There are areas of my life I’ve always struggled to respond to appropriately and instead have been constant disappointments throughout my entire life. As I’m thinking back, I’m worried that maybe I’m just being too hard on myself. I can’t be perfect. At the same time, though, I don’t know why I keep falling back to old habits when I know full well the effects they’ll have on my mood and my health. It’s this constant struggle between mind over matter, and sometimes my mind wins. It’s those times when it loses that gets to me.

I’m impulsive. I know this about myself. I do things without thinking through them first. Scratch that, I do think about them but the thought mostly consists of me convincing myself that that specific impulse is okay to follow through on. I should do this because I should. That’s it. That’s my thought process. I should do it because I should, because I thought of it, and that thought pleased me. Like really, man? If I thought about punching someone, would I be able to stop myself from actually doing it? Sometimes I don’t know. I need to find a way to control my impulses. Mind over matter.

I’m being intentionally vague because the specific act that drove me down this road is insignificant in the grander scale of things. This is just who I am and what I have to deal with with everything, not just this one specific thing that happened today. There’s something to be said about following my gut, and there have been times where following my gut has resulted in great things. It’s having the knowledge and intelligence to differentiate between the two, and that’s something I’m struggling with. I’m afraid I’m going to do something (else) that I’ll regret for a long time.

There’s something I’m doing right now that has helped me through my journey these past 105 days, and it’s something I’ve employed on and off for the past 5 years. That’s keeping track of my habits or things I want to keep track of on a calendar. It comes from Jerry Seinfeld and it’s called Don’t Break the Chain. The principle is simple: for every day you accomplish whatever habit or task you wanted to do, mark it on the calendar. As the days go by, the chain will hopefully grow longer, and the longer it goes, the more you don’t want to break the chain. I’ve been doing this for 7 habits. They range from writing, reading, eating right, and working out. But I also have a streak going for the last time I spoke to her and the last time I had a drink. These streaks are both thrilling and terrifying. The longer the streaks go, the more I want to see that chain grow. But the longer I go, the harder it is to sustain the length of these chains without breaking myself.

I’m haunted sometimes by my past disappointments. I want to live better, but I have no guideposts to guide me toward whatever that means. Should I be so hard on myself? Judging by my past, the answer is yes. I should be because my journey is fragile, and one false turn can be disastrous. I’ve been there; I’ve seen it happen. I’m scared it’ll happen again, and I don’t know what to do about it. The enormity of what I’m trying to do is weighing on my shoulders, and I want to keep going, to keep moving my feet, but the farther I go, the heavier that weight gets. And when I do something stupid, that weight seems to double, and I’m burdened even more.

I don’t know what to do, and it sucks, and it scares me, and I don’t know if I can do it.

I finished Week 3 of Insanity: the Asylum Volume 2 today, and I believe I’ve never been in better shape in my life. Unlike other versions of Insanity, there’s no dedicated Fit Test workout in Volume 2. Instead, at the end of every week (today), we do a workout called Championship. It’s about an hour long, and for the first 50 minutes, we’re doing intense sports-specific exercises. If we’re not tired after these first 50 minutes, then we will be when we do the last 10. This section of the workout is called Sudden Death/Overtime, and this is Volume 2’s version of the Fit Test. I can’t explain the workout because it’s literally insane. It involves the Agility Ladder, lots of jumps, more jumps, some fast feet, and even more sweat. For the past 2 weeks, all I’ve been able to accomplish is about 6 reps. Today, I did 8, and I could’ve gone longer. This next week will be my last week, and I’m going to try to go over 100% each and every day until one week from today, when I hope to beat today’s record of 8 reps.

Once I come back from California, I’ll have the next 120 days of the year booked with Insanity workouts. I haven’t thought beyond that, though, and I’m not sure what I want to do after those four months are gone. I was thinking of getting P90X, doing that workout, then doing a Hybrid workout with that and volume 1 of the Insanity since it’s on that workout calendar. I was also thinking of finally getting out there and learning some form of martial art. I’ve been interested in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and there is a gym that teaches it in Missoula, but that’s a 45 minute drive back and forth, and I don’t know if I’ll have the money, time, and energy to do that trek on a regular basis. Another thought I had was either repeating my Insanity workouts again, giving me another 200+ days of Insanity, or looking to see if I can enter some competitions. I know there are marathons I can enter, or even things like the Iron Man competition or something like that. I can’t go back to “slow” workouts after spending the past three months doing nothing but Insanity. Everything else makes me feel lazy. One idea I had with her before shit went to hell was getting certified as personal trainers and starting our own classes. I haven’t given this that much thought since, but maybe I should look into it some more. It’ll force me to think through my fitness goals and ideas, making me focus on what I think I need to do to keep in shape, and figure out a way to teach that to other people. That’s actually something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, the thinking through my processes.

In the future, I was planning to write entries that went through all my different workflows, like what tools I use and how I use them. I was really interested in doing this because it’ll, again, force me to think through what I do and how I do it, and during the process, I could possibly see ways I can improve and become more efficient and better. For example, I’ve been really wishing I used my iPad in a more productive way other than the strictly consumptive way I use it now. I don’t create anything with it, not like my iPhone and especially not like my Mac, and it feels like I can. My OmniFocus posts are a good example of what I’m talking about here. What do you guys think?

That’s where my thoughts are right now. I’m not sure what else to write about since things are just going well right now. I leave for California soon, and I’m excited. I’ll see some of you guys soon! Good night, everyone.

A few days ago, I woke up to three e-mails from iTunes. My bestest of best friends sent me three iTunes gift cards, and with each one, she sent me a great congratulatory message. One for the raise I earned earlier this week, another for committing myself to blogging my ass off on a daily basis, and the last for spending over 100 days without speaking to her. She told me to buy some tunes for when I blog, and I did just that. So far, I’ve bought only two albums, but they’re great ones. I’m listening to the 10th anniversary edition of Death Cab for Cutie’s Transatlanticism, and the other album was Modest Mouse’s This is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About. Both are great albums, and I have enough money for another one. Not sure what that’ll be, but I’m excited. I’m so grateful for having her in my life, and she knows I love her, but none of you guys do, so: I love her. She’s awesome.

I mention this because this act of great kindness made me feel real good, and that blended into my current streak of feeling good, which resulted in today, where I felt great. Part of it was the fact Insanity is beginning to show its results, and I’m looking good. I could definitely notice some extra attention from people of the opposite sex, and I know that I may have been projecting or something, but that whole thought made me feel confident. I didn’t change my walk or my aura or whatever, but it did make my smile come easier, and I could definitely notice how much a smile can change the whole tone to my day. It was a great day, and I smiled a lot, and because of all this, I accomplished a lot. I finally — finally — fixed an issue with one of our servers that was causing some terrible lag to some computers on our network. It’s now faster than ever, and that makes me feel amazing. It’s also almost Christmas time, so any potentially important projects have been pushed to next year, giving me time to focus on some of the little things.

I leave for San Diego in a little over a week. I’ll be driving there with my SUV, and the more I look at the route — Salt Lake City! Las Vegas! San Diego! — the more excited I’m getting. I have many worries, though. Can my car handle it? I worry I may have car trouble somewhere, and that’s something I don’t want. What will I eat? I don’t want to eat junk food on this trip, so I’ve been thinking about preparing and packing my own meals, but I feel like I should let loose and give in to some fast food. I’m debating whether to get energy drinks or try to stick to coffee as much as possible. Where will I sleep? I was thinking of stopping at a motel or something on the way, but the trip, at least according to Google Maps, will take between 18-19 hours. I think I can drive straight through. Obviously I won’t know until I’m actually out there, but that’s something I’ll try to do. Other than all that? Did I mention I was excited?

And that’s kind of my entry today. It was just a good day, and I want to leave it at that. Good night, everyone.

A few days ago, I came home from work feeling good. I had a productive day, and things just seemed to be going well, so when I saw my notecards on my desk, I decided to write a note to my neighbor. I didn’t think about it; I just did it. I apologized to her for being loud during my workouts, and I wrote to her that I usually workout between 5-7 PM. I stuck it in her door and went about my business. Today, I thought about that note and felt a little embarrassed. I’m not sure why I did it. It was just something I’ve been conscious about for months now. Insanity is no joke, and if I’m not making noise, I’m not working out. I’m pretending to work out. So I thought I’d apologize for all the noise.

This made me start thinking about all the actions from my past that I’ve felt and still feel embarrassed about. I know that I just have to own my actions and embrace them because they make up who I am. There were a few things I did in the days leading up to the creation of this blog that I’m super embarrassed and ashamed about, but I did them and I have to own them. Maybe not to you guys, but to myself. I have to be honest with myself. Will I ever do something like that again? I don’t know since I wrote my neighbor that weird note.

I can be very impulsive, and I think the reason I am is because I’m fueled by my emotions. I’m a very emotional person. It’s how I write, and it’s how I live. From the outside I may seem the opposite of this, but trust me, I’m not. Usually when I’m quiet I’m feeling fear or anxiety or something like that. It could be that I’m completely uninterested and don’t want to be mean about it. At least I think that’s what I’m feeling. If I’m having a good time, then I’m joking and laughing and saying stupid things because who cares, I’m having fun. And when I’m feeling good, I may start singing and dancing because why not? It feels good, so I do what feels good. And when I feel bad, I sometimes tend to do things that make me feel even more bad. It’s strange. Like how we sometimes listen to sad music when we’re sad. It’s therapeutic, I think. I can definitely see that since when I’m sad, I try to feel as sad as possible and write about that because that makes me feel better. Are we all like this?

The thought of owning my actions hit me hard today because I keep imagining scenarios when I run into her or to other people I may have hurt in the past. I want to apologize to everyone I’ve ever hurt, including her, but I know for some people, any attempt at an apology will feel empty and not genuine. I don’t hate anybody, and I don’t like the idea of others hating me. Is that petty? I want to take all the good parts of my lost relationships and ignore the bad parts because the good parts gave me emotions I always love to remember and feel again. And the bad parts make me feel bad, and I think that’s why I want to apologize, so I don’t have to feel like that anymore. Now I do think that’s petty because life doesn’t work that way. I gotta live with my actions and own them, and that’s just a part of life I have to live with and accept.

And that sucks.

This week has been pretty great. I broke a couple of 100 day milestones, which I’m very happy and grateful for, and today I found out that the school I work for chose to hire me full-time. This comes with an extra $3/hr raise, which amounts to about an extra $500 a month. I really had no doubt that this was coming since I’ve been working really hard the past three months to get to this place, but it’s always nice to know that my job is secure and that I’ll be earning more money. As long as I keep my habits going, especially my waking up at 5 AM every morning to write my novel habit, then this next year looks to be pretty great.

I used to love New Year’s because I loved writing my resolutions for the upcoming year. I really wanted to start fresh on January 1st and wipe away the dirt from the previous year and become someone better. I always had goals to be more fit, to be smarter, to be and do more, but I always seemed to crash really early. January had always been my most productive month because that’s when all my enthusiasm was at its highest. It quickly ebbed, though, and by February, I was back on my old habits, and by March, I looked at my list of resolutions with guilt and regret. So by April I would start trying them again, but the cycle repeated again, so by June, I just gave up and forgot about the list. Then December would roll around, and I would get excited again. This happened for years, and I never seemed to learn, until just one day it all clicked.

I stopped writing New Years Resolutions a few years ago. I purposefully tried starting new habits a few months before January because I wanted to enter the new year with momentum. Many of my current habits started that way. When I was 70 pounds heavier than I am now, I decided to start working out with more purpose during December. I was at 216 lbs on December of 2011. I’m now at 173 lbs as of Monday. At my highest, I was over 230 lbs in early 2011, and under 160 lbs earlier this year. I started this blog in September, and I plan to continue with it throughout all of 2015. And I’ll be coming into January with three full months of Insanity workouts and over 100 days straight of writing 300+ words in my novel.

One thing I love to do is keep track of what I’m doing. I like logging my weight every Monday, writing about my life in this blog, and simply just writing down ideas, notes, anything, and dating them. I like to look back and see what kind, if any, progress I’ve made. It’s always encouraging when I look back at old journal entries where I bemoan the fact that I’m not where I want to be and realize that I did get there. I did lose that weight, I did finish my first novel, I did get a great job.

For 2015, I don’t plan to write any resolutions. I plan to continue living life the way I’m living it now but hopefully better. I’m not sure what that means, but I’m confident I’ll figure it out. And I’ll hopefully have furniture and the rest of my stuff¹ from California. One thing I do plan to do with every new year, though, is trying to make it the best year I can possibly make it. But nowadays, that just means making today better than yesterday, and that’s something I always try to attempt.

As long as I’m trying, right?

This entry marks the end of my first 100 days on this blog. I plan to write many, many more entries, but for now, I want to revel in the fact that I made it here. 100 is a nice and big round number, a number that finally brings me to triple digits, and a number that means I’m not playing around anymore. I’ve come a long way since Day 1, and I can’t even imagine what the future holds. I’ve done over 75 straight days of my Insanity workouts, with many, many more to come. I’ve written over 31,000 words in my novel in 100 days. I’ve written over 60,000 words here on my blog. I look and feel better than I’ve ever felt in my life.¹ My novel brings me so much joy and spiritual satisfaction. And my blog keeps me accountable. If my next year can be like the last three months, then I can only imagine the man I could become.

I didn’t have a job when I started this blog since I had quit my old job weeks before. I lost my best friend in the whole world the day before I started this blog. I left my niece’s fifth birthday party with a couple of beers in me. I had gained over 10 pounds in the months before I started this blog because I drank either a full bottle of wine a day or a 6 pack of beer. My novel lied untouched for over 16 months. I just signed off on a new car loan a few weeks before, where I lied and said that I still worked at my old job. I desired so much to run away and go someplace I’ve never been before so I can start a new life and leave the pain behind. I lied in bed all day eating junk food, getting drunk, and watching TV from morning to night. I was lazy, irresponsible, and gluttonous. I needed all that to change. I needed to change.

100 days. That’s all it took for me to get from there to here. But it took just one day for everything to change, and that was Day 1. Day 1 was when I was fed up with how my life was and where it could end up. I needed to change, and all I needed was to act on that desire. I spent the almost $100 on this Squarespace account, spent almost no time setting it up, and just started writing. I’ve kept a journal for years, but something on that day told me to turn it into a blog. I didn’t think to help anyone when I started. Hell, I didn’t even think I’d have 1 reader other than myself. I didn’t think I’d actually get this far. But here I am. 100 days, 100 entries, 1 life transformed.

I like where I am today. There are things I’d still like to change and improve upon, but my life is nothing like it was before this blog. Old habits die hard, and I’m struggling with a few² every now and then, but I’ve yet to succumb to any of them. I leave for California in a few weeks, and I hope to return with stuff marking the day I finally decide to settle down. Until then, here’s to a lifetime of greatness.

Today I realized how fragile my current way of life really is. So many things have to just work for me to do what I need to do. What prompted it was, in hindsight, very stupid, but at the moment, felt very, very real. My key fob for my car stopped working after work. I actually started experiencing problems with it a few months ago, but I since replaced the battery and things just worked. Until today, when I couldn’t disarm the alarm on my car. I went back into my office, grabbed a Phillips head screwdriver, and unscrewed my key fob. I had a replacement battery in my bag, and I used that to replace the battery. Except, it didn’t work. I tried moving the battery around, trying to make sure all the contacts touched, and in doing so, I broke the battery holder inside the fob. I panicked. Luckily, since I’m a nerdy tech guy, I pulled out my phone and opened Dropbox because I had a PDF of my car’s manual in there. I quickly skimmed the relevant sections and learned that if I unlock my car with my key, the alarm — which will go off without disarming the alarm — will turn off if I turn the car on since my car recognizes my key. I didn’t know that, and I was so glad I wasn’t driving through town with my alarm going off like I was playing a game of Grand Theft Auto.

I have to get to work so I can do my job and get paid every 1st and 15th of the month. To get to work, I need my car to work, and that includes my key fob. I can no longer arm my car, but that’s totally okay. As long as my car works. I need to get paid so I can pay my bills. My bills keep me alive. I need to be alive so I can do what I need to do to be happy and content and great. I need to be great because I have this abnormal fear of being ordinary. I don’t know why I have that fear. I don’t really like showing off to others, and I guess I could be arrogant sometimes about certain things and at certain times. Maybe I am just plain arrogant. I’m not sure, to be honest. Only other people can tell me that. And no one’s really told me anything like that, so maybe I’m not. But this arrogance breeds confidence, and I need confidence to live the life I want. And I want to live the life I want because I only have one shot at living, and I want to make the most of it. And to make the most of it, I have to try to be great or else I’ll feel like I wasted it. Wasted life and that precious time given to me.

I have to stop being so high-strung. I have to learn to adapt and be flexible. To be like water. One small problem can’t bring my whole day down. For whatever reason, if I couldn’t get home on time, I shouldn’t let that ruin my day. I still got time to do what I need to do, and if it means not working out or not reading or not doing whatever else, then that’s okay. I should be extra vigilant the next day and learn from what happened and adapt. That’s the only way to survive this, quite frankly, hard life.

I have to find the motivation every day to wake up at 5 AM to write my novel, to come home from an 8 hour work day and find the energy to work out for an hour, to desire to read as voraciously as I can, and finally, the willpower to finish my day writing a deeply personal journal entry on a blog that friends actually read. This is all fun and I’m grateful that I’ve been doing this consistently for 99 days, but it’s hard. And today I realized how much I don’t want this all to stop because I couldn’t get home on time.

Wow, I guess I’m not sure how to adapt. I hope I don’t crash and burn. It feels like I’m just getting started.¹

I did the bare minimum today, and I’m not beating myself up about it. I slept in, stayed in, and lied in bed for most of the day. I went to the grocery store to buy some popcorn, but since I didn’t just want to be the guy that goes to the store to buy popcorn, I bought some steak, too. Tomorrow’s dinner is going to be amazing. I bought popcorn because I wanted to watch TV all day today, and I did. I started watching the 100 on Netflix, and it’s a fun show. Perfect popcorn watching entertainment. I purposefully didn’t want to think about dating or how I could be better or about anything other than relaxation. And I feel really good about that.

I get paid tomorrow, and all I’m thinking about is what I could buy. What I should be thinking about is stashing a lot of that check away to save up for my trip to California, which should be happening two weeks from today. That’s what I should be thinking about. Instead, I’m thinking about buying this camera bundle for $699 off of Amazon. This is the camera I mentioned a month ago. I probably won’t succumb to my I-gotta-have-it mentality, and instead try to be responsible. I guess. Besides, I think I finally finished setting up my wish list for when I go to Ikea to buy my much needed and desired furniture. That should crave any lingering shopping bugs.

The days sure do go by a lot faster when I sleep in. I’m so used to winding down my days at around 9 PM, but since I slept in an extra 3-4 hours this weekend than what I’m used to, it feels like I lost that time since I’m not really going to sleep 3-4 hours later. Maybe an hour later than normal, but that’s it. That tells me I’m not getting enough sleep during the weekdays, and that’s something I’ve known about since I started this blog. I’ve been neglecting my sleep because there’s a lot of stuff I want to do each day to ensure I get better in some way. The more I slack off, the more afraid I am of losing control of myself and falling back to my old self-destructive habits and routines. It’s been 98 days since my last drink, but today I really thought it wouldn’t hurt if I had one beer. I really thought that would be a good idea, and thankfully I didn’t succumb to it. But what if I did? What if I drank again?

The thought of turning my back on who I am and who I could be scares me because I know it’s 100% possible. I’m always going to be afraid of falling since I know how hard it is to get back up. If I’m being super honest with myself, before I started this blog, I was in some sort of free fall ever since I moved up here to Montana, and I’m just now course-correcting. I mean, I’m finally letting myself buy some fucking furniture for crissakes. It finally feels like I’m home, and it’s time for me to settle down.

I got really depressed after writing yesterday’s entry. Since it was Saturday, I allowed myself to sleep in. I woke up early because my body clock is used to waking up early, but since I knew I could sleep in, I did. It was during this time that I had a dream about her. After I realized how much work I need to do to improve my dating game, I yearned for simpler times, when I seemingly had this figured out. So I dreamt about her. Thankfully, it wasn’t a good dream. She was sitting down on a table, her head bent down and concentrating on something. A book? A sketch? I sat on a bench farther away from her, and I saw her. I recognized her hair, and I couldn’t help but stare. I looked away, and when I looked back, she was gone. It was around this time when I realized that I was dreaming, and I didn’t like this feeling of longing, so I tried to keep happy. She sat down next to me, her tell-tale smile breaking my heart because I missed it so much. She laughed and put her head on my shoulder, and then I woke up.

I don’t think this dream was supposed to be about her. I’m not going to get back in contact with her; I see no possible way this will end well. I’ve been racking my brain for the past few weeks — month? — trying to come up with the right angle to write to her, to see if there is something I can say to make things right between us, but I couldn’t find it. As a writer whose only tool are words, I couldn’t find the right and best words to write to her to make things right. That should tell me that I’ve outgrown her. I miss the idea of her, and the feeling she gave me, but I don’t miss her. And now I have to get out there and meet someone new.

As someone who is trying to live as clean a life as possible, I fear that I may be too boring for most girls out there. I don’t drink anymore, and I have a strict diet that I don’t want to deviate from, and I like writing. Writer’s, by definition, are solitary individuals. My routines are limiting my free time to really concentrate and spend with women, and I just realized I’m giving myself excuses not to do this. I hate dating. I hate it hate it hate it. But I have to. I have to.¹

Another issue preventing me from improving this area of my life is my fear of being shallow. I have a type², and for the most part, I have not been attracted to many girls I encounter in my day-to-day life. I don’t want to ask just any girl out because I can. I need to be attracted to them, and if I’m not? Then I don’t want to talk to them. That doesn’t mean that if I am attracted to someone I go and talk to them. I don’t, and that’s the damn problem. And I usually see these girls when I’m not looking for them. They just appear out of nowhere and I’m caught totally off-guard. That’s actually something I can work on and improve.

I’ve been afraid that I need to go out there looking for them, and that thought has been giving me a lot of anxiety. Should I go to a bar? A club somewhere? Should I join some sort of activity like cooking class?³ Instead, I should just go about my life, and I see someone I find attractive, I should go talk to them, and that’s the part I want to work on. Finding the confidence to approach a cute girl. Because that’s the best way I can think of to find someone in a very sparsely populated area. At least I think so.

God, if you guys don’t think I’m an idiot yet, then you do now.

When I was younger, I read this short story about a guy who was locked up in prison, and he was given access to as many books as he wanted. He read as much as he could, and he bettered himself as much as he could, so by the end of the story, he left prison a different and much better man. I forgot what this story was called, but as I grew older, I became acquainted with other books with similar themes. Obviously there’s the Count of Monte Cristo, a book I have not read yet but really want to. I’ve seen a few different film adaptations, though, and the scene I enjoy the most is when he’s locked up in prison. During high school, I read the Autobiography of Malcolm X. In it, he gets locked up and decides to change for the better. One of the things he does is to read the dictionary so he could be a better communicator. For some reason, I loved that, so I read the dictionary a few years ago, and I’m still recalling interesting words I learned from this activity.

I live in a little studio apartment with very few things. I have a bed, a table, and a chair. There’s a kitchen and a bathroom, too, but that’s really it. I’ve been living inside this prison for almost two years now, and for the most part, I’ve loved it. It’s my home, and I’ve accomplished some great things here. It’s simple, so I’m not that distracted with trivial things, and it has what I need. But it doesn’t have everything I need. I’ve blinded myself from a few essential things that would make my life happier. That’s people.

I love my friends, but my best friends are scattered all across the country. I have friends all over Southern California, some in Northern California, others in New York, and yet more all over the country. I’ve lived in Montana for almost three years, and I haven’t made as many friends as I would have liked. Don’t get me started on my dating life. I need to change all this. I need to be more active and pursue this part of life with all I’ve got. I need to meet more people because I’m not going to find a girl locked up in my own little prison. I can leave any time I want, but I choose not to. Why? I don’t know. It’s this not knowing that irritates me. Am I shy? Am I lazy? Am I scared? What is it?

I joined a crappy dating site today, and I wasn’t attracted to most of the girls I saw on there, and the girls I was attracted to live very, very far away. All the good girls seem to be taken around here. This is one of the worst things about living in such a sparsely populated area. I think most of the girls I’d be interested in leave and go live somewhere else, or they’re snatched up quickly by someone else. I’ve met very attractive yet very taken girls, and there’s no way I’m going to break anyone up. That’s just wrong. I need to start dating, though, and if I have to spend a lot of time and energy scouring my area for attractive girls who look interesting, so be it, right? I’m not going anywhere for at least another year, so this is something I have to do. And I have to move on. It’s been too long now.

Anyone in Montana who happens to read this know of anyone you might want to set me up with? Let me know! I’m dead serious, unfortunately.