I’m about half way through Month 2 of Insanity Max: 30, and I believe I hit a plateau this week. All of my times are improving from last week’s workouts, which is a good sign of progress, but I’m not pushing myself as hard as I should. My weight has remained steady for weeks now, and I seem to look about the same, too. I’ve plateaued, and I don’t know what it’ll take for me to move past this. That’s partly because I’m okay with where I am right now. I look good, I feel good, and all in all, I’m doing good in all facets of my life. I have no drive to push myself past the breaking point, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

I don’t want to slow down. I don’t feel like slowing down, and that’s a good thing. I don’t feel burnt out; in fact, I feel super motivated to keep pushing myself harder and harder. But that’s mostly toward my writing and not my health. My health has been a constant during this journey, and it’s one of those things that has outplayed its novelty factor and has turned into this thing I just do. Insanity is fun, and I love Shaun T¹ yelling at me to keep pushing myself, but I’m not. Not really. Again, I’m happy with where I am, and these workouts just feel like maintenance. My weight’s steady, my progress is steady, and my mood is content. Don’t know what to do.

I don’t want to stop working out, though, not even for a little bit. That week I took off last month when I was sick really showed me how much I need to work out. I remember feeling like working out the day after my first off-day, but since I was still sick, I didn’t. Working out fuels the rest of my life. If I didn’t work out, I don’t think I’d have this fire to make myself the best writer I can be. What might be happening is that this fire is a finite resource, and I’ve just shifted it over from working out toward writing. That’s actually a very comforting thought, and one I’m going to tell myself and believe now. Who knows? Maybe one day being the best writer I possibly can be will be one of those things I just do.

I don’t know what it’ll take for me to break through this plateau. I know the way I’ve beaten them before was by pushing harder until my progress returned and I could start seeing and feeling the results again. I don’t know if that’ll work this time. At least not as easily as “pushing harder.” That’s a given. I have to push harder. I also need to want it more than I want anything, and right now, I want to be the best writer I possibly can and not be in even greater shape because I’m already at the best shape of my life. It sucks, but it’s true.

I’m in don’t regress mode, and for now, I’m okay with that. I just know I won’t be forever. And that’s one thing I love and hate about myself. I have to keep moving my feet.

I’m reading Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose, and one of the many things I love about this book is the systematic detail she goes into. She has chapters with names like Words, Sentences, Paragraphs, Details, Gestures, and so on. Each chapter is devoted to these varied topics with fantastic examples from great writers and their novels, and I’ve learned so much. As a writer who, unfortunately, doesn’t read many classic novels, I’ve learned not only that I need to read a lot more, but also how I can improve my very own writing. Her chapter on Gestures, which I read today, was a revelation. I highlighted like half the chapter in my Kindle, and I most definitely want to re-read the whole book again soon after I finish it tomorrow. If anyone is interested at all, and I highly recommend this book, it’s only $10 on Amazon.

I cracked open my Confidant notebook again and started writing more notes about my novel in it. I’m really looking forward to simply pouring out all the thoughts I’m having about my novel and forcing myself to find the purpose in everything I’m doing. Why did this character do this? Why did I make this big event happen here and not later? How can I write this sentence, paragraph, chapter better? What can I cut? The work ahead of me seems endless, but boy am I having some fun.

The Charter technician came today and fixed my internet. He switched out a few filters from god knows where and traded my old modem with a new one. I’m sure it’s just a placebo effect, but everything seems faster now. And of course with my internet back, I reverted back to old habits of watching TV during dinner instead of listening to podcasts or doing something more productive. I should be asleep right now, but instead I’m writing this because I wanted to spend a half hour watching TV. This is really one of the only sore spots in my life right now. No internet means no TV, which means more time to write and read and learn. This is tough. Trying to spend every minute of every day doing something extremely productive all in an effort to make me the best writer I can possibly be right now is not a walk in the park.

No sane man does this, right? Not everyone breaks down their schedule by the minute with nothing but tasks that are productive and super focused on making them a better writer, right? People actually live their lives, right? I’m not sure when I became super focused on this, but I’m glad I did. I’m learning a lot about myself and what I can do. I’ve never been this focused on one thing before, but I’m really liking it. I really think I can produce the best work of my life right now, and all I need is more time and more consistency to prove it to myself.

I’m just not there yet.

I came home yesterday with my internet down. I called Charter, my ISP, and the customer rep tried a few tests, which all failed, and concluded that a technician would have to come to my house and check it out. This tech won’t come until tomorrow, so for the past two days I’ve been without internet at my home. For the most part, I’ve been totally fine without it, which completely surprised me. Well, for one, I do still have my cell phone, which I’ve used as a hotspot on my laptop. I’m not going to let a little internet downtime prevent me from blogging, but I do also have the means to get some internet when I need it. But second of all, I can’t do much of my usual web browsing on just a limited LTE connection. I can’t watch videos, for example, and videos were and will be soon my most time consuming unproductive activity that I do. So instead of watching TV, I’ve been listening to podcasts or music while I ate, or pulling out my Confidant notebook and writing notes about my novel, or going to bed a little earlier, or working out a little earlier, or reading a little more. In short, I feel like I’ve been more productive these past two days than I normally do, and that’s awesome.

A few years ago, when I first moved into my studio apartment, I consciously decided that I didn’t want to get internet for my home. I was in deep minimalist mode back then, so I tried to live with only the essentials, and the internet wasn’t one of them. I, again, did have my cell phone, which I used to create a hotspot, but back then, I only had 300 MB a month to use. Needless to say, I didn’t use the internet that much. I lasted about three months, and I sometimes miss those days because I read so much at that time. I read so much because I had the time to read. I wasn’t distracted by YouTube or Hulu or Netflix or a million different time-consuming distractions on the internet. It was a more peaceful time back then. Now, though? I need a constant internet connection to live my life. It’s insane.

I’ve been focusing more of my time toward my novel. My novel sucks. It has always sucked, and that’s something I really want to change. I feel I can produce something much better than what I have right now. I know I can. I can feel it in my bones. But, the problem is, I haven’t done that yet. That’s something I want to change, and I think I’m slowly building up a habit where I can spend more time on this that’ll actually stick in the long run. Today, I guess, is technically day 3 of this habit, so I don’t know for sure what I’ll be doing a week from now. I hope to still be doing all I can to produce the best damn work of my life, with or without the internet.

Sometime’s life’s little annoyances can reveal something beneficial and fortuitous. It all depends on my perspective. And what I want to do is get shit done, and that’s all I care about right now. That’s all I’m allowing myself to care about because life’s too short to worry about not having internet at home right now.

I learned how to disarm a guy today at school. You grab the barrel of the gun with one hand and pull it away from the perp, grab the barrel with the other hand and twist his arm toward your body while turning your back against him and pulling the gun away. I practiced this with trained police officers and a group of teachers from school, and I had a lot of fun. I learned four basic defensives moves: an overhead punch, with the meat of your hand and not your fist, sort of like swinging a hammer; elbow strikes, either straight on or coming from above; knee strikes, where you grab his shoulders and strike his body as hard as you can; and a kick, where you use the heel and not the toes of your foot, to push yourself away from him and get some distance. Put them all together and you have a very effective combo to disorient the perp that hopefully buys you time to get away or let others get away or to simply give others enough confidence to dog pile him and subdue him until the authorities come.

All this was a small section of a larger class about preparing ourselves in case of a school shooting. Not every school in the country wants to do this type of training because they feel that school should be a school, a place of learning and not of violence. But in an age where school shootings are increasingly common, it’s nice that our administrators deemed it necessary to train their staff in this. We examined a lot of school shootings from the past, from Columbine to Virginia Tech to Newton. It was all very enlightening, and our teacher, a big white guy with a beard and named after Levi’s, was very funny, very serious when he needed to be, and very clear in his message: school shootings are remarkably short, and police response times are just a bit longer, so the onus on protecting ourselves and our kids falls on us. Even just being told that hitting people is okay, which goes against everything we were taught and are teaching our students at school today, goes a long way toward saving lives.

When there’s a guy with a gun shooting people, you have three options: run, hide, or fight. We did drill after drill practicing different scenarios that incorporated all three options, and all of them were tough, enlightening, and scary. During our first scenario, all we heard was yelling and gunshots. Some of us tried barricading the door, but others started jumping out the windows in the back of the classroom. Unfortunately, they jumped right into the path of the shooter. Another scenario had us hear the shots and before we could do anything, the shooter burst into our classroom and started shooting at us. Our teacher was shot first, but luckily, we had a bunch of guys attack the shooter with desks and chairs and we were able to pin him down and dog pile him. And in another one, once we heard the shots, we had enough time to lock the door and barricade it with desks, tables, chairs, anything we could find, and we waited. We heard the shooter try to open the door, but since he couldn’t get in and all he wanted to do was rack up the body count, he left and didn’t bother wasting time on us.

These exercises were scary. We knew a shooting was going to happen. We knew the few things we needed to do to protect ourselves. But once those shots were fired and we heard screaming, a lot of us just froze. We were taught about the herd mentality. If we see everyone not doing anything, we’re all not doing anything waiting for someone to do something. If we see some people start running and jumping out of windows, then most of us are going to do the same thing, oblivious to the fact that maybe there’s another shooter back there waiting for us. And if some people start fighting, others start fighting, too. It’s amazing to think that this is how we operate, but it’s very true.

I’m very glad and very grateful I was asked to do participate in this class, considering I’m not really a teacher. In fact, I was the only non-teacher there, which was a little awkward, in a way. I guess I am teaching a class next quarter, so I guess that’s why the principal asked me to take the class. If something like this happens while I’m teaching a group of kids, I’m responsible for their lives. I have to be ready to tell them what to do because our lives depend on it. It sucks that these are the times we live in, but we do, and we have to prepare ourselves and our kids for it. Because a little bit of preparation, no matter how much it sucks, can save lives. Levi, our instructor, was in the Army, and in the Army they taught him to “Embrace the suck.” That’s what we did today, and I think we’re all better off for it.

I love having a job because it has helped me manage my time in a really productive and focused way. That’s something I realized this weekend. I couldn’t imagine trying to build a routine with, at most, 16 hours a day for 7 days a week. Instead, I just have the weekends to do that, and that’s something I prefer more because, for one, 2 days are easier to swallow than 7, and because these two days both follow and precede a 5 day workweek, where my hours for each of those days are eaten up by a job, forcing me to maximize¹ those few hours I do have for myself.

I spent most of my weekend² catching up on my web reading. Web reading is exactly what it sounds like: reading information that came from the web. That’s different than my more focused reading, which usually involves my Kindle or a real book. I love to do most of my web reading on my iPad because it’s the most comfortable device to use for this type of activity. The screen is beautiful, both crisp and clear, and the device is so simply made that it disappears into the background and the actual content comes forward in a very lucid way. My newish routine has really come into its own these past few weeks, and that’s given my weekends a new energy that I love. I’ve been designating them as my reading days, even though I read from a book every night. Because of my job and my other habits and routines, I don’t have much time to read recreationally. That’s why I love the weekends so much now: I get to catch up on the week’s articles that I couldn’t get to. It’s really made me feel not only more productive, but also more curious.

I grabbed my Confidant notebook, printed novel, Kuru Toga pencil, and red Pilot pen, and rethought and reworked my novel. I focused on just the first chapter because I didn’t know how exactly I was going to do this task. The task, as it appears on OmniFocus, is “Rewrite and revise novel.” It’s vague and open enough that I can do anything I want, as long as I do something. Today was the first trial run, and I think I was successful. I’m planning to throw away a lot of what I’ve already written and start over. I re-read the first chapter, crossed out a lot of paragraphs, wrote some notes, and rethought the whole purpose of the chapter. That set me down the path of finding the purpose of each chapter I’ve written so far, and when I brought in the main goal of the book and applied them to each chapter, I realized how off-track I went with a few of those chapters. I don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow, since I have to start on a new chapter³, but all I know is that I like the path I’ve set for myself. It means more work for me, but what else would I rather do than work at what I love?

It’s amazing how my mood changes when I’m not just productive, but when I’m productive in things that actually mean something to me. I feel that fire inside of me that wants to engulf everything in a majestic conflagration of joy and gratefulness. It’s a marvelous feeling that I know won’t last, but I’m glad when it’s here right now with me. It’s amazing and it makes me happy I’m alive.

With each sunrise and sunset, I move further away from the person I don’t want to be anymore and toward someone I can’t even imagine; yet, I will always keep dragging the weight of my past behind me while chugging along into the future. Time never changes down here on earth. How I spend my time is how I choose to live my life. Time shaped who I am right now, and only through time can I live the type of life I want.

I keep chipping away at improving myself, and with all the small victories I’ve racked up over the past 160 days, I’m at a point where I feel confident enough to do anything. For the past few weeks, I’ve been attempting to rearrange and rethink how I live my days, and for the most part, that meant focusing more on my writing and all the peripheral tasks that can improve it and less on those things that are either unproductive — watching TV, surfing the web, etc. — toward more productive things, things that I love to do but haven’t focused fully on, things like writing, reading, and learning.

I want to be published. That’s it. That’s my goal. I want to write something good enough that somebody with the power to publish it, will. That’s the simple truth of it. But to be published, I have to write. Not only do I have to write, I have to write well. Not only do I have to write well, but I have to finish something, and I have to improve it and improve it and improve it until it becomes better than good enough. In fact, it has to be better than even that. It has to be the best thing I can physically produce at this moment in time. And to do that, I have to keep writing, to keep doing better than my best, and to keep doing all of that every day.

My novel sucks right now. It started off with an intoxicating energy that propelled the first three chapters forward and gave me a false sense of confidence. Six chapters later, though? I want to throw every byte and printed page into an incinerator and pretend I never wrote any of it. Hell, I kind of want to do the same thing to this blog. There’s something about fires that I like. It purifies every thing in its path. I feel like I’m in need of some sort of purification. Catharsis, maybe. Maybe that’s what the past few weeks worth of focus have been about.

There’s something about starting over that feels good, but once the beginning stares at me and taunts me and laughs at my own incompetence, I feel the drench of fear raining on me like some sort of hell-cloud. Then I realize I don’t have to start over. That I don’t really want to start over. That I’m just afraid that I might be a failure or that I will fail. Fail at what, though? Somebody else’s expectations of me? But what about my expectations of myself?

That’s why I keep moving my feet. I keep moving forward because there’s no where else I can go. Time will keep pushing me forward, regardless of how I feel about it. All I can do is take the damn reins and control my own destiny.

I’m resolved to focus my days more on my writing from this day forward. There have been things I’ve been doing that don’t really help my writing out in any way, and I’m going to see how I can either sprint through completing them or deferring them to some far-off future date. There’s this block of time in the middle of every day that I can use to spend some time improving my writing in some way that I’m not using in a productive way, and that’s the block of time I want to focus on. I write every morning and night, so it’s only fitting I write every day, too.

I finished transcribing the Great Gatsby today. I’ve been chipping away at this project for way over a year, and I’m glad I’m finally done with it. The last two pages were the saddest to write because this book has been a part of my life for a few years now, and now it’s over. But when one thing ends, another thing begins. I’m going to start transcribing Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms tomorrow morning. This is a much longer book, and it’ll probably take me a lot longer to complete, but that’s okay. This is not a sprint. The point is to learn, and I learned a lot while transcribing the Great Gatsby. I’m sure I’ll learn something from Hemingway pretty quickly. I finished re-reading this book tonight for the third time. It’s a sad story, and there’s way more dialogue than I remember, and Catherine can be kind of annoying, but I like his style. It matches my temperament, I think. Simple. Honest. Unflinching.

I compiled my novel — what I’ve written so far — and printed it at work today. It was over 49,000 words, or 242 manuscript pages, and I’m only halfway done. I want to spend not only this weekend, but every day, revising and rewriting and revising and rewriting and revising and rewriting until the story, the characters, the words are just right. I want to be proud of this novel, even if it won’t change the world or anything. It’s changed mine, and I’ll be eternally grateful for it. I know it can be better, and I’m both afraid and eager to get started. I’ll see, right?

As for my blog, today marks day 159. I’m almost halfway through this journey, and I don’t know what I’ve learned, to be honest. I started it because of some girl, and now I’m pretty sure I’m over her now. It took me a good while, but I think I’m finally there. I’m working harder than I’ve ever worked in my life, and I’m making the most money I’ve ever earned in my life, and I’m in the best shape of my life, and I’m reading a book a week again, and I’m writing a novel and enjoying the whole damn process, and that’s more than I can say 159 days ago. Does that mean I’m good to go? That I’m done?

Hell no.

This is for life, bitches.

My body is tired from the beatings Insanity has given it this week. I wasn’t this sore at any time during Month 1, but now with Month 2, I’m sore and tired and cranky. I haven’t been able to go to sleep at 8:30 like I’ve wanted to. Every time I do happen to have everything finished by then and I try to fall asleep, I can’t. I lie in bed for at least an hour before I finally doze off. Last night, I couldn’t go to sleep until after 10. It was annoying. Insanity hasn’t helped me fall asleep any quicker, and instead, since I don’t get at least the 8 hours I want to get, I wake up sore, tired, and super cranky.

This week has been tough, and I’m not sure why exactly. It’s been pretty humdrum at work. No crises. The internet is up and running just fine. A few printers here and there have been causing me headaches, but that’s it. I’m getting along really well with everyone at work, and I’m really enjoying coming to work every day. My routine is rock-solid at home. My morning routine has helped me get my novel written, and has helped me transcribe the last few pages of the Great Gatsby. I finish it tomorrow. That’s insane. My nightly routine has helped me keep my blog updated with personal entries that have helped me learn more about myself, and it has also helped me to finish reading A Farewell to Arms tomorrow. I start transcribing that on Saturday. Really crazy. So why has it been a tough week?

I don’t know. My first reaction was that I was burning out, but my gut tells me that’s wrong. I don’t feel burnt out. I feel super energized, actually. I love what I’m doing. But I am tired. I am questioning my life right now. I want to do something crazy just so it shakes things up a bit. That thought on its own is crazy. I don’t really want to do that, but I am yearning for something. That quiet desperation I wrote about weeks ago went away for a bit as work got really crazy, but it feels like it has come back, and with a damn vengeance, too.

It’s Valentine’s Day at school tomorrow. All the kids will be giving their classmates cards and candy and other things, I’m sure. The senior’s are doing something with flowers. I saw a group of girls with pink and red roses in the office today, tying them up or something. They’re doing something. Some co-workers even bought candied hearts and other Valentine-themed candy for those kids who don’t get anything, which, they’ve told me, happens every year. That’s sad. I don’t have a Valentine and I don’t expect to get anything, but kids shouldn’t feel sad on this day. It’s a day to love and to feel loved. No heartbreaks allowed.

I don’t know how tomorrow is going to turn out. I don’t have answers to any of the more existential-type of feelings I’m having right now. They’re there, and I recognize they’re there, but they’re not going anywhere or telling me why they’re there. I’m not really asking right now, anyways. I’m tired, sore, and cranky, and I just want to go to bed. This entry made no sense. Sorry guys.

It was the middle of the day, and I was tired. I couldn’t fix the printer giving me issues, so I called the reseller who sold it to us. They tried walking me through all the steps I’ve already gone through, and I gave them even more steps I tried to get it up and running and they were stumped. I asked them to send a technician over to check it out because everyone needed this printer to work. They will. I was called over to the Elementary school computer lab to check out a computer that wouldn’t connect to the internet, but there was a class in session, and I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of it. I decided I’ll check it out later. I never did. I was tired, and I went to the District Office to make a cup of coffee.

The district clerk called me into her office to ask me a question about my paycheck.

“You’re getting about three hours overtime. Do you want me to put that on your next check, or do you want to apply it toward your vacation hours?”

I thought about it for a moment. “Last year, I flew down to Los Angeles for my friend’s birthday around May, and I was thinking of doing that again this year. I’m not sure, though.” I paused for a moment. “I really don’t have a life, so I don’t know if I’m ever gonna need vacation hours for a while.”

“What do you do? Are you like a gamer or something?”

“No. I write. I’m a writer. I’m writing a novel right now.”

“Oh really?”

“Well, I wrote one already, but I threw it away. I’m on my second draft, and I think I’m going to throw this one away, too, and start over again. Other than that, though? I work out.” I didn’t know how to answer the question.

“Oh, do you lift weights? Have you ever thought about working out at the gym here?”

“No. I just do like body weight exercises mostly. I used to weigh like seventy pounds more than I do now, and I’m kinda freaked about gaining any of that back, so I work out a lot. Like an hour a day.”

We went on about this for a little bit. We talked about my diet, her diet, and found we shared the same philosophy about food. I never knew that about her. The whole time we talked, though, I kept coming back to her earlier question: What do you do?

I didn’t know how to answer that. I write. I work out. I watch TV. I go to work. She asked me if I’m seeing anyone or if I’m interested in anyone. I told her no, I’m not. It’s complicated, I lied. I have no one. There’s no one.

I didn’t tell her about my blog or that I’m transcribing the Great Gatsby or that I read or that I’m on this journey to just be better. Later, after our conversation was over and I was thinking about it, I wondered why I didn’t just say I was trying to focus more on my life, to settle down, to focus, and to just be better. I was shy, I think. Maybe a little bit of humility held me back. I don’t know. This was the first time I could’ve actually talked to someone about what I’m doing and going through, but I chose not to. I don’t know why.

I need a life. I’ve been thinking about that all day. I told her I wake up at five every morning, and she scoffed at me and said she has trouble getting up at seven. I have to write my novel, I said.

I have to do what I have to do, is what I should’ve said. My life is doing what I have to do to live a great life. I want to live a great life. That’s what I should’ve said. Maybe next time.

I’m 28 years old. I don’t feel 28 years old, but I’m aware that most ages don’t have a feel to them. I feel young. I feel old. I feel like a lot of my past years were wasted, and I feel like I’m making up for a lot of that, even though consciously, that’s not why I’m doing it. I’m spending my time as strictly as I am because simply, I want to be better. This is a continuous process that will only end with my grave. At least that’s the hope, except for the dying part. That part can wait.

I turn 29 in May. I’m almost 30. I don’t know how to feel about that. I think I’m not going to feel much of anything next May. 30 will just be another age I have a year to live with. Sometimes these numbers give me a sense of urgency to merely do more. I haven’t done this, or I haven’t done that. What am I waiting for? I ask myself. Just do it. Obviously, that’s easier said than done, especially when the things I want to do would span across many lifetimes. So I pick and choose what I want to be spending my time on. Transcribe the Great Gatsby? Yes. Organize the notes in my Commonplace book? No. Well, not yet. Write my novel? Yes. Travel to Europe? Not yet. Ask a girl out? Well…

Life is short. 28 came by fast. It feels like I just started freshman year at USC. It feels like I just graduated from college. Hell, it feels like I just graduated from high school. There’s no blueprint to how to live a good life, but many writers have recorded their thoughts in timeless books that try to help us live better. It feels like I’m learning how to live every time I wake up. Every time I repeat my daily routines, I feel like I’m doing them for the first time. But I don’t, and I have a long history of progress I can reflect on and be proud of.

I don’t know where I’m going with this. I didn’t have an introspective type of day. It was a very normal day. It’s been a past couple of normal days, as evidenced with last night’s entry. I guess my mind is on the vicissitudes of my life. Maybe I need to change it up again. Maybe I need to take a few more risks. Or maybe I’m just right there on the edge, but I need to do just a bit more to feel better. I don’t know. All I know is that I don’t know where I’m going.

I can fill my days with all the most productive things a man can do in 24 hours, but what’s the point if there’s no reason to it? It feels like some of the things I do have no reason to them, but they do. I just can’t see it yet because they’re incomplete. At least I think so. Well…

Writing is hard. Writing is long. Writing really has no external rewards, at least not for me. I’m not earning any money writing my novel or writing my blog or transcribing the Great Gatsby. The internal rewards are vast and priceless, though, but is that enough? Do I yearn for more? I don’t know. I’ve only lived for 28 years. Maybe I need to live another 28 before some of these questions have answers. Who knows?