I had a better day at teaching the high school kids today than yesterday. I misinterpreted their attitude yesterday as being nonchalant and apathetic because I asked them today what they thought of the assignment and most of them said they loved it. Their previous assignment was to write a soliloquy and recite it in front of the class, and they hated that. They said my assignment was better than that, and I’ll be honest, that felt good. I then asked them if they wanted to make movies this quarter, and they all said yes but that they already made movies earlier in the year. They sucked, they said. Except for this loud kid, who said his didn’t suck. Other people said it sucked. I told them they all sucked, and they laughed.

I came into the class with a few ideas, most of which I repurposed from college, and the drama teacher loved every idea I threw at her. At first this surprised me because she was a drama teacher, and I would’ve thought she would’ve known about a few of the ideas I threw at her, like acting out a scene from a movie. She didn’t know she could find screenplays online. Fair enough. Another one of my ideas was breaking up the students into groups and having them write, act, direct, and film a scene. This might be too much work for them, the drama teacher told me. What if they just get a scene from one of their favorite movies? Sure, I said. As long as they do some work, right? Of course, she said. I asked the students if the last drama teacher taught them anything about making a movie, since they went ahead and filmed one anyway, and they all said no. They were given a camera, a prompt, and told to have at it. This information excited me. It meant that I would be given the opportunity to teach them all about film production in the span of a few weeks. It won’t be much time, but there’s not much to the basics. I’ll see, right?

If you guys can’t tell, I’m excited about all this. I was told today that drama class might be cut next year because there aren’t any qualified drama teachers on staff, and that made me sad. I don’t have a teaching degree or any sort of qualifications to lead a drama class, but I would like to. It’s fun and enlightening. I’m learning a lot because I have to go back and re-learn many of these lessons so I can at least seem competent in front of these kids. Of course, I could be deeply disappointed by them later on in the quarter when I show them one clip from a movie and all they want to do for the rest of the quarter is watch movies. If that’s the case, I’ll pop in some Sergei Eisenstein or Andrei Tarkovsky. I love these guys, but you really have to be a cinema nerd to appreciate them. These kids aren’t nerds. They’re high schoolers.

Teaching is challenging, and I think that’s why I’m going to love it so much. Before I co-taught my first class, I met with the drama teacher in the morning, and we went over the few ideas I had. One of them was having the students break off into pairs and read the first scene of the Social Network. It’s a great scene, and what I loved about it was that it had both a simple setup — two people sitting by a table in a coffee shop — and very complex dialogue. There’s so much going on in this scene, and like typical Sorkin, it’s written very entertainingly. I wanted the students to read the scene a few times and start writing notes beside their lines with action verbs. Each line, I told them, isn’t always delivered straight on. There’s subtext behind the words. A character’s tired or timid or angry. Each emotion will result in a differently delivered line, and I wanted the students to start thinking about that. That was my first project with these kids, and I thought it would be fun and that the students would jump up on their seats and yell with joy and happiness and sprinkle confetti all over me and say how awesome this was going to be, but they didn’t. They sat there with blank looks on their faces and a jaded demeanor that I wanted to slap away.

These are just high school students from a very small town in Montana. They’re not college students. College was so dominant in my head that I don’t remember anything before it. I graduated from high school over ten years ago, and I don’t remember what it was like in my classes. Maybe I would have acted exactly the same way as these students if someone like me came into my class and the first thing he did is tell me to read a ten page scene from a movie and expect to act it in front of the class within a week. I wanted them to memorize the scene, but the drama teacher told me that would be too much for them. Last week, I told her I wanted them to write a five page scene, but she nixed that idea, too. Hell, along with this project, they’re also practicing reading a children’s book to the kindergarten class. I’m not sure what they’re supposed to be learning from this, but it’s something they’re doing and will be graded on. I’m going to have to rethink my game plan going forward with this class, but I’m okay with that.

This is my first ever class. I’ve never taught anything before, and I never thought I’d teach anyone ever. Surprisingly, I’m enjoying it. Like I wrote a few days ago, the best way to know something is to teach it. As I’m on this journey toward becoming a better writer, I know how important I have to treat this class. I’m not only teaching a group of students what I love, but I’m also learning a lot about myself the craft I love so dearly. I just hope I can evolve from wanting to slap them to wanting to hug them. A man can dream, right?

One thing I love about writing this blog is the fact that the seeds to today were planted days ago. As a writer, especially a very introspective and personal writer, I try not to let anything go. If I’m feeling tired and burnt out, I have to investigate why, and this blog has been a great medium for me to do that. I don’t know if I would be where I am today if it weren’t for my blog. It’s given me the opportunity to examine myself as openly and as honestly as possible, and that self-interrogation has helped me grow faster and more fully than I would’ve otherwise. Even when I don’t want to write — especially when I don’t want to write — I sit down and do it anyway because it’s the only way I know how to think.

I’ve been too focused on working during this six month journey that I’ve neglected to reward myself. In the Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg describes something he called the Habit Loop. In short, the habit loop consists of a cue, a routine, and a reward. For a while, I treated my progress and growth as a person, a writer, and an athlete as my reward. In a sense, they are very rewarding, but that reward is so gradual and subtle that I could go days without feeling the beneficial effects of all my hard work. What I needed was a more direct reward: a new toy to play with, a night out with friends, or a tasty dinner at a restaurant. Without these hard-earned and tangible bonuses, I would become more irritable, tired, and burnt out. Fortunately, I made the conscious decision to let myself have fun today, and I’m very glad I did.

I felt rejuvenated today because I let myself have fun and heal. Part of my healing process was going to Starbucks and buying myself a coffee and a muffin. The muffin was delicious and really hit the spot. I ate it much too quickly, though, but it made me smile and that smile hasn’t left my face since. It’s funny because, on the face of it, today doesn’t look that different than any other day. I did all my work, and I checked off all my tasks in OmniFocus, and yet, I feel like I let myself relax and have fun today. I played video games, watched music videos on YouTube, and bought the new Modest Mouse album on iTunes. These activities, although tame and simple, gave me the necessary break from the go-go-go lifestyle I’m used to living, and in the end, that’s all I needed to feel good.

I don’t know what the future holds for me. I don’t know if today is a sign of things to come or a blip on my timeline. All I know for sure is that I have a smile on my face, and I feel good. I’ve written it all down for me to read later and remember that all I have to do whenever I’m feeling tired or burnt out is to relax, have fun, and reward myself with something nice. Because in the end, life is too short not to have some fun.

I wrote once about how much Leonardo da Vinci inspired me as a kid. Remnants of what I learned from him still influence my thoughts and actions. He taught me to always carry a notebook, to live with integrity, and to keep fit and healthy. I’ve said this many times before, but I’m going to say it again: I’m in the best shape of my life. This, above everything else, is something I notice and feel every day, more than what writing, reading, and journaling provide. I understand this sounds vain, but I really enjoy pulling my shirt up and admiring my abs. I’ve never had abs before, and now I have them, and I like looking at them. In a sense, they’re the clearest and most visual example of what I’ve accomplished during my journey.

I’m starting off with this because I haven’t felt well during my past few workouts. There have been a few moments where I felt dizzy, or moments like today where my lower back hurt mightily. It didn’t help that I had double the workouts today, but I had to push through because I really did not want to fail. Even though I’ve felt like my “mental toughness”, something Shaun T says all the time, hasn’t been all that tough, I pushed through, for good and for bad. I always knew that I was more physically fit than where I believed I was, and that it was my mental toughness that held me back during some of my workouts. There are days when I’m not motivated enough to workout, but I do it anyway. I don’t push myself as hard as I do when I’m more motivated, but I’m still sweating buckets by the end of it. Thankfully, tomorrow, and all Sundays for the next month, is my day of rest, so I’m going to try and heal as best as I can.

A few days ago I wrote:

Numbers measuring my progress have kept me in check, and I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for them, but I believe I’ve outgrown them.

I have an app on my phone that I’ve been using since Day 1 to track all my habits and behavioral adjustments. Every day I open up the app and check off every goal I accomplished that day. Sometimes, as I go through my day and about to succumb to some urge, I stop myself because I want to check off that habit in the app and not feel disappointed in myself if I fail. This has included stuff like no alcohol to writing 300 words to eating well. I hate failing, and this has meant that I’ve lived a very restrictive life the past six months. They’ve been very happy days and I’ve accomplished a lot, but I really think I can start relaxing just a tad. I don’t expect to start drinking wine by the gallon or eating fast food every night for dinner for a week or lying in bed 24/7; but I also don’t expect — and, frankly, don’t want — to live this way forever. I shouldn’t hate myself for missing one workout day, even though just thinking about that while I’m this close to finishing my current hybrid workout freaks me out.

Coming back to Leonardo da Vinci, he didn’t finish many things he started. He was a perfectionist and highly curious. He wrote thousands of pages in his notebooks, and he even planned to go back and organize them coherently, but he never got around to it because he kept working until he died. My very regimented and strict lifestyle leaves no room for curiosity and improvisation. I need to change that if I want to improve, and that’s all I really want.

Next week I start teaching a group of high school students all I know about writing and filmmaking. Instead of getting a class of my own, I’ll be joining a teacher’s Drama class to help her out. I sat in on the class today and watched the students work, and frankly, I’m worried. Many of these kids — and kids is all they are — are treating this class as a free period where they don’t expect to work. I treat my craft seriously, and if these kids don’t care, then they’re definitely going to hate me because I’m going to make them earn their grade. When the teacher informed them that I was going to join their class next quarter, many of the students displayed their approval, which made me smile because they didn’t know I mentioned to the teacher earlier of a starter five page story assignment as my first act as teacher. When she heard their murmurs of approval after introducing me, she informed them of my assignment idea and they quickly quieted down. I am going to have my work cut out for me.

In my Confidant journal, where I write my feelings and thoughts about my novel, I wrote about how I hated what I’ve been writing recently. I feel like I’m rushing through this chapter because I want to get through my writing session as quickly as possible. Ironically, a few days ago I wrote about how much I loved where I was going with the chapter. I’m very fickle, and I don’t know how to explain it. I’m a slave to my emotions. That’s why I believe this opportunity to teach kids about what I love came at a very opportune time. The best way to really understand something is to teach it to other people.

I want to master my craft of writing and teaching it will only make me a better writer. I wrote down a few ideas in Vesper during the class, and even though they were vague and generic ideas for what to teach, the entire process energized me. On Monday, I’m going to meet up with the drama teacher and brainstorm a game plan for when I officially start. Since I scanned every sheet of paper I saved from my time at USC, I was able to pull up syllabi from all the writing courses I took in college and gather ideas from them. My goal — and I hope I’m not jinxing myself here — is to teach them the fundamentals of telling a story. Characters. Conflict. Structure. The basics.

I’ve never taught a course in my life. I don’t have a teaching degree, and I know I’m going to fail a lot during this course. The entire thought, though, excites me. I love writing, and I’ve been given an opportunity to share that with other people. I’m hoping that’s enough to help me get started because these are uncharted waters for me. I’m excited and nervous, but the predominant emotion I’m feeling is fear. Nothing easy is worth doing, though, right? Right.

I’m struggling to be a more consistent writer. I want to be a better writer, and I know to become better, I have to write every day. I have to work on my craft as much as I can. I write a lot, but I don’t know how much or if my writing is improving. I don’t give myself enough time to revise my words or think through a concept and develop it organically. I force myself to write 500 words because that’s the only way I know how to measure progress. That might be the problem. Writing 500 words every day is a tangible goal, but what I’m yearning for isn’t something tangible. I’m yearning for something I can’t measure, and I think that’s called art.

I’ve been measuring my progress in many areas of my life that I think have helped me. For example, this is my 200th entry. I rattled off a bunch of stats for my 100th entry, which I can do again: I’m over 65,000 words in my novel. I’m over 124,000 words in this blog. I’m hovering around 170 lbs, but I’ve become more cut in the past few months than ever before. My job is great and still paying well. My car is running great. All my stuff from California is still making me happy. My habits and routines are vast and stronger than ever. My life feels like it’s on cruise control, and I think that’s because I’m so concerned with numbers and not on quality. Numbers measuring my progress have kept me in check, and I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for them, but I believe I’ve outgrown them. My desire isn’t to do something every day anymore because I trust myself to show up and do the work; instead, my desire is to use what I’ve built and improve upon it in a very intangible way, but I don’t know what that looks like yet.

I’m struggling to find something meaningful and enjoyable to write after six months of doing this every day. It’s easier keeping a journal and writing in it every day because those words are just for me. I try not to let this happen, but writing publicly changes what I think I should write about. I want to at least leave my readers somewhat informed on something. Sometimes I don’t know what I want to write about and other times I do. I’m just not consistent. Once I complete my goal of 365 entries, I’m definitely relaxing my daily goal. I’ll continue to write in my journal on a daily basis, but I’ll try to limit by blog output to an entry a week. I hope that’ll give me more time to produce something meaningful. But these are easy plans for the future when I’m more concerned with now.

The only way to improve is to keep producing work that I can evaluate. I need to learn from my mistakes and grow. I need to surround myself with writers better than me and learn from them. I need to do more than just write. I have to live, and that’s the real challenge, isn’t?

I love technology. Specifically, I love my MacBook Air, iPhone 6, and iPad Air. I love the feel of the keyboard on my laptop, especially when I’m writing. I love the look of many of the apps I use, like Ulysses, Scrivener, and OmniFocus. I love how LaunchBar helps me move around my Mac very quickly, and I love how TextExpander helps me type faster by typing less.¹ I love how so much of my administrative life can be done on my phone. For example, a friend of mine emailed me a document that I needed to sign, scan, and email back. From my phone, I opened the attachment, a .docx file, in the free Microsoft Word app, edited it, saved it, and printed it. I then signed the document, printed my phone number and the date on it, and scanned it using Scanbot. I then emailed the resulting PDF to my friend. All this was done in minutes, and that fact still blows my mind. Imagine doing that a few years ago.

As a Technology Coordinator², I spend all my time around technology. From Windows laptops and desktops, to iPads and iPod Touch’s, to my own Apple products, I’m surrounded by it all. I spend most of my time troubleshooting and fixing these devices, but that hasn’t stopped me from loving and appreciating the amazingness these devices can do. Like the above example, technology can help us do and accomplish so much. I really don’t think I can be as productive as I am today if it weren’t for my devices. I’m writing this not too long after finishing dinner, and I’m more glad that I’m worried about having to write in a couple more journals and read a few more chapters of Don Quixote than fighting with the technology I have or worse, living in a world without these devices.

Staring into all these screens for most of the day isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, though. I’ve definitelynitely noticed spending less and less time outside or with other people, especially when I’m focused on some task on one of my devices. For the past few weeks, I’ve been having trouble getting to bed early because of all the things I want to do on my computer. I do need to be more conscious about limiting my screen time. I need to go outside more often, and I’m glad I get to go firefighting this summer, but that’s just a month or two out of the whole year. I live in Montana, home to nine national parks, and I haven’t visited any of them yet. I have hiking gear but I don’t use it outside of firefighting. Taking a walk just to take a walk seems so foreign to me that I don’t remember all the times I walked when I didn’t have a car and enjoying it.

This entry took a strange turn. It went from loving technology to scolding myself for using technology too much. Don’t listen to me you guys. I don’t know what I’m talking about.

It’s harder getting up in the mornings because I’m sleeping later and still waking up at five. I’m drinking more coffee than normal, but it’s simply making things worse, causing me to crash in the afternoon, which then makes writing and working out very difficult. I somehow manage to use my willpower to push through, but I can feel my reserves running on low. Last month, I scheduled an 8:30 PM bedtime, along with tasks filling up every minute of my week. I’ve not adhered to this schedule very well. Before starting this entry, I went and tweaked my schedule so I get to my blog entry first thing after dinner, write in my two journals after, and finish up my night with some reading. I particularly enjoy the reading right before bedtime part because it’ll give my eyes a rest from the blue light emanating from all my digital devices, which I hope will help me fall asleep faster. I need all the energy I can get because I’m working harder than ever.

Last week, I started to write another 300 words every day in the afternoon, and I’ve been successful at it for nine straight days. That means I’ve doubled my usual output, moving up the date I expected to finish my novel from late July to the middle of May. This new habit was easy to implement and sustain because of my experience building and nurturing habits. My trigger to start was getting home from work or sometime after four in the afternoon. Before I begin writing, I’ve been blending a smoothie for me to drink during the session, which mimics my morning coffee. This little act has helped me more than I thought it would because I’ve developed this tic where I need to drink something in between breaks in the writing. Even when the cup is empty, I find myself whipping my neck back and holding the cup to my mouth, trying to taste that last drop sitting at the bottom of the cup. It’s ridiculous, and it might be a superstitious ritual, but it helps.

If we look back at the previous 197 days of my life, we might see the progression from one habit to another habit to another habit. If I remember correctly, the very first habit I tried to build was writing 300 words in the morning. I remember sitting by my desk at five in the morning, my apartment engulfed in darkness, and staring at my laptop screen with the blank page of my word processor waiting for me to write something. I remember sitting there for 45 minutes before I started writing something. I remember trying to work out again but failing because of how sore I felt the next day. Eventually, I started Day 1 of Insanity: the Asylum Volume 1 on October 1st, and I really haven’t looked back since. Since September, I’ve read sixteen books. That’s almost three books a month, which is more than I read the previous year. I’ve meditated for 178 days straight, and I really believe that has helped me to focus and relax. Other than this blog, I’ve started and kept three other journals, and along with the additional 300 words every afternoon, I’m writing more than I’ve ever written in my life.

All this is why I’m tired, but I believe I’m earning my rest. How many people can say that?

I sometimes write my personal essays and journal entries with the understanding that I’m going to re-read them in the future; therefore, I try to write about what I wish to do or hope to become as a way to force myself to do those things. For example, when I first started to journal seriously six years ago, I wrote a lot about my weight and diet. I didn’t like how I looked or felt about myself, and I remember re-reading some of those entries a year or two later and still feeling the same. Eventually I decided that enough was enough and I forced myself to lose the weight and to eat better, and now I’ve never felt or looked better in my life. I’ve written about my lack of a dating life, my wish to become a better writer, and my relentless pursuit to be better. By writing all this down, I hope to set the proper gears in motion wherein I execute everything I want to accomplish.

In an effort to become a better writer, I’m trying to become a better reader. Last week, I began to read Don Quixote. We all know the story of Don Quixote, but one thing I didn’t know before I started reading it was that it was written by a narrator who’s retelling the stories he’s picked up from random books of Don Quixote, who in turn became a knight because of the many histories about knights and chivalry he read. It’s this modern and highly entertaining meta-narrative that was written back in the 1500s that I’m falling in love with. It was this meta-narrative that sparked the thought that eventually produced the opening paragraph of this entry.

Am I living inside a narrative world of my own creation? I don’t mean it to seem as ostentatious or as grandiose as it sounds, but I’m interested in this thought because it makes me reconsider and rethink the whole purpose of journaling, which is what these personal essays are, in the end. Am a journaling to improve myself? Or am I journaling as a cathartic experience, as a way to get everything out of me? I don’t think one answer is more right or wrong than the other, but I believe it’s both because I don’t think I can have one without the other. The only way to improve myself is to expel all my thoughts and emotions into words, and by doing all that, I’m improving myself.

Now that I know this, though, am I going to start writing about all my desires and wishes since I know that by writing it all I have a good chance I’ll execute in all of them? Since I don’t want to find out, I’m not going to do that. Like I wrote about a few days ago, I believe limits help me thrive, and by limiting my entries to just a few desires, then I might have a better time focusing on them and actually executing them well.

Don Quixote went all in¹. I should, too.

Since the day I first started writing a blog, I’ve always yearned to write really good personal essays, but I never gave myself the time to grow enough to accomplish this. Instead, when I sit down to write an entry, I go into it unprepared. I have no idea what I’m going to write about, and what I do end up writing is published unedited and sometimes not proofread. I’m not always proud of everything I write, and I’ve sometimes felt ashamed that I didn’t spend more time with an entry to improve it. My name is emblazoned everywhere, tying me to each and every word I write, and I know I should be more mindful about keeping stock of my name, but I don’t.

One of the biggest issues I’m battling with myself is spending money I’ve not budgeted for on things I want. I have to be careful not to overload my life with tools because they’re new and desirable and instead use the tools I actually have. It’s tough when that new app or notebook or other tool comes out and it looks life-changing, and all I want to do is buy it. Today, for example, my Maker Confidant notebook from Baron Fig arrived. Of course it’s beautiful and well-crafted and I can’t wait to use it, but I didn’t need it. I had their other limited edition Confidant, the three-legged juggler, that I’ve yet to use. Things aren’t different on the digital side.

I’ve been keeping all of my blog entries in their own Scrivener project file since almost the beginning of my blog’s existence. For a while, Scrivener served its purpose really well. It organized and contained all my writings in one place without worry, and all I had to focus on were the words. Recently, though, I’ve felt that I needed another tool that could handle my blog a little differently. Scrivener is great for my novel because I use many of its features, and I can’t imagine using anything else for it. Yet that power is more than I need for my blog. Scrivener handles Markdown fine, but I’ve been using Byword to write all my entries in Markdown and sync that back into Scrivener, but that just made Scrivener a container for all my entries and not really a tool I actively used.

A little over a week ago, Ulysses came out for both the Mac and iPad. I’ve heard of Ulysses tangentially from some Mac sites and podcasts I consume, but I never looked into it. Last week, it was everywhere. Conveniently, the developers offered a demo version of it, which I downloaded and tried out. I fell in love with it immediately. It looks and feels a lot like Scrivener, but it’s a bit simpler and more focused on writing in plain text (aka Markdown) than Scrivener. I love that I can easily and quickly break down one essay into multiple “sheets”, rearrange them at will, and then merge them all back together. I did that with this entry, and it changed my entire view on how I can write in the future that I’m simply excited to keep writing.

I appreciate tools that make me excited to create something with them. I love writing in my Confidant notebook, and that’s a big reason why I have three of them. I love writing my novel in Scrivener, which is why I wanted to write my blog with it, but it absolutely was the wrong tool for the job. Ulysses is the right tool for this particular job. I used the demo version to write this entire entry, and all I have left to say is, “I’m sorry future Mario for the financial debt I’ve put you in, but you have to admit, it was worth it, right?” I’m confident the answer is yes.