I decided today should be one of those days where I let loose and have some fun and eat some food I usually don’t eat and drink wine and order pizza and eat ice cream and lie in bed all day watching TV. It’s been marvelous, and I don’t feel guilty or anything, but I might tomorrow when I feel bloated and fat and unhealthy. My Discover card last night increased my credit limit by over $2,000 because I’ve been such a great customer and I manage my credit very well that I almost spent over $400 on a new backpack and accessories. I still might, actually, because it’s for firefighting and fire season is almost here, and I don’t want to use my very crappy Walmart duffel bag this summer. Instead, I would like to have a quality bag with me, but of course this is all me trying to justify a very expensive bag. Why do I go toward expensive items? Because I love quality, and I don’t usually buy myself that much so I think I deserve something practical and cool like this. Don’t you think?

I’m watching Gilmore Girls and this show makes me wish I was a smarter teenager and that I had really smart people around me at all times. I know it’s a show and I know these lines are written by smart people and performed by talented actors, but damn, don’t I wish I could talk like them and have friends that talk like them. Life would be so much more fun and interesting. I’m really enjoying drinking wine and buying stuff — I just bought a Depeche Mode album because Depeche Mode — because I usually don’t allow myself to do stuff like this. It is becoming somewhat more regular, but maybe that’s a good thing? I had a great and productive week, and spending Saturdays like this might be my new routine. I need it. Also, it’s not like I’m struggling with money or anything. I have a good job, and I’m responsible with all my bills, and I don’t have a TV or video game consoles and I don’t buy any extravagant clothes or go out to eat every day or anything irresponsible like that. Every now and then I buy music and apps and I buy more food than I should, but it’s fun! Right?

i have lists of things I want to buy, and if I bought everything on there (minus the books), would I be happy? Would I not add anything more to it? I don’t know. That’s a good question, right? Would this cycle ever end? So it’s good that I splurge every now and then, but I also shouldn’t buy everything I want at the moment I want them. That’s just silly. But I’m listening to this Depeche Mode album — Some Great Reward — and it’s sooooo good and I’m enjoying my purchasing decision. People are people so why should it be/You and I should get along so awfully?

Also, I emailed her because I missed her today, but I’m 99.9% confident she’ll never email me back. So that’s where I’m at tonight.

Montana is wearing me down. I didn’t show my drama class my movies from college because I was stupid enough to ask them if they wanted to watch them. They, of course, didn’t, like the fucking useless pieces of shit they are. I’m sorry, I’m a little bit buzzed right now. I bought two different bottles of Pinot Noir because I’m going to start cataloguing all the different brands I can find and write notes about the ones I like the most. I don’t want to include their price because of this video. But wine, especially Pinot Noir, gets me super buzzed super quickly, and my filter is taking a break right now, and I just want to get all of my feeeeeeeelings out of my system.

Kids fucking suck. High school students who would rather not do anything than something fucking suck. The whole fucking town this school is located is too small. The whole state of Montana is too small. I don’t like how everyone knows each other. I thought I would like that, shit, I did like that when I first moved up here, but now, after living here for a few years now, I don’t like it. I like my privacy and my anonymity. It’s crazy how some teachers have seen some of these high schools grow up since the time they were kindergarteners. That’s insane. And sad, in a sense. These kids only know one school and one small town an the same fucking people. There’s a huge world out there.

I need to travel more. I need to get the hell out of this school, this town, this damn state. I miss California, but I want to go East. I don’t know. I am buzzed right now. I have no filter. I might regret all of this later. Who cares, right? This entry might be educational. We all might fucking learn something about me. I was soooo ready to show them my movies from college. I really wanted to show them, but they wanted to go outside and enjoy their last Friday of the school year. I told them no, and they became these stupid little snotty bitches because of it. I tried to tell them what YouTube videos they wanted to watch, and we watched some fucking stupid videos of some guys making trick shots. This is the shit they want to watch? What the fuck? That was stupid. So I showed them this videomy best friend Will wrote, and they didn’t like it. That pissed me the fuck off. We screened their films yesterday, and if I’m honest, they all sucked, and they’re telling me they didn’t like that video? Fuck them. Fuck them all to hell.

I miss film school and college and all my friends. I miss being around people with taste and a great work ethic. I miss people who would rather create something than consume like fucking leeches. And I fucking miss people my own damn age. Hanging around kids all the time has driven me fucking insane. Sorry if there are any typos or grammatical errors. If there are, please email fuckoff at youdumbbitch.com. Thank you.

We finally screened all of our drama students’ fairy tale adaptations in class today, and they were super fun and adorable and good. I’m very proud of all of them, and I’m so glad we were all able to pull this off in one very short and very haphazard quarter. School ends on Tuesday, but since Tuesday is a short and we all leave early, we only have this class for two more days. Tomorrow, due to popular request, I’m going to screen a few of my films I made during college. This will be the first time I will screen my films to a classroom since 2006. It’s been 9 years, but damn, I’m still nervous. That’s crazy, right? I hope they like it. It should be fun… I hope.

I went back today and looked through a few of the films I helped create with my friends back in college and those films from my friends I had nothing to do with, and they were all so good and fun and nostalgic to watch. I had so much fun during college, and this drama class has brought back a lot of those old feelings. It was so much fun teaching these kids something I love so much, and then watching them all apply it in a film of their own made me feel proud for all of them. It was so great. And then those films from college, both mine and my friends, also gave me a lot of those feelings. All these films were made 7-9 years ago, and that is a long time ago but it really feels like yesterday. I miss film school and my friends. I miss creating with them and laughing with them and making something together. If there was any reason why I’d move back to LA…

I’m a novelist now, though. I’ve been working on renaming my characters, but finding new names for them has been tough. Why would I want to rename them? Their names are super generic and they don’t “place” the character’s in the reader’s minds very well. They’re Jimmy and Katie and Michael and so on. One thing I’ve come across during my research is how names are linked to a culture, from Gaelic to Latin to Yiddish. That has made me look at my characters in a deeper way. Who are they? Where do they come from? Where do their parents come from? I mean, they named their children what they named them for a reason, and if I understand them, I understand my characters, my children. It’s all very internal and possibly too vague to understand, but it’s something I’m going through, and important enough for me to write.

I’ve been writing seriously for over ten years now. Time is moving by too quickly! I mean, I just turned 29 years old a few weeks ago, and now I’m almost 30. I still need to get married and have kids and buy a house and make it in my career and a million other things I can’t even think of, but I’m writing a blog instead. Priorities! I’m an adult now! I gotta do what I gotta do!

All I needed was a change in attitude. I’m doing many of the same things as I did during the days leading up to my burn out, but I feel more relaxed. I think a big reason for that is that I’m finished with my novel, but even though I haven’t written anything new since finishing it on Monday, I’m still working on it. My morning routine is the same, I’m still working out and reading in the afternoons, and these entries are still getting written. Yet I feel more relaxed. It’s awesome and I don’t want to ruin it, but I’m always curious as to why I feel certain ways in an effort to better understand myself. I doubt I’ll be successful tonight, but for lack of anything else to write, lets see what I can come up with.

I’m letting myself have more fun than in the past. Mostly that just means watching more TV. I’m watching the Gilmore Girls on Netflix, and I’m in love with everything about this show, especially Lauren Graham, the lead actress, and the incredible writing. It’s so good. I like coming home from work, lying in bed, and hitting play on something to watch. It’s a great way to unwind, and I didn’t realize how much I needed it. It was nice to spend that time writing since I was able to finish my novel two months ahead of schedule, but man, at what cost? So I like this time for myself after spending eight hours at work, especially since I have to work out right after. So TV has been great. What else?

One thing I’ve mentioned before is my revamped OmniFocus perspectives. My Today list, which is my main list and the one I live off of every day, has been simplified. Simply seeing fewer tasks on this list has made me feel freer and less burdened to do more. It’s great feeling this way, and I really believe this has affected my mood more than I would have thought. Of course, I have a new list called Next where I have some of those tasks that used to be in my Today perspective, plus a helluva lot more, but this list doesn’t hold much, if any, mental weight. It’s actually great seeing everything that’s still “open” in one place. I have been going through it, reading my tasks, and choosing one or two to do each day, and it’s nice. I’m choosing to do these rather than having to do them, and that difference is everything. My Today list has things I must do because those are the things that are most important to me and adhere to my principles. The other stuff would be great to do and make me happy if they’re done, but they’re not essential and there isn’t a time limit on any of them.

Having fun and reducing my daily burden has helped me be happier and still get stuff done. I don’t know how long this will last — nothing lasts forever, unfortunately — but for now, I’m happy and that’s my main focus right now.

It feels good to be back. The routine is sound, except I’m still figuring out how to properly implement my novel rewrite into my day because I’m not too sure how I’m going to approach the rewrite yet. I came up with some good ideas today that I hope to implement in the coming days and weeks and just see how they feel and work. I’ve never rewritten a novel before. This current version of my novel was supposed to be a rewrite of my last novel, but I started it from scratch and in doing so, it became something completely new. Now I like this draft a lot, and I want to make it better. It’s fun but difficult and a little bit overwhelming.

If there’s one thing today taught me is that it’s good to give yourself a break when you need it. I didn’t write 300 words this morning (for obvious reasons), and I didn’t beat myself at all for not having a plan already in place and me implementing it as much as possible. I should be okay with simply letting myself think, and that’s what I did, and I feel good about it. I’ve been relying too much on quantifying everything, and that has setup unmanageable expectations for myself. I need to relax, get my work done, and have some fun. I can see the progress I’ve made in the past eight months with all 470 pages of my novel printed out and ready to be worked on. I know the work I do now can be used as a template for all future rewrites. I should take it slow and make sure I do it right. No rush.

Here are the few ideas I had about my rewrite plan: outline my novel so I can see what I have and see where I can improve it; write new scenes and put them in where I think they should go; and rewrite one or two scenes a day. This last one seems super attractive to me because that’s something I can easily quantify, but it’s last on my list because I don’t want to do something if it’s not right for my project yet. I really think I should outline my novel first and work on the structure, the pacing, the beats, everything like that before I go in and fiddle with the revision phase. The plot needs work, the characters need work, my sentences need work, it all needs work. Again, I’m excited but overwhelmed.

The past few weeks have also been unkind to my weight. Yesterday I weighed myself, and I gained three pounds from the previous week. I weighed myself again this morning and I weighed 2.2 lbs less than yesterday. Overall, I’m up about three pounds since April, and this has made me feel guilty. I shouldn’t be, though. I’ll lose this weight within the next few weeks, but even if I don’t, I still look great. I feel slower, though, but that’s just because I haven’t been working out as much as I used to. Again, I shouldn’t let a quantified life interfere with my mood or progress. It’s going to be hard since I’m so used to doing it, but if my goal is to find a balance that will keep me productive but extremely happy, it’s worth doing, and it’s worth doing right.

It only took me 260 days, but I finished my novel today. The first draft at least, and now comes the fun part: the rewrite. I’m actually afraid to start it because I don’t know where to start. It’s not as easy as sitting down every morning and writing 300 words and calling it a day. There’s no easy way to quantify a rewrite, is there? I only want it to be quantifiable because I want to keep myself accountable on a daily basis, but I won’t be able to, and that’s okay. I have to figure out a good workflow for me to use for rewrites since I’ve never built one for myself. At least not one that was any good. I’m excited, though. There’s a lot of work to do — which has felt paralyzing — but I know I can do it and I know the end result will be worth it.

I’m back to my regular routine, and I missed it. I missed it a lot. I loved having something to do during the mornings, the afternoons, and right now at night. Since I didn’t go to work today because of Memorial Day, I had more free time than I would normally have on a Monday, and I used that to read and watch Man of Steel. I’m reading the revised edition of Getting Things Done, and it inspired me to create a new perspective in OmniFocus that I hope will help me feel less overwhelmed and burnt out yet more motivated to check stuff off. I normally had just one perspective, my Today perspective, which showed everything due or deferred today and was flagged. Most of the tasks there repeated every day as part of my routines, and those are the easiest for me to do and check off. It was the other tasks, those I would have liked to get done today but wouldn’t feel too bad about if I didn’t. At least that’s what I hoped in theory. In fact, every day I would postpone a task to tomorrow was another sliver of guilt I felt. After days of this, those slivers added up to real mental weight that made me feel overwhelmed and guilty. So now I’m using my Today perspective as my list of most important tasks, which just includes my routines: my morning routine with writing, transcribing, learning, meditating, etc., my nightly routine with more writing, reading, etc., and those other routines like working out and journalling. Those all covered my three areas of living, and those are the tasks I really want to focus on and get done on a daily basis. Sometimes, though, I have time to do something else, but since it either wasn’t flagged or I simply wasn’t feeling it at that moment, I wouldn’t do it. Now, though, I can just look at this Next perspective and just see what’s available for me to do since this perspective simply shows every unflagged and available task I can do right now. Granted, I just started doing this today so I don’t know what it looks like in the long run, but I think this will help me out, at least at first.

I don’t want to burn out again, but I also don’t want to be such a workaholic. For this next stretch of time, from now to Day 365, I’m hoping I make great strides toward finding that balance that has been evading me thus far. I’m confident I can at least get close, but only time will tell. I feel good about it, and I haven’t been able to say that for at least a month. God, it feels good to be back.

I’m going back to my regular routine tomorrow, and by regular I mean my scheduled-to-the-minute, intense, and rigorous one. I had this epiphany today where the past few weeks have just been a vacation, that I needed to let go and have some fun for a little bit to recharge for my next run of days. I didn’t like feeling like this lazy and angst-ridden lifestyle I had been living was going to be my new normal, so I decided to go back to what worked. I’m making a change, though. I’m going to be more cognizant about listening to myself and my body and taking those breaks when I know it’ll do me some good. I’m thinking of taking half-days every now and then, and maybe one weekend a month to sleep in and have a lot of fun. But for the most part, I need to be working. I need to be fighting for something every day; otherwise, I feel bad, and I don’t want to feel bad.

I don’t want to live a life of mediocrity. I know I can accomplish some amazing things if I simply hunker down and do my work. Half of that is simply showing up, and I haven’t been. Tomorrow, though, I’m jumping right back on that saddle and doing all that I used to do with such ease. I reconfigured my OmniFocus task list, so I will have all those familiar reminders throughout the day to keep me in line. I’m excited, to be honest, but also a little bit scared. I gave in so easily when I didn’t want to, and I’m worried I may do the same thing tomorrow. It’s that voice in my head that tries its best to convince me to not do what I know I need to do. I had overcome it for so long, and I can do it again. I know I can.

I spent a bit of time today clarifying my goals in my pocket notebook, and I kept coming back to my three big rocks: writing, reading, and working out and eating well. These are my three pillars of living, my mind (reading), body (working out and eating well), and spirit (writing). This triangle, when done every day or as regularly as I can, makes me happy and excited to be alive. I’ve been sorely missing both emotions lately, and I’m ready to get them back. That means I’m done drinking and eating out and sleeping in and finding excuses not to do what I love. These things, in the long run, make me unhappy, and you know what? Fuck that. Fuck anything that makes me not feel good. Life’s too short for that shit.

Life’s too short to live it in mediocrity. We all know what we need to do, but we don’t do it. We find excuses. We tell ourselves that we don’t have time or that life’s getting in the way or this bullshit reason or that bullshit reason. Fuck all of that. We find the time and the willpower and we do what we need to do because anything less than that is mediocre, and who wants to live a mediocre life?

It’s past ten o’clock, and I haven’t written a word all day. I’m on my sixth beer, and I think I use drinking as an excuse to do things I’ve forbidden myself to do. Does anyone else do that? I recognize that this behavior is unacceptable, but I don’t want to do anything about it. I want to be bad, and I want to do things I forbade myself from doing. I think I’m done, though. I’m tired of not doing my work. Work was so fulfilling, and I miss feeling fulfilled. I don’t miss feeling desirous for more, though, where my soul yearned for something that I wasn’t giving myself. Which brings me back to square one.

How do we get back on that road we’re supposed to be on? Why do we fall, Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up. That quote just came to my head. I’ve been on a Batman kick the past few weeks. It seems like I need Batman every few months. He’s great. If anything, he’s the closest thing to a role model I had growing up. He’s the quintessential self-made man. He doesn’t need superpowers to be a superhero. I need to feel like a superhero. How do we do that?

First thing first: find your Alfred. Alfred kept Batman in check. He kept him grounded and human, and whenever Batman needed to talk, Alfred was always there. They’re best friends and the closest thing they have to family. How many times have I yearned for something like that in these entries? A lot.

Second: fight for something. Batman fights crime. He trained his whole life to be the best he could be at doing that. He’s both strong and smart, and he’s committed to seeing this goal through. I know what I’m fighting for: to be the best writer I can be. Not the best writer ever, but the best I can be. There are a lot of things I think I need to do to get there, like reading voraciously and working out regularly, but it’s hard, especially when I don’t have my Alfred right now.

Last but not least: never give up. Do we ever see Batman give up? No! He gets into trouble, sure, but he always finds a way out of whatever predicament he’s in. He keeps fighting. This entry is a victory for me, even though I shat all over my regular routine and goals today. I could have drowned in booze and wallowed in self-pity, but I knew I needed to write. It’s not kicking some Joker ass or anything, but in my own way, it’s a victory. I’ve been fighting for 258 days, and that’s kind of amazing in and of itself.

Find your Alfred. Fight for something. Never give up. That’s how I think you become a superhero.

We never learned how to live well, did we? It’s not something we learned in school, and honestly, I don’t think many of us had role models we could have looked up to who lived or were living a great life. I at least didn’t. Do any of us know how to recover from our mistakes? Or know what the worst part of ourselves is? Do we know when it comes out and how to live with it in a positive and productive way? How many of us even ask ourselves these questions? If you’re anything like me, then I’m sure you rarely if ever asked yourselves these questions. I think that’s more normal than not, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing. Shouldn’t we know these things? Shouldn’t we have at least broached these subjects in school in some manner?

There’s more to life than knowing mathematical formulas and grammar. I’ve always believed in that, and that’s why I’ve always tended to gravitate toward expressing myself and self-improvement. The unexamined life is not worth living, as Socrates said, one of the best examples of a man whose life was lived well I’ve ever come across. I always loved Philosophy. I wanted to minor in it when I went to USC, but I would have had to pay for another year of school, and I just didn’t want to. I’ve been delving into it off and on since I graduated, and I’ve discovered some great philosophers, like Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Confucius and Buddha, and Seneca. I’ve always been a fan of Leonardo da Vinci, and even Bruce Lee has taught me a lot. One thing I’ve learned from all this is that living life is hard. Big revelation, right?

When you live alone and there’s no one there to push you, it’s hard to find the motivation and willpower to fight for a well-lived life. Modern life has too many distractions and things to do to make things easy. I can see why people want to live an eremitic life in the mountains or in monasteries. A well lived life is simple and fulfilling. That’s why I gravitated so much toward Minimalism. It forced me to focus on what was important, to throw away the unessential and be left with only those things that bring me joy. The things that don’t bring me joy aren’t physical possessions but choices I’ve made that haven’t contributed toward a joyful life.

What’s the worst thing about myself? I’m too arrogant to learn from my mistakes, I think. It seems that I repeat the same mistakes over and over and over again, and then I beat myself up about it again and again and again. I’m stuck in that cycle again, and I need to get out of it. I need to fight for the life I want, and I gotta do it every day. The question I need to ask myself now, though, is what kind of life do I want?

I hate to admit this, but a big part of my evening routine now includes more than a couple of beers. I crave it after work, in fact, but I don’t drink any until after I workout and shower. A big motivator for me to workout has been the promise of an ice cold beer. I don’t know if that’s sad or if it’s simply a necessary action during this stage of my life. I’m unsure of what to do next. I have no immediate plans to do anything other than go to work, do my three big rocks, and do whatever else in between those actions. The only thing I have to look forward to is fire season, and that will offer a nice respite to my current lifestyle, one that I’m eager for. But it’s temporary.

I haven’t been sleeping as much as I need to be, and a big reason for that is that I’m not going to bed at a reasonable hour. Sometimes I’m mindlessly browsing the internet with no rhyme or reason to it other than anxiousness. I don’t know what to do right now, and I hate not knowing what to do. I’m maybe two to three thousand words away from finishing my book, and then I could start on the rewrite, which may provide some structure to my days. I officially finish week one of Max: 30 tomorrow (if I do it), so I have another two months of workouts planned. Now, I could go back to my old routine since it did give my days a strict structure, with something to do most every hour of the day. But that burnt me out, which has led me here, to right now.

What does strength mean and do I have it? Am I strong enough right now to do what I need to do? What do I need to do? What do I want to do? How should I be spending my days? Am I happy? Am I sad? Am I asking myself too many questions? Are these questions too obvious to ask? Do some people just know the answers and never ask themselves these questions? These aren’t mind blowing questions, and they took zero effort from me to think about them, so does that mean I’m dumb or something? That I can’t answer them right now? I have been drinking, but not that much. I’m super clear headed right now. I was procrastinating earlier, but that shouldn’t matter, right? I don’t know. I’m just throwing shit out there to see what sticks. So far, nothing.

This is a stupid thought, but I hate it when people tell me what to do. I don’t like it. I like to do my own thing, but then here I am restricting myself harder than I would let anyone restrict me. No wonder I burned out, right? I said it’s a stupid thought because of the consequences I wanted to justify for myself. I want to let loose and be gluttonous for a little bit. Maybe that’s dumb and potentially dangerous and definitely recidivistic. But I don’t care tonight.