I’m slowly settling down into my new routine, and I’m enjoying it, mostly because of the weather. There’s something about sunny days where it makes me relax more than work; whereas winter makes me want to settle down and get to work. I’ve never been one to take much stock in the seasons, but I’ve recently noticed how they have affected me during the past few years and I find that fascinating. I think that’s mostly a sign of my navel-gazing ignoring everything outside of myself, and that’s one of the biggest issues I’m trying to see how to change. I’m not too sure how to change that or even just improve it, but that’s all part of the journey.

I need something to fight for, and I think I create an imaginary world of sorts in my head where I have something to fight for. The only problem is that it’s not real, and since it’s not real, it’s fragile. When it inevitable breaks and falls apart, I lose that thing that kept me going. When I first started this blog, my main motivation to keep going was the hope that one day she would come back into my life, and I could show her how much I’ve changed. That never happened, but I was able to replace her with someone else. Unfortunately, that someone else wasn’t a wise choice, so I’ve moved on from that idea. Now I don’t have anyone to pretend to fight for. Now that I’ve written all this out, I feel like doing what I can to move away from some external source, especially if it’s a girl, and try to find my own internal reasons to fight.

I’m going to repeat myself because I need to reiterate these things to myself again. I’m fighting for a writer’s life, where I earn my living writing stories. That’s what I want to do, that’s what I think I’m good at, and that’s what I need to fight for, for that life. I’m also fighting for a healthy lifestyle. I’ve sung the praises for how working out makes me feel really good, and that hasn’t changed. What I’ve always struggled with is eating well, and that’s something I want to fight harder for. Unfortunately, none of these things are earning me any money. I do have a good job that pays me well, and I love the groove and responsibility I have at work, but it’s not work I truly love. I want to fight for a life I love, and sometimes that life seems far away and other times it feels within my grasp. It’s like waves crashing onto shore and then receding back into ocean. It’s there and then it’s not.

We all know this isn’t easy, but we fight anyways because we have to. We must fight because we know that if we don’t fight, we might as well stop living. We fight because we love it. We love fighting for something, and even if we never get what we want, we will at least know that we fought for something. That, in the end, is all that matters.

Are you still there? The world hasn’t ended? I can drink and have fun and not fill every minute with something to do? Good.

What does a successful day mean to me? I don’t know if I’ve ever asked myself that question. Before, I probably would have said that I needed to do something productive for most of the hours I was awake. I might have even counted the hours I slept, which meant I would have tried to optimize my sleep as much as possible. All of which is to say that a successful day to me would have been one where I worked hard from the moment I opened my eyes and woke up to the moment I closed my eyes and slept. For a long time this was all true, but I don’t know if I feel the same way about that anymore. I know for a fact I don’t feel that way anymore.

I’m content with spending a few hours working on accomplishing my three big rocks for the day and spending the rest of the day either being productive or not, playing games or not, drinking or not. I’m going more by how I feel at the time and having those feeling determine the outcome of my day. That’s how I’ve been living my days for the past few weeks, and I don’t hate it, but I’m also not convinced I like it yet. There’s something missing, and I don’t know what that is, but I don’t care that much about finding it out yet. I’m still in vacation mode and taking a break from the past few months of work.

I’m having trouble staying awake right now because I’m tired. I wanted to write that because I wanted to let future me know how, no matter how unmotivated and uncaring these days may have seemed to me in my memories, I still found that something to push through and get this entry written. I need to remind myself that there’s something incredible in that. There’s nothing stopping me from ending this entry right now other than some force inside of me, and that force, whatever it is, will always be inside of me. I can always tap into it, no matter where I am or how I’m feeling. I need to remember that for those times I’m feeling down or frustrated or annoyed.

I’m still new to this blogging thing. I’m used to keeping a journal, where I write my private thoughts to a private audience, but with a blog, I’m writing to more than just myself. I’m writing for other people, too, and you know what? I kind of hate that. I definitely care about my audience when I’m writing a screenplay or a novel, but my journal? I don’t give a fuck about who reads this. If they’re not entertained, I don’t give a fuck. I have zero ads here, I don’t make any money, and traffic doesn’t matter to me. It’s very easy to not read my blog, and it’s easier to write when I know I’m writing just for myself. That’s what I call living a successful day.

Be prepared, everyone: You are about to read the greatest thing ever written by man on the internet, hell, on anything. This entry will be so great that your mind will simply be blown and all you want to do is read more of my shit because I’m like a drug, the best and most addicting drug you’ve ever had in your life. Your life that is mediocre compared to mine because oh my god I’m the most interesting man who has ever lived. The Dos Equis guy has nothing on me. Rip Hunter came from the fucking future just to tell me how legendary I am for all the future children of earth. I single-handedly saved the world from invading aliens while also curing fucking cancer. Mankind has a future because of me. I brought down governments with just my smile and we all live happily ever after.

Is that something we should aspire to? To be great? It’s all about attitude. How you view the world determines how you live it, how you conquer what life has to offer, what the universe decides to throw at you at any given day. We don’t always feel like this, at least I don’t. But we’ve all had days where we do, and we should all try to remember those feelings — that attitude — and try as best we can to manifest it during those days when we don’t feel that way, when we feel low and sad and unmotivated to live life outside of a self-created bubble of doubt and pity.

I’m definitely more keen to live this way because of how crappy my life has been the past few weeks. Shit went to hell, and I had to figure out if what I wanted was really what I wanted. I’m not a fucking robot, but I tried to live like one. Same monotonous routines at the same time every day like clockwork. And it worked. It worked for eight months. Then I realized I was human and I couldn’t possibly live like that forever. No one can. So I drank a lot and played a lot of video games and I simplified my days to just three big rocks, but lets be real, most days I just did the one big rock: these blog entries. A broken streak doesn’t mean a broken life. It just means I was human.

I know I’m not anything like I wrote about in the first paragraph. How cool would it be if I defeated invading aliens? But I know exactly how that attitude makes me feel, and I felt that today, and I loved it. I got back on my horse today and returned to my big rocks, and it felt good crossing those tasks off my todo list.

Life should be fun and should be lived in the present. If what you’re doing isn’t fun, even if it’s productive, don’t do it. Try to do things that are both fun and productive. That’s when you know you got something special. But take a break every now and then. Be human. Relax. Drink. Get out. These are all things I need to do more of, but when I do, man, it makes me feel like the most interesting man in the world and that’s how we should all feel all the time.

This is what my blog is: it’s a diary that I use to capture whatever thoughts and feelings I have during the actual act of writing. I’ve tried before to turn it into something more specific, but that hasn’t worked for me. A diary works for me. Maybe that’s an excuse to explain away the quality of my entries. Whatever. I like the spontaneity of writing without a plan. Sometimes I discover things I wouldn’t have otherwise, or at least taken me longer to discover. When I look back at my entries, I can tell that what I wrote was what I was feeling most strongly on that day. I love the entries where I was super motivated and super enthusiastic about everything I was doing; I also love the entries, especially those from the past month, where I’ve been stuck in a bout of depression, and that’s all I’ve been able to write. That bout of sadness motivated me to take a break from my rigid routine and have some fun. I’m glad I did because I feel motivated again to get back to work.

Taking a break has shown me the value of work. I want to get back to work. I don’t know if I’m going to automatically get back to the routine I scheduled down to the minute, but I’ll definitely try to get back to a productiveish schedule, which is to say something that wasn’t this weekend. I didn’t write any word in my novel this weekend, and at first I felt guilty, but after thinking about it a bit today, I think taking a break will do me some good. I haven’t stepped away from my book since September, so I don’t know if it’s any good or not. Only time away from it will show me that. I’ve been so focused on getting it done that I never stopped to consider whether it’s any good or not. I don’t know the answer to that, but when I get back into it tomorrow, I will hopefully have fresh enough eyes to see what I got.

Another thing this break has motivated me to do is to meet more people. I know I’ve said that a shit ton of times during the past eight or so months, but I really need to get out more. Firefighting will start soon, and I know I’ll be back with friends and strangers for days and maybe weeks at a time, so that’ll be fun and invigorating. But I need to do something else to improve my social life. Any thoughts, readers? That’s why I have a comment section, people! To hear your voices!

Anyways… I think I can handle my liquor again. I’ve been drinking fairly regularly this past week, and nothing bad has happened. I haven’t done anything stupid, I haven’t ruined any relationship, and I’m still here feeling pretty good about myself. So I was worried about nothing, he said now before shit went to hell, maybe. I also stopped writing and transcribing and reading and working out, kinda to all that, and the world hasn’t fallen apart. And I played video games! and nothing bad happened. So I think I can allow myself a break every now and then to have some fun and recharge, just as long as I balance it with some hard work. Balance, everyone. I’ve been talking about that for-freakin-ever. I’m still learning. Another reason to love diarying my thoughts down. That’s right, I’m making words up and I don’t care.

Peace out, y’all.

I wasted most of today with broken streaks and empty beer bottles. I’m at a very slow party in Pablo with a guy named Mike and his makeshift home. He’s built his own skating half pipe in his backyard, which is pretty awesome, except that he had us finish it up for him. It was nice to do the work, but we were at a party, right? Why we working, yo? But it was fine working, especially since it warmed us up from the cold. At least the food was good and the beer was free.

It’s better than how I spent most of the day, which was lying in bed and playing video games all day. I had a shit ton of fun, though, and that was the point of it all. I’m still feeling a bit guilty about not sticking to my old rigorous schedule, but not as much as before. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I’m a little too beered up to know for sure. Out of my big three rocks, the only rock I’ve done today is this entry, and I’m not even done yet.

And it’s now hours later, and I drank a few more beers and smoked some weed, and a bunch of skaters from Canada came and started skating on all the surfaces they could skate on, and it was fun. I had fun. It was a great break from the regularity and rigidity of my normal days, and I’m glad I’m not being so strict on myself. I will soon, though, I think. Not all my days can be spent like today, and that’s a good thing. I would die of alcohol poisoning and social anxiety.

Anyways, I’m tired, buzzed, and eager to play more Batman. Good night!

After 250 days, I’m going to give myself permission to slow down and not write 500 words an entry every night. Tonight will be one of those nights. I just came back from watching the new Mad Max movie, and I thought it was amazing. George Miller’s visual style and kinetic editing is so interesting and entertaining that I loved the movie more than I thought I would. I knew I was going into a nice summer popcorn movie, and that’s what I wanted today, but he took it to a whole other level I wasn’t expecting. Highly recommended if you haven’t seen it yet.

I bought more beer today, and I didn’t work out today. I bought beer, and I’ve been drinking beer since coming home from work, and all I want to do right now is play some video games. I don’t know what exactly is happening to me, but I know I just want to relax and have some fun. So that’s what I’m going to do. Good night everyone!

I gave in and bought beer today. I don’t feel as bad as I thought I would back when I decided not to drink at all, so progress, I guess. I knew I just wanted to play more video games after my workout, and since I knew that, I wanted to drink because it’s even more fun to play while a little bit buzzed. I’m slightly buzzed now, but three beers, regardless of how long it’s been since I’ve drank anything, isn’t going to do too much to me, unfortunately. All I really want to do is get this entry over with so I can get back to playing my games. What the fuck, right?

I almost didn’t work out today. I really really didn’t want to. I wanted to buy said beer, eat, and then spend the rest of the night playing video games. But I did workout. I don’t know how I did it other than just doing it. I just did it because it needed to be done. I remembered the entry a wrote a few days ago where I said how working out simply helps me feel better. And it did today. I feel good. Sore and really tired, but I feel good, and I’m glad I moved my body. I also didn’t want to write this entry tonight, but here I am writing it. I don’t know what exactly is motivating me right now. I think it’s the fact that I don’t want to break this streak I’ve got going. This is day 249, and tomorrow will be day 250. That’s quite the streak, no?

The school year is almost over, and I’m really glad about that. The students are getting on my nerves, a bit, mostly in drama class. They’ve all just checked out, and here I am trying to have them do something fun but they don’t really care. I don’t know if I would want to help teach anything next school year. Maybe it’s not my thing. Besides, there’s always something to do with the technology we have, especially since we’ll be getting a lot more new computers this summer. I had to ask for a bunch of quotes from a few vendors to give to my bosses so they could all have a meeting about it and see what they have in their budget to determine their purchasing decisions. If we get all that I’ve asked for, I would be setting up 22 new computers and about 9 new laptops. That’ll take me a few days to get all set up for sure. Can’t wait.

I’m sorry these entries suck. I think they suck, but I don’t care enough to make them better. I feel like I’ve stopped caring about a lot of things. I’ve felt like this before and it usually passes after some time. So I’m going to enjoy not caring and drink and play some more video games. Because I don’t want to think about my life right now and how unhappy I seem to be with it.

My days, now that they’re simpler than before, feel good. That guilt I was feeling the past few days over not doing things I used to do no longer make me feel guilty. In fact, I feel more relaxed. Where I would feel slightly stressed and pressed to write after work, for example, I now feel relieved and relaxed when I don’t have to, when I can lie in bed and watch some TV and simply relax. I really needed to venture away from extremism and more toward a balanced lifestyle. I’m still trying to find the right balance for me, but for now, I feel good about it.

That’s a big thing I need to pay attention to, my feelings. I was feeling burnt out for weeks, maybe months, but I ignored it because I needed to get this stuff done, and I needed to fill my days with work. I told myself, and I’ve even written about it before, that I needed to be hard on myself because I hated who I was before. I hated it so much that I ran to the complete other side of the spectrum and lived a life of extremes. No drinking. No eating unhealthily. Working out for over 200 days. Write write write every day. Read voraciously. No fun, pretty much. Now I need to swing back to the other side of the spectrum, but stop before reaching the other side. Balance. That’s what I need to find.

I’m still learning. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just trying to do something so that I can be happy and get work done. I want to be a writer, and I know I won’t get there if I don’t write. I also don’t want to be unhealthy. I remember that life, and I don’t want to go back there. So I need to workout and I need to eat well. But it’s okay to drink booze every now and then. I definitely needed it. It made playing video games that much more fun. And I need to journal. I just need to. Even if it’s uninteresting to read to anyone else, I need to get it out.

There are so many holes in my life that I’m struggling to fill, and I notice when I don’t write about it. That tells me I’m either afraid or embarrassed or ashamed about it. One of those things is finding and making friends. I know simply talking to someone about this stuff will help me feel a lot better instead of keeping it all inside. I also need to get out of my house, and in turn, my head, every now and then. I need to laugh more. I used to laugh a lot with friends I lost and with friends that are in other states. I miss that a lot. I miss having fun with people. I hate bitching about it, but I need to in order to make me do something about it. It won’t immediately, but I can always hope.

I worked out for the first time since Thursday, and I feel fantastic. I can’t believe I don’t do this when I’m feeling low. I understand that when I’m sad I don’t want to do anything, but if I just stand my ass up and hit play to some Insanity, my world will be much brighter. It’s ridiculous how effective physical activity is on my mood, but it is and I have to remember that. I started over yesterday, but in truth, today was really the day I started over because I didn’t work out yesterday. I mentioned yesterday my three big rocks: writing in the morning, working out in the afternoon, and blogging at night. I like the simplicity of that, so I’m going to keep this to structure my days for the foreseeable future.

I need to not get burned out anymore. I’m not sure how to do that while still being productive and living a fulfilling life, but it is something I want and need to figure out. I love what I’m doing now, which is simplifying my days and letting myself drink and play video games every now and then. I started Batman: Arkham City today, and I’m having so much fun playing it. I feel relaxed and not as guilty as I felt yesterday. Again, as long as I do my three big rocks, I’m happy. I have had to temporarily postpone some of my old habits, such as transcribing A Farewell to Arms, writing my novel in the afternoon, and journalling in my Confidant notebook. I think I’m going to slowly start adding some of these back into my routine, but I don’t think I can add all of them. I don’t know if I want to write in the afternoons anymore, especially since I’m so close to finishing my novel. It’ll take me a twice as longer now to finish it, but once I do, I would have had to rethink this habit anyway. I do feel guilty about not writing in the afternoon, though.

One thing I wanted to focus on was how I felt about things, like feeling guilty yesterday about not working out and feeling guilty now about not writing in the afternoons. My body is telling me that I should write in the afternoons. I did have that urge to do that today, but I wanted to work out first because I felt that to be more important. I will see how I feel tomorrow after work. All the other dropped tasks don’t make me feel guilty, so those were adding to my burn out, I think. I’m rediscovering myself, in a way, and it’s fun.

I learned a lot about myself the past eight months, and I crashed and burned. Now I’m picking up the pieces and seeing what worked and what didn’t work, and I’m putting it back together in a way that hopefully works out in the long run. This is all an experiment, one I’m glad I’m doing. So, it’s back to basics. I have to take it one day at a time and adjust when necessary. Lets keep those feet moving.

I’m starting over. I’m throwing away everything I’ve done on a near daily basis since starting this blog and rethinking everything before starting over. I burned out and in quite spectacular a fashion, too. I’ve noticed that I’ve hit this cycle a few times already in the past, and I could feel myself entering this cycle again a few months ago or so, but I didn’t know how to course correct. I had committed myself to so many things, and I loved the progress I was making during this productivity flow, but I was completely ignoring all the signs that were pointing toward burn out. So, I’m starting over.

I don’t know what my new days will look like, but I know I can’t commit myself to so many things anymore. I wrote in the morning, but I didn’t in the afternoon. I stopped transcribing A Farewell to Arms for now¹, and I’m thinking of reading in the mornings instead. It won’t be a long session, thirty to forty-five minutes tops, but it’ll be better for me as I can the evening to relax and have some fun. One thing I didn’t do today is workout. I didn’t do it as a sort of test because I wanted to see how I felt by not doing it, and I felt guilty and sad. I need to work out, even if I don’t feel like it. So one idea I had was working out immediately after coming home from work. That way I won’t let my mind interfere and possibly stop me. I just do it. But, I’m not sure. Just thinking out loud.

I played more Batman: Arkham Asylum today. I finished the game yesterday, and now I’m trying to get to 100% completion by finding all the puzzles and hidden areas of the game. I’m a completionist that way. I would love to spend more time playing video games because they’re fun and they really do help me relax. The danger is playing more than I should, especially if it interferes with my other tasks. Like with anything, it’s finding a balance, and that’s the struggle for me. It has been since the early days of this blog when I was trying to find the right balance then.

One thing I need to do is write every night, and that’s where this blog comes in handy. I love that I have this blog. It’s an outlet for me to simply express myself and document the journey I’m on. That’s all it does, but it means a lot to me, and I’m so grateful to have it. I’m still giving myself 500 words an entry, but that’s more out of habit than anything else. I’m not sure if that will change anytime soon. Maybe I’ll allow myself fewer words if the entry asks for it, but I have to be careful about that. I could convince myself that every entry I write deserves fewer than 500 words, and then I start becoming lazy and then I might just stop writing all together. So I need limits.

To recap: I need to write my novel in the morning, I need to workout in the afternoons, and I need to write my blog at night. Everything else is secondary. That means I’m giving reading and playing video games the same weight in relation to each other. Put another way, my three big rocks are writing, working out, and writing again. The rest is simply pebbles and gravel. I can live with that.