Why was I so sad yesterday? That was uncharacteristic of me. I feel better today, and I attribute that to my ridiculous two hour workout, a nice, full day at work, and this gorgeous Montana weather. Yes, I did a two hour workout, and I was sweating buckets by the end of it, but you know what? I feel fantastic right now. One thing I love — really love — is when I’m dripping with sweat, and I’m on my hands and knees, and all I want to do is lie down, stop, and catch my breath, but I don’t because I just have to do one more push-up or one more jump, and when I do and every part of my body burns and hurts afterward, then I know I’m working out, and I know I’m getting stronger, and all of that makes me feel incredible.

When all else fails, I can rely on my routine. My routine has been battle-tested and in development for years, and I’m really grateful that I can fall back on it, even when I’m sad and unmotivated. One thing that I would love to improve, though, is fitting in those unique little tasks into my days because I’ve noticed myself skipping many of them on a daily basis because I just don’t have the time to get to them and give them my complete and utter focus. I know what I have to do to do it (create new habits); I’ve been doing it for years now. I just gotta do it.

I love building things up slowly. I’m over 80,000 words in my novel now. All it took was writing 300 words back in September and continuously adding 300 words on top of that every morning for months. Eventually I doubled my output, and now I’m here: 80,336 words into my novel, which I love more than my first one, and a little over a month to finish it, which I will. I love how my body has transformed from a flabby 230 lbs Mario to a stronger 170 lbs Mario. All it took was my decision to see if I could lose one pound a week, and here I am, three and a half years later.

Nothing worth lasting happens overnight. You need to completely rewrite and redesign your life to be more healthy and in a way that gels with your goals, and above all, you have to live it the way you want to live it. Trust me, there will be some low points — just read yesterday’s post — but in the end, if you find yourself right back into the groove of things after a bad day, then I think you’ve found the right type of life for you.

I’ve been doing this for two hundred and twenty-five days now, and I’m still learning something new about myself, not to mention finding the energy to write something at all. If that’s not proof of what I’m preaching, then I don’t know what else to do.

I wasted this weekend, and I almost didn’t want to write tonight. I didn’t care if I broke my promise or all the many streaks I’ve kept active these past two hundred and twenty-four days. None of me cared. The only thing making me write tonight is habit. I have no idea what this entry is going to be about, and I don’t even know if it’ll be worth reading once I’m done. I wanted to sleep in this morning, but I didn’t because I forced myself to get up because I wanted today to be a good day. I sluggishly went through my morning routine, and once I meditated — which is the last activity in my routine — I began to watch TV and my day went down hill from there. I spent most of the day in bed being unproductive, and I really hate myself for it.

I could’ve been productive today but I wasn’t. I didn’t even care about my todo list today. The only reason I checked stuff off was seriously out of habit. There was no friction in doing them because I’ve been doing them for so long that it’s all just automatic. That’s for the best because I was too unfocused to use my mind at all today.

I’ve been sad all day, and I haven’t been able to pinpoint why yet. Part of me is lonely, and I definitely need more friends and/or a girlfriend, but I don’t think it was that. These fucking beautiful days have brought back some painful memories of days gone by, but I don’t think it was that either. I think it was the fact that I stayed indoors during another beautiful day, like my soul wanted to feel the sun’s rays against my skin because it knew it would make me feel better. I didn’t, though, and I don’t know why. I didn’t even think about it until I started writing my journals today. It made sense to me.

I was thinking of transferring my Squarespace blog to a WordPress one, but I don’t know yet. I don’t know if I want to keep blogging after this project is over. I know I’ve said I do, but my moods change and now I don’t feel like it. I’ll keep journaling, of course, but privately. I don’t know if I like all this openness anymore. Who knows how I’ll feel tomorrow or in a week. I don’t. I stopped trying.

I’m rushing through this now because I just want to reach my word count. I feel like my old self, where a bottle of wine and some fast food was my nightly routine. That and sending texts I knew were going to remain unanswered to someone I no longer give a shit about. I hate when I’m like this, and I don’t want to dwell here for too long for fear of reverting back to him. All I know is that I want to go to sleep and wake up tomorrow ready to go to work.

Mobile photography overtook my focus today, and I absolutely loved it. It meant I didn’t spend my time that wisely, as in, I had a list of todo’s in OmniFocus that I absolutely did not do because I was taking pictures and watching photography courses on Skillshare and editing my photos in various apps on my iPhone. I have no idea if this is just a one-off thing and I’ll wake up tomorrow regretting today’s wasted potential, or if this will turn into a satisfying hobby that will satisfy some sort of creative itch. Time will tell.

My Saturday ritual has started to include a trip to the Starbucks in Polson, and while I waited I took a boring picture of the logo. I wanted to play around with some black and white photography and typography, and I kind of like the end result. I wish I took more pictures at various angles, but I felt that’ll be a little socially awkward for me to do. It’s just a Starbucks after all.

I took this picture after getting a haircut, and I spent at least half an hour editing it in various apps on my iPhone before settling on this final version. I posted it in Instagram, and I really like how it turned out. Montana is beautiful, and I have been here for three years and it feels like I haven’t taken advantage of my time here yet. I don’t know if this photography bug will compel me to travel more and to take more interesting pictures, but if this ends up being the best picture I’ve taken during my time here, so be it. I love it.

Once I came home and parked my car, I saw this field of dandelions just smiling under the bright sun, and I had to take a picture. I took a few pictures, took this one and edited it, and I really like the final result. I upped the saturation, obviously, because I really felt these colors represented spring. Spring doesn’t officially start until Tuesday, but it’s already started here. I love all the green on the ground and the blue in the sky, and everything just feels good when the outside looks like this.

One thing this diversion caused me to miss was reading voraciously. I didn’t read a single word of fiction today, and that makes me sad because, and here it comes, I need to focus on my writing and reading and I failed at that today. It’s great that I found something else that was fun and that provided a momentary break from my usual routine, but I need to be better than this. I have books to read, words to write, and such a limited amount of time to do it all in. Part of me is already feeling like grad school is a done thing. I can’t get complacent. I have to do all the work, no matter the cost.

God… I need to relax, don’t I?

The end of the day sometimes forces me to look back at my day with a wish that it had been different, where I should’ve acted with more purpose and joy. This regret fills my heart with a present that should’ve been instead of this sorrowful reality. These beautiful sunny days are my first in Montana in a long time where I finally feel at home, yet I’m missing people I used to have in my life and people I wished were in my life but have never been. I feel withdrawn from society when I shouldn’t be since I have so much to offer. I’m alone right now because I choose to be alone.

I need to write, and I need to read, and I need to work. I’m directing all this physical and intellectual effort toward one particular end, and that’s to be my best. I need to be my best because life is too short to live it in mediocrity. Life depends on how I spend its time, and I want to spend it working. So these brief moments of sorrow I’m suffering need to be worth it; I have to make them worth it.

Life, like any good journey, has its ups and downs. I was down for a while, but over these past two hundred and twenty-two days, I’ve pulled up my bootstraps and started climbing that mountain, and I feel like I’ve reached the top and can see the whole world of possibilities. I can lift my hand up in the air and reach for the stars because that’s all I want to do. I want to reach for the stars and do all that I’m capable of doing. It’s an insane feeling because I feel like I can do anything.

At the end of the day, though, I’m only human. As much as some people think I am, I’m not a robot. I do get tired and burnt out, and I do feel unmotivated and sad and every other emotion in the human language on some days. For example, I’m really forcing myself to write right now because I feel sad, and I don’t want to write anything. Why am I sad? Because I’m alone, mostly. I would’ve loved to spend this beautiful sunny day with someone, which made me nostalgic, which made me sad and regretful.

I wrote in my writing journal today that I should stop writing in this blog and instead use that time to work on my novel or to build up a short story portfolio. That idea sounds super appealing, but I did make a promise to write 365 entries. I’m very close to accomplishing that, and breaking it now seems ridiculous. I’m conflicted, though, and I don’t know how I want to proceed yet. I really want to improve my fiction, and I especially want to build up a portfolio of short stories for grad school. I thought of maybe cutting the word count for these entries from 500 to maybe 250 words. It’ll still be daily, but it’ll be shorter. I might move in that direction if my urge to write more fiction is stronger than my urge to keep my blog writing streak going.

I read the first short story from Flannery O’Connor’s book, Everything That Rises Must Converge, and it was great. It was better than great, it was awe-inspiring. Her very first line revealed so much in a single sentence that I feel embarrassed for my sentences. How powerful a simple sentence can be. I love learning this stuff. I only read the story once, but I’m going to read it again tonight before bed, and I think, once I read the rest of the book, I’m going to transcribe a few short stories and start learning from them as much as I can. Because wow: I’m a sorry excuse for a writer.

If I want to get into graduate school, and not just any graduate school, a great graduate school, I have to be a better writer. I have to tear my writing down and build it up again with writers that are a thousand times better than me. I have to learn and I have to read and I have to write. Above all I have to write and agonize over every sentence. I really think if I did that with my novel, my 77,000 words can easily turn into 30,000. Maybe I’m being a bit too extreme, but that’s how I feel right now.

I have this abnormal desire to be just be the best right now, and it’s driving my every thought, my every move, and it makes me feel great. I’m also pushing my body every day to the extreme ends of what its capable of and those endorphins coursing through my veins feel amazing. They’re addicting, and I don’t know why more people don’t work out. Get your ass up and move people. Your body will thank you and there’s nothing wrong with looking amazing.

I love pushing myself when I’m tired, especially when I’m tired, because that’s the only way I’ll get stronger. That’s the only way anyone will get stronger. It applies to everything other than exercise. I’m a better writer today than I was six years ago, but I’m still pushing myself harder than ever. Even if I write a million words a year (2,700 words a day — totally doable), that doesn’t guarantee mastery or anything. Mastery means more than just doing something. If that activity is done mindlessly, then you’ll be at the same level you were a decade before, if that’s how long you’ve been doing it. It takes deliberate practice to improve, and that means complete focus and determination to be better. That’s where my mind is right now. And I want to be better.

For me, that starts with my sentences. My subjects and my verbs. Those simple and complex ones. And everything in between and around them. I focus so much on what I’m trying to say, and I don’t spend enough time in how I’m going to say it. It’s a shift in thinking, but it’s something I have to do. If it’s not hard, it’s not worth doing, right?

I finished reading the first part of Don Quixote, and a few hours later I received Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor and Runaway by Alice Munro. I’m going to take a break from reading the second part of Don Quixote and focus my energies on reading and learning from these two books of short stories. I’m excited. With all my focus geared toward improving my craft, I’m living a happier life.

I feel more creative. I have a few characters in my novel that I love writing, and I started writing them again yesterday, and everything I’m writing with them I love. They’re funny and tragic and they’re the heart to my story, so much so that I’m thinking of focusing on them a lot more in the second draft. I’m also nearing the end of my story, so everything’s converging toward the climax, and I’m having fun writing that. I’m supposed to be finished with this novel sometime next month, and that deadline both scares and excites me. It’s good to have a deadline, but that also means I need to start wrapping things up and getting ready for the rewrite. Can’t wait.

The main drama teacher is gone for the rest of the week, so I was able to take charge of the class and act on a few of the ideas I’ve wanted to play around with. Like fun improv activities. We played one called Freeze, where two students stand up and start acting a scene that I give them. Later, someone in the audience yells Freeze! and takes the place of one of the actors — pose and all — and continues the scene. I would then yell Stop! and give them a different prompt once things were slowing down. We had a lot of fun, but I noticed a lot of the same kids going up and doing all the work. We had to call on a few students to come up and start participating. They did well, but I would’ve liked them to be more active. That’s something I could work on later.

They start acting their Social Network scenes tomorrow, if we have complete groups available. Our school — and possibly our district or the whole state of Montana — thought it wise to schedule more of their track meets during school hours. I had most, if not all, of my track meets after school. They weren’t going to have us miss school because of an insignificant track meet. But I guess in Montana they feel the opposite. So many of our drama students are in track and so they’ll be gone tomorrow. If we have groups, we’ll go; if not, we’ll probably do more improv. Fine with me. Our next assignment has something to do with Fairy Tales, but we haven’t figured that out yet.

Pretty standard and habitual day, unfortunately. The more I simply read and write and workout and not do much else, the less material I have to work with to use in these entries. I may not make it a full year not for lack of discipline, but for lack of material, and to save my few readers the trouble of reading something very boring.

I’d rather read than write right now. Take that for what it’s worth.

As a reaction to yesterday’s entry, I read Don Quixote as much as I could, fitting in reading times during the little breaks of my day. I was able to get farther into the book than usual, and I’m really grateful for that because I’m really close to finishing the first part of this really good novel. Don Quixote, the book, is hilarious, and Don Quixote, the character, is amazing. He’s committed to becoming a great knight-errant, and he’s doing all he can to be one. How many of us can say that about anything in our lives?

Last year, I wrote a short story for the Sycamore Review Wabash Prize for Fiction. I thought the story I wrote was pretty good, but it was declined. I had to pay a submission fee to enter, which also paid for a year’s subscription to their literary journal. A few months ago they sent my first journal from my subscription, which I haven’t gone through, and today, I received my second journal. The first one didn’t have last year’s fiction prize winners, which is why I haven’t read through it yet, but the second journal does have last year’s short story winner and finalists, which I’m eager to read soon. These entries were considered good enough for publication, so there has to be something there that I can learn from.

Tomorrow I should get two more books containing short stories. A big reason why I read so much Don Quixote today was because I wanted to quickly start these two books. I don’t think I’ve ever tried reading two fiction books at the same time — other than the time in 2011 when I read a Shakespeare play a week along with whatever book I was reading — but I’m considering doing that and incorporating it into my routine somehow. I’m thinking of a morning reading and a nightly reading or something like that. I won’t know until I figure it out, naturally.

I also bought Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace and the revised version of Getting Things Done a little over a week ago. I also want to get started on these books soon, plus I’m building a substantial list of fiction books I want to buy that will help me become a better reader, and in turn, a better writer.

I’ve never been so focused on one thing in my entire life. My goal is to be a better writer, and I’m trying everything I know how to be that. I don’t consider these entries a reflection of my skill and talent because I truly believe writing is rewriting, and I don’t do that with my blog entries. Instead, my blog is a place where I get to think aloud, and I think it’s been that since the beginning. It’s where I try to keep myself accountable, write out what I’m thinking, and document the progress I’m making as a writer and a human being. I used to feel so guilty that my entries weren’t that good, but I’m glad they weren’t. They shouldn’t have been.

What I need to do, and what I’m doing, is to focus on my literary fiction, whatever that means. That, again, means reading and writing as best as I can. Lets do this.

I want to tell stories. That’s essentially why I write. Whether they’re fictional or biographical, I like telling stories. I have to keep reminding myself about that because I’ve been feeling insecure about my writing recently, and if I really think about it, I’ve always felt insecure about my writing.

I feel like it doesn’t matter how much I write if it’s not a super focused activity. If I write habitually and, in a sense, mindlessly, then there’s no way I can improve. I can see it in my writing, and I can feel it when I read it. This is one area of my life where I have to be hard on myself. Writing chose me, and it’s something I have to do, but writers needs to be read. I need to be read. I have to be published, and I’m just not good enough yet.

As a response to my insecurity, I spent $25.93 on two books today, both of which are short story collections. I bought them because I need to improve my short stories. Hell, I have to write more short stories, and to be better, I have to read authors who write really good short stories.

I’m also rushing through my novel right now. I need to get through the first draft because then I feel that I will finally start writing. I’ve written 76,000 words, but that’s not a novel. It’s a couple hundred pages full of false starts and tangents I should never have taken. I need to refine my characters, tighten my plots, and improve my sentences. I need to keep revising it until everything flows and reads like a novel. I’m too far away from that right now, so again, I need to get through this first draft before I can start writing.

I think I need to rethink my daily routine. I do a lot of writing but not enough reading. I need to read more. I also need to write more fiction if I intend to improve it. I don’t know what this looks like yet. Part of me wants to cut my daily blog entries, but I made a promise to myself to write for a full year. I’m 147 entries away from that, including this one. I could always sleep less, but with all the Insanity I’m doing, that might not be a good idea. I’m also thinking about cutting back my workouts, but I need to workout my body, so I can’t cut that. What I’ve been thinking of doing is not writing 300 words every afternoon. Instead, I could spend that time either revising my novel or reading seriously. I’m not sure yet. Hell, I don’t know anything right now.

All I know is that I need to be a better reader and a better writer. I feel like this is an excuse, but there isn’t enough time in the day for me to do what I need to do. I feel crushed by the weight of my own ambition, and I don’t know what to do.

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” — Douglas Adams

I keep a journal where I write the thoughts and feelings I have about my novel. I’ve been beating myself up over the perceived lack of quality that I’ve been writing in my novel, like how bad I am, how I will never get into grad school because I suck, and how how I’m just wasting my time writing so much. When my writing’s not going well, my mood changes and I lash out at the only person who cares: me. I don’t know how much of what I’m berating myself about is actually true, but it hurts sometimes and motivates me to do better the other times. If I want to be a good writer, I have to do everything I can to make it happen, and I think this journal helps me get there, especially because I’m hard on myself.

Like with most of my paper journals, I limit myself to a page an entry. I do this because it gives me a goal to reach, and it makes it easier for me to peruse later. I’ve done this with most of my Moleskine journals, and since I’m writing this in the bigger Confidant notebook, I’m forced to write more. I date every page because I love knowing when I wrote something, and I number every page in every notebook I’ve ever owned because it makes it easier to reference other entries. Page numbers also provide a visual way to know how many more pages there are left in the notebook or how much I’ve written in it so far. I really like the blank pages of this notebook. Not being constrained by lines gives each page a unique look that I like, and seeing each line written straight as if on some line anyway gives me pride.

This journal didn’t start off so negatively. It held so much promise. I wrote down character sketches and ideas and outlines and anything I thought would help me write my novel better. As its function evolved into a personal journal, my thoughts turned more negatively. I demanded better from myself, so I decided to write another 300 words in the afternoon. My extra output has really helped me realize how quickly I need to write the first draft because that’s the only way I know how to discover the story I want to write about. I’m discovering my story with each scene I write, and that has meant I’ve written some very crappy scenes. It’s these crappy scenes I’m berating myself about. I shouldn’t because I know they’re crappy and I need them to be crappy so I can improve them during the rewrite.

I keep writing in my journal about how much I want to get to the rewrite already. I have ideas on how to make it better, and I want to write them. I also know, however, that I need to get to the end as quickly as possible because I’m afraid I’ll be stuck in rewrite mode forever and never finish the damn thing. I’m planning to finish this first draft within the next month, and even though I shouldn’t care how crappy it becomes, I will care. It’s going to be hard finishing it with this self-imposed deadline, but maybe that’s something I can write about in my journal.

Instead of berating myself over the lack of quality in my work, I could berate myself about meeting this deadline.

I spent the majority of the day watching Daredevil on Netflix, and it’s so good that I almost succumbed to my desire not to do any work today. That feeling was so strong and so familiar that it scared me a little bit. I hadn’t felt that in a long time, and I thought I grew stronger than that during this journey. I was wrong, and now I have to think about my discipline again. Truthfully, I really want to finish writing this entry so I can squeeze in one more episode of the show before I grow tired and fall asleep. I even switched things up a bit tonight and finished the rest of my nightly routine, leaving me with just this entry to write.

Part of me is glad that I gave myself the entire day to watch a very good television show. The other part of me, though, the part of me that knows I should be more focused and disciplined than that, isn’t glad. I should’ve read more, should’ve written more, and shouldn’t of eaten so much. I ate a lot today. I tend to eat a lot when I watch a lot of television, and that’s a big reason why I wanted to watch less TV. I’m still working out as hard as usual, and for the most part, I’m eating well, so I shouldn’t be that afraid of eating a few too many bagels one day out of the week. My mind might actually need it more than it thinks it does.

I’m almost done with my novel, but I think I finally cracked a few storylines that have been giving me issues since the beginning. I’m very ready for the rewrite because I know the changes I want to make, and I know what I need to do to make the whole story better. But I want to finish it first. I don’t want to go back and start over, in a sense. I need to keep moving forward until I reach the end. Then I can work on revising it.

I don’t know if I’m good enough to get into graduate school. I have my doubts, and unfortunately, my doubts are overcoming my other emotions. I know I have a fighting chance to get into a good school if I only tried, but my doubts are slowly convincing me that I shouldn’t even try. I don’t like feeling that way, but I also didn’t do any work today to overcome my doubts. Instead, I drowned myself in television and didn’t do much thinking about myself. I entered the world of Hell’s Kitchen and forgot about my own for a good eight hours.

This isn’t who I want to be, is it? I know how hard that sounds. I should let myself have some fun every now and then. I know that. But I’m also on a mission to spend as much of my time writing and reading and improving myself in all possible ways. Why do I feel so guilty for watching television? I shouldn’t be.

I am, though.