo list app of choice?

I had fun working out today. I started the new volume of the Asylum, and man, what a workout. It was so much fun and so challenging and it finally feels like I’m taking advantage of the agility ladder that came with the first volume of the Asylum. Some of the moves I have to do on the ladder are insane. I kept hitting the ladder because I couldn’t keep my eyes on the screen and the ladder at the same time, but once I got a handle on it, I was able to focus and work my body out properly. I’m going to enjoy this new workout because for one, they’re shorter. I won’t be doing double the work on a daily basis like I did last month, and two, every Sunday is rest day or stretch day, my choice. I’m looking forward to that, to resting on a regular basis. This four day break was essential since I feel great. The only body part still sore is my right ankle, and with all the hops and jumps and fast feet I did today, it might take a bit longer to heal. But that’s okay because I feel great.

It’s a new month, and for some reason, I always love these days. They’re kind of like a reset day, a day to shake off the last month and look ahead at the new one with fresh eyes. A month to do what needs to be done to advance toward becoming the person we all know we can be. A month to get rid of the bad habits and implement new and better ones. A month to simply take advantage of. So far, my day was pretty identical to my days from last month with two exceptions: I’m focusing on finally finishing transcribing the Great Gatsby by hand. I have less than 30 pages to go, which isn’t saying much since I started this project late last year. The second one is finally spending each night writing about the three things I’m most grateful for that happened to me today. I decided to use my previous journaling app Day One because it’s ubiquitous. It’s on my iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and it’s easier to type it out because then right after I start writing my blog entry. They go together nicely, and if we know anything about habits it’s that they work best if they’re paired with an already established routine. So every time I’m ready to start writing my blog entry, I open Day One and quickly write the three things I’m most grateful for then start writing my blog entry. It’s only day 1 of that, so lets hope this habit actually sticks.

Winter seems to finally be here for real now. Snow’s been falling for the past few days, making some of the roads to work a bit slick and dangerous to drive on. I’m glad I bought my SUV because she seems to handle these roads like a champ, and I feel safer driving. And I kind of like the cold. I like the whiteness of the snow and the fact that when I work out, with my shirt off and all the sweat that drips onto the floor, I steam. Steam literally emanates from my body, and that’s quite the sight. It’s cold on the outside, but I’m so hot on the inside. There’s something about that contrast that entertains me. It makes me feel good, and I like feeling good.

I like to daydream. I like envisioning a life where I’m the man I want to be, with the life I want to have, with the girl I want to love. I like running through take after take of pretend conversations or scenarios I may one day have with people, running through my lines until I find the right set of words I like and then peppering them into my real life conversations. Do we all do this? I’ve never asked anybody. There are times where no amount of daydreaming will prepare me for what life gives me.

I compare myself to other people, and most of the time, this act makes me sad. I always find some flaw in myself that this other person doesn’t have, and I enter into this bleak whirlwind of insecurity and resignation. I’m not as smart as this person, I’m not as strong as this person, I’m not as interesting as this person. It doesn’t matter if any of it is true or not because I still have that bit inside of me that won’t let me be content with who I am. It may be tiny, but it holds me back, and sometimes I succumb to my emotions and lash out at myself by drinking or not doing my work or shutting myself down and breaking every good thing I’ve built up in my life.

I want to say that that’s the old me. That I don’t do that anymore, but I don’t know for sure because today I compared myself to some guy that may or may not matter in the grand scheme of things. Instead of lashing out, though, I decided to hold it in and write about it tonight, and that’s what I’m doing. This is me lashing out, and I think — now that I’m writing this entry — that this is a good thing. It’s been over 80 days since my last drink, and I’ve been on a path to improve myself for over 80 days now, a path that I have not strayed from since I started this blog.

I don’t know the future. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to sustain what it is I’m doing, and part of me does care. If this can be my new normal, if this intensity for living never leaves me, then I’ll be happy. But the pragmatist in me knows that I can’t reasonably live my life this way forever. That’s why I’m so adamant on keeping and sustaining my habits and routines. As long as do small thing after small thing, day in and day out, then it’ll all add up to a life that can weather anything.

One of those small things must be accepting myself. I may not be the smartest or strongest or most interesting person in the world, but that’s okay. I don’t have to be any of those things. People can sense whether or not I like myself, and at that point it doesn’t matter who I want to be because who I am is someone that doesn’t deserve anybody. By accepting myself first, by loving myself first, then I’m opening the door for somebody else to love me, too. And that, in the end, is what I want.

I’ve been spending the past few days in bed and resting. I’ve left my house only twice: on Thursday for Thanksgiving dinner, and today to buy some groceries. Other than going to the bathroom, working out, making food, and writing in the mornings, I’ve spent my holiday break in bed watching television and reading. It’s been marvelous. I’ve been beating up my body too much for the past few weeks, and even though I’ve been working out harder than I ever have for over two months now, my body still gets sore, and I still need rest to recover. Tomorrow I do my Fit Test, which means I will be completing my 30 day Insanity/Insanity: the Asylum Volume 1 hybrid workout. That’s over 60 days of Insanity done. On Monday, I start Volume 2 of the Asylum, and from the looks of it, it’s going to be even tougher than what I’m used to. So again, I need all the rest I can get.

I’ve been doing what I kind of made fun of before, and that’s binge watching a television show on Netflix. That show is Scandal, and it hooked me in its pilot episode. I’m kind of embarrassed that I’ve been spending a lot of my time watching a television show — granted, a really good television show — instead of checking tasks off my todo list. I have two types of tasks, those are due and those that aren’t due but I’d like to get done today. I’ve been checking off the due items and totally neglecting the deferred ones. I’m okay with that because I know come Monday, come the first of December, the first day of a new month, I’m going to get back to work.

I needed a break. I needed some time off. I needed to rest and have some fun. To me, watching television is fun. It’s also very lonely. I chose to look through my journal yesterday because I was wondering how to start writing the three things I’m grateful for that I said I was going to do a few days ago. I was considering writing them down in one of three notebooks or in one of two apps. I skimmed through my journal because I was curious how different my personal entries were from my blog entries. And I fell down a rabbit hole of my own creation. Those entries were brutal to read, and it brought back memories I purposely tried to let go of since starting this blog. I miss her, but that’s natural. I just have to fill the void she left with someone else. And that can be fun, once I let myself get there. When that’ll be, I don’t know.

I still haven’t figured out where to write the three things I’m most grateful that happened to me today, and that’s one of the tasks I’ve pushed until tomorrow. I’ll be fine once I figure it out. In the meantime, I’m listening to some Sigur Rós, feeling good about seeing my words up on my screen, and very eager to get back to watching one more episode of Scandal. It’s a good show. Did I mention that?

I went back and read entries from my journal I wrote earlier this year. They date from April to July of this year, and I didn’t realize how much life happened during those three months. It’s about the same time I’ve spent on this blog, a bit less actually, and I know how much life has been lived during that time. There were so many entries that read like personal marching orders, ways to live a good and happy life, tips for being strong, to always smile, to be grateful I’m alive. I was clearly inspired by Marcus Aurelius’ book Meditations, a book that became my favorite book of all time when I read it earlier this year. But it also contained so much anger and pain and confusion because it involved her.

Like I wrote yesterday, life has its lows and its highs, and our relationship clearly had both. I read those entries, and I missed her and I didn’t miss her. I kept telling myself to move on from her, but then something good happened, and I wrote about how much I loved her. Later, I kept telling myself to move on from her again, but on the very next line I wrote about how much I still loved her. My last entry was the day I was called out to my first fire. I wrote about how this fire will be good for me because I would have been given the chance to leave her life for a bit, to give us some much needed space. On recollection, that fire lasted only 5 days. A few days after that, we had lunch together, and that was the last time I ever saw her.

I still think about her, and it’s been almost three months since I last communicated with her. The idea of getting back in touch with her has been weighing so much on my mind recently. In fact, it’s what hurt my focus a few days ago during my 86 minutes of Insanity. The idea of talking to her again hit me that day, and I’ve been struggling with it ever since. Should I? Shouldn’t I? I see no reason to get back in touch with her. In fact, I’m 99% confident that I should not get back in touch with her. But it’s that 1% percent that always gets me in trouble. I always root for the underdog, even if it’s not the best idea.

I didn’t want to write a whole entry about her again but nostalgia is a fucking bitch. I remembered everything that happened between us — the good and the bad — while reading my entries. I love writing, and I think I wrote some of my best stuff with these raw descriptions of our relationship. I remember holding her when she cried and told me she needed to let me go. I asked her if that’s what she wanted, that I would leave her if it was, but she said she didn’t know, so I told her I wasn’t going anywhere. I remember when I wouldn’t talk to her for a few weeks, how sad that made her feel, how I made her cry, and how sad I feel about that now. She finally confronted me about it later and we talked about it for hours. I remember that was one of the last times I ever hugged and kissed her. I remember the day before I left for Los Angeles, we had a date together, and we had the best time we’ve ever had in our lives. I held her and spun her around and she snorted because she was laughing so hard, and I asked her why I loved her so much, and she said that somebody has to.

Why is it so hard to move on? She hurt me, and I hurt her, and we’re not together anymore, and I think that’s how it should be, but then I have these memories of her, memories that make me happy and memories that hurt me, and I don’t know what to do. I started this blog because of her, and I’m 99% sure she’s never read it. It’s that 1% of me that wants her to, though, and that’s the part that always gets me into trouble.

I’ve never been the type of person who thinks about all the things I should be grateful for; instead, I think about what I don’t have. Not so much material possessions, but personal traits and characteristics or certain types of relationships or anything in between. I’ve known for a while now that being a grateful person is a fantastic trait to have to improve one’s health, and I even have a task in my todo list that says to write three things that happened today that I’m grateful for. It’s set to repeat every night, except that I’ve never implemented it into my nightly routine. I might change that tonight.

It’s Thanksgiving, and I’ve never written about or even thought about the things I’m grateful for on this holiday. One thing I’m grateful for is my health. I’m alive, and with every breath I take, I’m reminded how lucky I am to be alive. I haven’t been sick since February of 2011, almost 4 years ago. Every time I get a little tickle in my throat or a runny nose, I worry that maybe I’ll wake up the next morning with a full-on sickness. I haven’t yet, and I hope I didn’t just jinx myself. I’m grateful that I’m physically fit enough to even attempt let alone exceed with these tough Insanity workouts. Every morning I wake up and look at myself in the mirror and smile because I look okay. It’s not really the looks, but the way I see myself. That confidence wasn’t always there.

Up to a few years ago, I was the most insecure person in the world. I hated myself so much, and now I can’t even imagine inhabiting that mindset anymore. I’m grateful for my personal progress. I’m grateful that I’ve lost over 60 pounds in the past few years, and I’m grateful for all the extra energy that’s given my days. I’m grateful for having the courage to become a wild land firefighter in freaking Montana. And that I love being one so much. I love camping and exploring the natural beauty of the world and helping fight for its preservation and health every summer. I’m grateful for those three great summers and hopefully many more to come. I’m grateful for having found a job that pays me well and that provides me a strong intellectual challenge and mental satisfaction. I’m grateful for the people who helped me get this job, and all I want to say is thank you to them.

I’m grateful for all my friends and family. I may not be the easiest person to talk to or get along with, but I’m happy for everyone who’s stuck around. I’m grateful for everyone who decides to spend a few minutes of their time to read what I write. That literally brings tears to my eyes.

Life, no matter how hard you try to prevent it, will always have its lows. But it will always have its highs, too, and it’s those highs I’m most grateful for. They provide the fuel to my fire when it seems I’m all burnt out. They keep me going, and I’m only on day 81. I got a lot more life to live.