I feel good. Actually, I feel great. That’s not something I could’ve said sixty days ago. I can’t believe it’s been sixty days. Sixty days. Two months ago I had my heart broken, my actions disappointed me, and my life seemed to be in shambles. Now? Now I’m in a good place. I have hope for my future, and I can’t wait to live my damn life the way I want to. I’m in charge, and that’s something I’ve never fully internalized until I started this blog. This blog has been up and running for sixty days, and each one of those sixty days has an entry. Sixty straight entries. Holy shit.

Sixty.

I’m not sure why I’m putting so much significance on this number. My goal has always been three hundred and sixty-five. So… three hundred and five more entries to go! I can do it. Three hundred more entries? Piece of cake.

Writing is my life

The struggle with writing a daily blog is having something to say every day. I admit, I usually don’t have something of significance to say every day, but if I didn’t write every day, those entries that actually mean something to me would never have been written. If anything, this blog has chronicled my journey to become a more disciplined writer. All I’m doing and all I’m hoping to do revolves around the fact that I’m a writer, and that’s a role I no longer want to take for granted.

I’ve been having this nagging urge to write more every day. Some professional writers write for hours every day. I write for maybe forty-five minutes every morning and about the same every night. I don’t write more because I have so much to do already. I have to eat breakfast, I have to meditate, I have to go to work, I have to workout, I have to read, I have to eat dinner, I have to shower, and I have to sleep. There’s only so many hours in the day. And I have to have some fun or else I’ll burn out much more quickly.

Ideas for the future

Thirty days ago I gave myself three goals to try and accomplish by the end of the next thirty days. Today I finished a book — The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp — but I don’t think I read that much more. I was also supposed to measure my body fat to determine if my whey protein powder made me gain any fat and not muscle. Earlier this week, I ran out of my protein powder, and I decided to quit using that. I think it helped me gain muscle, which was my goal for adding it to my diet, but I’m now more interested in fueling my body with healthier and more nutritious options. Today my package of Primal Fuel came and that’s something I’ll be using from now on. I tried a shake today, and it tasted delicious. Here’s hoping it helps me out. My third and final goal was to develop some sort of framework to develop my personal philosophy. I believe this blog has been my vehicle for that. I wrote about this a few days ago.

Am I going to create some goals for me for the next thirty days? No, not really. I hope to keep up with my current routine. I hope to maybe add a few more things to my routine to make me better than I am today. I also hope to stretch myself a bit and maybe develop some new hobbies. Eventually I hope to be more serious about my coffee by actually grinding my own beans and experimenting with different brew methods. I’m also really eager to explore photography by buying a very good camera and lens and taking more pictures of the beautiful state of Montana I’ve called home for almost three years. Finally, I hope to finish furnishing my home with everything I need and want and decorate it with my own style and design sensibilities.

Creating

All these hopes are endeavors that improve and expand my creativity. I love creating. I really fucking love creating. If this blog is any indication, I love creating the type of life I want to live. It’s hard work. It can get slow, tough, and seeming hopeless sometimes, but it can also be so much fun and pleasurable.

Focusing on designing a life I want to live and actually living that life is one of those things I’m always going to enjoy. And like any artist, I’ll never be satisfied. I’ll always be tinkering with it, but unlike art, I’m not going to decide when it’s all done. That’ll be left up to Nature herself.

I want to keep her waiting for a long time, though.

I don’t know what to write about today. My weekdays are really busy. I’ve never really appreciated my free time before until just recently. I don’t have time to think, which sounds weird to me. I’m always moving, always doing something. My schedule feels tight (at least during the weekdays), and that makes me feel robotic, in a sense. Since the weekends are the only days in the week where I can actually slow down and reclaim some of my free time, I’ve been trying to use them as my days to think and to explore my curiosity.

One thing I’m always curious about is how I can improve how I do things. I’m always asking myself how I can be more efficient, or how I can reduce friction between starting something beneficial and not. For the past few days, I’ve been thinking about my todo list app of choice, OmniFocus. I’ve been trying to simplify it for months, and I thought I developed a good system right around the time I got my job. It still felt too complicated. So at the beginning of the week, during my Weekly Review actually, I began to make some changes. I combined many projects into one, deleted dozens of contexts and focused them on just seven: Focus, Routines, Home, Tech, Errands, Work, and Waiting. I’m currently not using the Routines context, butt that’s because I’m not done tinkering yet. I’m actually not sure if I even need that context, but I won’t know until I dive back into this app.

Everything is in OmniFocus. It helps me build my routines, get things done, and it makes me feel less burdened to remember all those nagging little tasks. It helps me keep on top of my finances, with routine home and car maintenance tasks, and it even reminds me to take my vitamins every morning. It’s such an amazing feeling knowing I don’t have to worry about these things. But I am cursed with that constant feeling of having to tinker with my system because I’m never satisfied with it. There’s more I can be doing, and until I know I’m packing every minute of every hour of every day with tasks to improve myself in some way, then I’ll never feel satisfied.

Is that obsessive? Maybe. Crazy? Most definitely. But it’s a system and a mentality that works for me. I’m doing great on so many things right now, and I have to stop sometimes and appreciate that. From writing to working out to my job, I’m doing okay. This is what I wanted a few months ago.

Why can’t I be satisfied, though? Why do I have to keep pushing myself? Because I want to be great. Not for anyone else, but for myself. I know I can get there, but knowing my tinkering-obsessive personality, I’m most likely never going to allow myself to get there. I’ll never allow myself to just be, and that will either be a blessing or a curse. Maybe a little bit of both?

I just bought Ariana Grande’s new album from iTunes, and that’s what I’m listening to right now while I’m writing this. I like her voice, and she’s so adorably cute. I’ve been buying a lot of music lately, and I’ve been playing each new album I get on repeat until I get the next newest album. I actually pre-ordered Taylor Swift’s newest album, and when the full album dropped last week, I played it on repeat for days. That’s all I listened to while at work, while writing, and while lounging around my home. Last week I discovered Run the Jewels, a hip hop duo comprised of Killer Mike and El-P. They released their second album last week, and that’s been on repeat all the way up to today. And a few days ago I bought another Sigur Rós album, and I love listening to them when writing my novel. All these albums are just so good. I love music.

When I decided to write my first novel, I made a few decisions that I don’t think I’ll ever do again. One of them was writing the entire thing by hand. I thought I’d get a better feel for the story by doing it that way, but once I started my second draft, I realized I needed to throw that whole first draft away. That decision was a good one. Another decision I made was to write without any music. Before that decision, I rarely wrote anything without music playing in the background. I say rarely because I’m sure there were a few times in my life where I wrote without any music (not counting classroom settings). I guess I wanted to experiment and see what it would be like doing these things. Turns out, I don’t like it. Now I know, though, so that’s good.

One thing I love about Insanity is the music that plays in the background during every workout. If you’ve never experienced an Insanity workout, you might have a tough time understanding what I’m trying to say. The music varies between workouts, but it’s all a variation on some high tempo, instrumental track that relates to the context of the workout. During the warmup, the track is upbeat but a bit slow. As the warmup speeds up, so does the music, but you never notice it, really. Then later, during other high energy workouts, the music might speed up and increase its energy. There’s a moment during the Game Day workout where we’re sprinting as fast as we can after already doing a variety of running exercises for five or so minutes. The music feels inspirational. There’s a track of cheering fans layered underneath the music, and I could really feel myself sprinting down the track in a packed stadium. The music helps me push harder. There’s an option to turn off the music, but I never do. The music plus Shaun T’s magnificent training style equals a passion for Insanity that I don’t have with anything else.

Love Me Harder by Arianna Grande and the Weeknd just started playing, and I’m dancing to the beat in bed. I love the Weeknd. A few years ago he released a trio of albums for free, and I gobbled them up because his voice is so sexy and smooth. I love it. That coupled with Ariana Grande’s beautiful voice makes this track one of my favorites.

I’ve never really written about music before. I was just tired today, and all I wanted to do was close my laptop and go to bed. But I wanted to write something tonight. And I’m glad I did. I had fun.

The Insanity hybrid workout is kicking my ass. I think I sprained my left shoulder and right foot during my workout today. I, maybe unwisely, workout barefoot, and Insanity demands a lot from my feet. From running in place to jumps to more jumps to even more jumps, my feet have taken a pounding for the past two months and during that time, I’ve only taken a handful of days off to recover. I don’t want to take any days off unless I have to, and if I have to fight through the pain, I will. What does that say about me?

I’ve never been more focused with anything like I am now with my life and how I want to live it. Pain is part of the game¹, and I just have to fight through it. What I want out of life will never be given to me, and I genuinely believe that I have to fight for every little bit of it. I want to be healthy, but I want to look and feel the best I’ve ever felt, too. I finally lost some weight this past week², and I really think I’ve never looked this good before. But I can be better.

I want to be a professional writer, which means making my living writing. I have to write more every day, though. I’m over 17,000 words into my novel, and I really enjoy what I have now, but part of me feels like most of it is crap. I want to be a better writer, and I’ve had that desire for a long time. That’s why I started to transcribe the Great Gatsby by hand, just to know what it’s like to write a good novel³. That desire is also partly why I started this blog. I just know the best way to get better at writing is by writing.

Finally, I want to know how to live the best life I possibly can. To do that, I have to study philosophy. Back in college, I wanted so much to minor — maybe even major — in philosophy, but the curriculum for the minor required that I stay another year in school, and that was something I couldn’t and didn’t want to do. So I didn’t satisfy that desire then. Now that I’m older, though, I learned that I can get a better education outside of college than in it by simply pushing myself to read tough books and think critically about subjects that interest me. There’s so much I still don’t know, but I’m super eager to learn more. That means reading so many books and stopping to think about them deeply and critically. In this area, I can definitely be better.

I need to be better at so many things, and I’m so happy that I’m working at it everyday. So much joy is coursing through my body right now that I wish I could share it with everyone. It feels great, and I want to be great.

On Day 30 I gave myself three goals to focus on for the following thirty days. They all revolved around my personal three pillars toward a good life, which involved the mind, the body, and the spirit. I’ve always felt confident about what I needed to do to develop both my mind and my body, but it’s been developing my spirit where I’ve been the least confident in. To be clear, I know that everything flows into one another: a healthy body helps strengthen the mind, a strong mind helps push the body to new heights, both the mind and body contribute tremendously to the spirit, and of course the spirit flows back into the other two in a very harmonious way. But what I’ve been struggling with is the feeling of aimlessness when it came to effectively developing and nurturing my spirit beyond my mind and body. My goal back then was to develop a framework toward what my own personal philosophy could be, and for twenty-six days I’ve felt like I’ve been neglecting this goal the most.

Except, I think this blog has shown me exactly everything I need to know to develop my own philosophy. In essence, philosophy is simply a love of wisdom. The more attuned and sensitive I am toward myself, the more knowledge of myself I know, which in turn helps me grow into a better person. What I consider a better person is most definitely different from what you or someone else considers a better person, but that’s not where I’m going with this. This blog has been my attempt toward an honest examination of myself, both my actions and my thoughts, and not anyone else’s.

I’ve learned that I’m concerned with finding ways to not only improve but maintain my happiness. Being happy is important to me because I’ve been depressed for a long time, and I don’t like who I am when I’m blue for no discernible reason. Working out, eating right, writing, reading, working, and keeping myself busy have all contributed greatly toward that. I still feel empty, but I think — I hope — by developing my philosophy, I can find meaning and satisfaction that’ll fill me up with all that life has to offer me.

I’ve also learned that I’m concerned deeply with quality. I wrote a lot about this yesterday, so I won’t go too much into that right now. I will say that I’ve been deeply concerned with everything I’m allowing myself to enter my life. In short, I’m being ruthless with everything that has entered and that could be entering my life. I think the word allow is important here. Sometimes I’ve allowed things to enter my life without truly acknowledging the effects that thing would have on me. I hesitate to use the word thing because I’m referring to both physical objects and people. Quitting my job all those months ago was the best decision I’ve made in a long time, and a big reason why was eliminating my toxic co-workers from invading my life. And again, there’s her, that girl I thought I wanted but find I’m so better off without. By understanding the effects all these things have on my life, I have a better understanding of what is making my life worse and what is making it better. This distinction is super important to help me live a life of quality.

Finally, I’ve barely written about this here but it’s something that’s constantly on my mind, and that’s the idea of taking risks. We only live one life, and I hate the thought of wasting it. But with some things, I feel like I am. Mostly that revolves around my dating life, or my lack thereof. To truly live, I have to take risks. I have to. I don’t want to live a life of what ifs, but a life of I did. I did ask that girl out. I did jump out of that airplane. I did live my life the way I wanted to. I don’t know how to take more risks other than just taking more risks, so I don’t know how to plan for that.

I guess I just have to be who I am. Simple, right?

I went to Walmart today because I wanted to buy some frames to hang up the new posters I bought, but when I walked to the frames aisle, I found that they still did not have them in stock. About a month ago, I bought a mirror from them because I wanted to make sure my work attire looked good. Today the entire frame of that mirror broke. I discovered that it was constructed really poorly and made out of some cheap material that would not have lasted long regardless. This just gave me a bad taste in my mouth when it comes to that store, and I vowed today that I’m never going to shop there again. In fact, I’m in the process of replacing most of the things I’ve bought from them in the past few years with newer, better designed, and higher quality items from artisans that actually care about the stuff they make.

Quality matters to me. I’ve written about that before. Quality items last longer and they age beautifully. All that comes at a cost, obviously, but I’m willing to pay it if it ensures longevity and trust in the product. Once I drove back home, I spent a few hours researching new frames to get for my posters. I came across some highly rated and really beautiful black, real wood frames on Amazon. I had a certain aesthetic I wanted, which limited my choices, but once I found these, I felt relieved and excited. I ended up buying a few more things — most of it with my Discover card rewards points — to round out my desk and bag, and I’m confident this finally completes phase 1 of Operation: Interior decorating. Awesome name, I know.

Once I purchased these items, my mind next went toward working out. Today was Day 1 of the Insanity/Insanity: the Asylum hybrid workout I’ve been building up to for the past month. I don’t know how I did it, but I worked out for 90 minutes of pure Insanity goodness. The first workout was Strength from the Asylum. This workout is over 47 minutes, and involves the use of my two 15 lbs dumbbells. Last year when I did the Asylum, I used 10 lbs dumbbells, and those gave me a good workout then. For the past month, I’ve been using the 15s, and man did that extra weight make this workout tougher. Today, though, this workout was better than it has been all month. I’m stronger now, naturally, but I kept pushing myself until I couldn’t anymore. I finished the workout soaking wet and super happy. Except, I had to do 40 minutes of Pure Cardio from the original Insanity program. Like the name suggests, I’m constantly and continuously pushing my heart rate higher and higher for long stretches of time until the end. I was exhausted after the warmup. The warmup! I pushed through, though, and I finished Pure Cardio even more wet than before and feeling a level of tiredness I’ve never felt in my life. But I kept smiling because I felt great.

A quality life means a well-earned life. I know the dictionary defines quality as something measured against something else, with the former’s degree of excellence higher than the latter’s. I’m not comparing my life to anyone else’s but my own. I know what I was before this blog, and I know who I want to be after. I’ve been focusing so much on the quality of my inner life for a long time that I’ve been completely ignoring the quality of my external life. I really believe that if I surround myself with quality items I’ll be better, not to mention happier. Does this bode well for my wallet? Of course not. But I’m an obsessive budgeter and highly responsible with my money. Even though I don’t consider myself a minimalist anymore, I still only buy things I need or will be used and improve my life in some way.

In the end, though, I know stuff will not make me happier. Hell, focusing on just my inner life will not make me happier. A combination of these things with a willingness to be better and to wake up ready to earn every day ensures a quality life. That’s what I’m after, and that’s a journey I’m excited to embark on.

I don’t know what to do with myself on rest days. I started dinner earlier, which felt weird. I treated myself and bought myself some popcorn. I ate it while I watched some television, and it felt good being lazy but I don’t want this to be a regular thing. Not just because I have to keep pushing myself and try to be better every day, but because I missed working out today. I miss the feeling of euphoria while I work out that lingers long after I finish. Working out is the best metric I have that lets me know I earned today. Nothing else compares.

A little over half of my purchases were delivered to my front door today, so that tied me over today. I haven’t come home from work with boxes piled up in front of my front door waiting for me in a long, long time. It felt like Christmas. My new mStand laptop stand is amazing. It’s beautiful and really well-built and designed. Unfortunately, my Apple keyboard and magic trackpad won’t come until Monday, so I couldn’t complete my desk the way I wanted to. Patience, though. I finally have a wallet, and the Slim Wallet by Bellroy is, also, amazing. It’s smaller than I thought it’d be, yet it fits all the cards I need: two credit cards, a debit card, my driver’s license, and my health insurance card. It feels good to finally have a wallet again, and a good one, too. My 32 GB USB flash drive is tiny. Like, half a finger tiny. It gets lost in my keychain, and that’s amazing. It’s nice knowing I have all this storage just there whenever I need it. I like that secure feeling. My GRID-IT! organizer by Cocoon organizes all the little things in my messenger bag so neatly that it also makes me super happy. My bag no longer feels like a mess and feels more like a mobile office, which was the goal all along. I have everything in there that I need, and I love that. Finally, my three posters from Ugmonk also came in, but I won’t be able to hang them up until I buy some frames from Walmart tomorrow. They’re more beautiful in person than from the images I saw from the website.

Many things seem to be coming together, albeit slowly. I feel really good, and I feel really happy. I feel like nothing can hurt me right now, and that makes me feel powerful yet secure. I don’t always feel like this, though. I would love to always feel this way, but I know I won’t be. However, and this is something I have to remember, this won’t be the last time I ever feel like this. I will feel like this again and again and again, all the way to my death bed. Sure, in between those times I’ll feel sad or hurt or in pain, but those feelings will come and go just like the rest of them.

I have to remember sometimes that I’m a living, breathing, human being, and life happens all the time. I shouldn’t be wasting it dwelling about some future that may never happen. I should just be and live.

I finished Day 30 of the Insanity: the Asylum program today. The video is titled Athletic Performance Assessment, and I didn’t do it before I began this program this month. Therefore, I had to compare the reps I performed today to last December, which was the last time I performed this assessment. Out of the nine exercises, I stayed the same or improved on eight of them. On the one exercise I didn’t improve, I was about 75% away from completing another rep to match my last score.¹ All in all, I’m very happy with how I performed today considering I weigh over ten pounds from what I weighed last December. I will take tomorrow off to rest, and then the real work will begin on Saturday when I start the hybrid workout.

Last year when I finished the Asylum program, I felt amazing. I completed the best and hardest workout I’ve ever done, and not only did I feel the best I’ve ever had in my life, I looked my best, too. After completing the program once more, I have to say all those same feelings are back, but this time, I feel stronger than I’ve ever felt. The athletic performance assessment proved to me that I am stronger. I’m carrying ten more pounds, yet I performed pretty much the same across the board. I can feel and see the changes all over my body. My arms, my back, my chest, my abs, and my legs all feel stronger. And this was just a warmup. Again, the real work begins Saturday. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, I begin a 120+ day Insanity marathon on Saturday. That’s a full one third of a year, not including the thirty I just completed.

To be my best, I have to be at my best all the time. My daily routine must be to be better than the day before. I have to keep pushing myself and reach heights I’ve never thought possible. If I don’t, then I’m just coasting. I don’t want that. I don’t want to just drift through life and wake up one day on my death bed and regret not living. I want to know what I’m capable of, and I want to know that I can push myself past that.

This isn’t easy to do, but it’s the most satisfying thing I’ve ever done in my life. That’s the only thing that’s motivating me to keep doing this. That and that it’s so much fun. From working out to writing to working with computers and getting paid for it to writing some more, I’m having the best time of my life right now. Winter’s coming, but I have this fire in my belly that will keep me warm for a long, long time.

Remember when I used to write about some girl? Those were the days.

All I want to do right now is sleep. I’m so tired, but I feel so good, too. I finished Day 29 of Insanity: the Asylum. Tomorrow will be my last day, then I’ll take Friday off, and on Saturday I’m going to start the thirty day hybrid workout. I feel good not having to think about what I’m going to do to keep healthy. Instead, all I have to concern myself with is just starting.

Daily routines keep me happy because a major part of what may hold me back is minimized tremendously, and that’s my own damn mind telling me not to do something. One thing I’ve noticed when I’m super focused on improving myself is how much easier it is to just start. Every morning I wake up at 5 AM, brush my teeth, shave, make coffee, sit down by my desk, open my laptop, hit play on iTunes, and start writing. Every morning is the same. The same steps in the same order. I could live without any sort of clock telling me the time, and I could tell you what time it is by just this routine alone. I don’t have to think about it ever. I did when I wanted to implement this change into my life, and trust me, those first few weeks were tough. Once I stopped thinking about it, though?

The hardest part about starting a new habit is sticking with it past the minimum thirty day threshold. I’ve started and stopped so many habits over the past five years that I’ve developed a rhythm of recognizing the patterns of habit creation. The first few days are always the funnest. We’re starting something new, something we know will be beneficial to us in the long-run, something that’ll make us better. But then our mind starts to revolt. This new habit requires effort, and our mind is not used to exerting any effort in this area. So it revolts. The mind tries to convince us that stopping is the best thing to do because it’ll just feel good. Our goal is to push through that. Every day we devote toward accomplishing these new habits is another day stacked on top of our mind until one day, the weight of our new habit becomes our new normal. And just like how we can shower without even thinking about it, we can do whatever new habit we want without thinking about it, too.

So I’m lying in bed, exhausted as all hell, and I feel good because I know I earned today. In one day, I will finish something I started a month ago. I’m 300 words closer toward finishing my novel. People like me at work, and I’ve been told repeatedly how good of a job I’m doing. I started a new book — the Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp — and I’m loving it. These are my defaults, my daily routines that I don’t have to think about but make me feel so good. And so tired. God I’m tired.

Montana has taught me one irrevocable fact, and that’s that no one day is predictable. The cold blanket of winter has enveloped my little corner of the world, and that means scraping frost from my windshield every morning, as well as sleeping with the tinny sounds of my heater humming in the background. No matter how hard I try to control my days, to follow a routine that I know is good, healthy, and highly beneficial to me, there will be times when the unpredictable mess things up.

Nothing unpredictable happened today, and that’s the problem, I think. I’m not growing the way I want to. Sure, I’m working out, writing, and making money, but those were the basic big rocks I wanted to develop in the first thirty days of this blog. It’s now been over fifty days and nothing much has changed. I’m not earning my days anymore.

I need to keep pushing myself in order to grow into the man I want to be. What does that mean? I really wish I knew. All I know to do is to listen to my body and to my emotions, and follow the path they’re trying to clear for me. I’m unsatisfied, and I don’t know what to do about it, exactly.

There’s so much more I want to do, and I think that’s where part of the problem lies. I’m paralyzed by choice. I’m not sure which thread to pull because I don’t know if that thread is the best choice for me at this time. All I know is that I have a very small piece of time available to me every day, and I don’t think I’m spending it wisely. Unfortunately, at least during November, that time will be cut even shorter since the hybrid workout from Insanity will take much longer than what I’m used to.¹

Insanity will take care of my desire to be more fit, healthy, and better looking. I need to work on my diet, though. I want to cook more and different meals. That requires research. I need to commit to making something different for dinner every day, maybe during November. Cooking blog?

I’m writing every morning, but I want to spend more time on it. I have notebooks specifically bought for this purpose, but I’m not using them. I’m not used to them, so I have to build them into a workflow somehow. I have to hate not having a notebook around instead of not knowing I need one around me at all times.

I’ve always had an insatiable desire to learn, but I’ve never focused my learning into some sort of system that demands more of me every day. What I mean by that is that no matter how much I read, I don’t apply that information in a useful way. I don’t ensure I know that information, but instead rely on my memory and forge on to the next subject. I’ve always wanted to implement the Feynman technique, but I’ve never found the motivation to implement that in my life. It’s time to change that.

Finally, even though I meditate every morning, I don’t feel like it satisfies my spirit. I think this is where my feelings of emptiness are stemming from. I’m unsatisfied with something, but I haven’t found why yet. This is one area of my life I need to focus on a lot more.

I have to earn every day. I have just one life, and I don’t want to waste it.