I have this idea about letting go, but all my emotions and thoughts surrounding it are fuzzy. The way it started was that I discovered the Confidant hardcover notebook by Baron Fig. They have these videos from creatives and working people about how and why they use notebooks. Watching these videos just solidified something inside of me, and to better explain it, I have to delve deeper into something else.

Minimalism has constricted my life, and I didn’t even know it did until just recently. Simplifying my life excites me, and ever since I started living on my own a few years ago, simplifying was all I ever thought about. I wanted to know how to live more with less. I transitioned to keeping most all of my notes in text files because they were simple, future-proof, and highly transportable. That led me to learn Markdown, which is what I use to write the entries on my blog. It helps me keep some rich-text formatting while still using simple plain text. This is important to me because I am a writer, and the less friction there is between me and writing the better and happier I am.

Simplifying also meant getting rid of everything I didn’t actively use. Years ago I decided to go paperless. Over the course of a few years, I scanned thousands of pages into my computer, and they’re all saved and backed up on Dropbox. During the process of scanning all my papers into my computer, I decided to get rid of paper altogether. I threw all my non-Moleskine notebooks away. I bought an iPad last year, and one of the big reasons why was to use it for notes if I ever felt the need to. I haven’t, really, used the iPad for that. I prevented myself from using paper notebooks because I didn’t want the extra weight in my life, both physically and mentally. I felt bad whenever I added something new to my life because I felt like what I had not only was enough, but also more than enough. I wanted to reduce my possessions, not improve the quality of my possessions.

Which brings me back to the Confidant notebook. I purchased one today, and it should come within the next week or so. I still have one pocket Moleskine notebook I have not filled out because it used to be my journal, but this blog replaced that. I have two large Moleskine notebooks. I’m using one of them to transcribe the Great Gatsby, a project I started last year but have put on hold recently. The second notebook is completely blank, and I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it yet. So why did I buy another notebook? It wasn’t really the notebook itself, although it is very beautiful and something I want to use. It’s because I want to let go of this idea that I can’t flow with things that I decide to enter my life.

Recently, I spent a lot of money on things. I bought a new bag, and as you can see, it’s not only beautiful but pricey. I bought stuff for my desk, for my car, and for other parts of my life I felt needed something to improve the quality of it. Even though there’s a total of eleven new things entering my life in the coming weeks, minimalism has taught me to use everything I own, and there won’t be any exceptions here.

Just because I can reduce my life to the bare essentials — food, clothes, shelter, and warmth — doesn’t mean I should. I want a quality of life that helps me be happy, healthy, and creative. Do I think this notebook will bring me that? Hell no. I’m not even sure if I’m going to use it as regularly as I wish I would¹, but I wouldn’t know if I didn’t let go of a burden I didn’t even know was a burden.

I woke up at 2 am to my upstairs neighbors fighting, and I couldn’t go back to sleep. I opened up the YouTube app on my iPhone and searched to see if there were any Doug episodes since I didn’t like lying in bed knowing I couldn’t sleep. And there was! I watched one, Doug’s in the Money, and I wanted to cry after because I missed this show. It’s been over a decade since I last watched an episode of Doug, and it seems like I learned a lot about life from that show. I feel kind of ridiculous after writing that, but there’s a truth there that I really believe in.

Work was hectic. The server crashed on Friday, and that’s just been causing me so many issues. Since I only slept for four hours, I was cranky all day and didn’t want to do anything. Every little issue that popped up because of this server hit me personally, and even though I kept my stoic appearance in check (haha), I was irritated inside. Why wouldn’t anything work? Why wasn’t any of this easier? Why did my predecessors not do things better?

Needless to say, I struggled to do much of anything today, but alas, I did. I worked out, finishing Day 21 of the Asylum program. Tomorrow is Rest Day, which makes me feel amazing. I started to read a bit from my book, but I felt so tired that I didn’t get past a few pages. I’m giving myself a pass on this tonight. But just tonight. I wrote my daily words this morning, and I meditated. Again, those are my big rocks, and I barely did them all.

I wonder how all this will look like a few months from now. Will my big rocks now still be my big rocks then? I think they will. I’m curious to see what else I can fit into my days. I wonder what else I can do to help me improve in a tangible way. Any brave readers out there care to offer some suggestions?

This entry feels different. I’m pretty sure no one’s going to read this for a few days, if ever, and I’m okay with that. Some days aren’t awesome, and today wasn’t one of those days. I’ve been meaning to go back and tag all my entries with tags that described my moods. Sad, happy, excited, melancholy, stuff like that. I want to see what tags pop up the most, and maybe that can give me a clearer picture on how my mood affects my journey. It’s an intriguing thought experiment that I want to follow up on.

And for my last sentence all I have to offer is this: sleep is important, so get as much of it as possible.

I seem to have had a knack for breaking things recently. Yesterday I dropped by blender on the floor, and when I picked it up, I heard something rattling inside of it. Because I’m stupid, I plugged it in and started it up. I could smell smoke immediately. I’m pretty sure it’s dead, but I haven’t opened it up to double check. Today while I was doing the very last move in the Vertical Plyo workout, I decided to push myself and instead of only jumping laterally three-ladder lengths — my limit since I started this workout last year — I decided to jump the whole length of the ladder. I slipped and slid right into my closet door, unhooking it from its hinges. I tried to put it back together but I couldn’t do it on my own. I texted my landlord for help, and I think he’s coming over tomorrow to check it out.

I guess it’s fitting that I’m breaking things since today I spent a considerable amount of money buying new things. Some of the things I’m getting will replace some things I already own, but most of the things are new additions to my life. I believe they’ll make my life a bit more pleasant, especially while I’m at home, but that could just be me justifying these purchases. I tend to do that a lot. Amazingly, these purchases cover a tiny bit of all the new things I want to get. Most of the stuff I want to buy will replace things I already own (like that blender), and others will just make my home feel a bit more homey. I like being a minimalist, but I don’t like feeling constricted, which is what it’s doing. A good rug costs a couple hundred bucks, but it’ll make a huge difference to the feel of my home. You know, stuff like that.

Since about Day 3, I’ve been crossposting these entries on both Twitter and Facebook. I’ve been thinking of ending that on Day 50 because round numbers, but I’m going to stop doing that with this entry. 99% of my traffic comes from Facebook, so this’ll mean most nobody will read my blog unless they remember to visit manually. Why am I doing this? I’m tired of being obsessed with the metrics of this site. That’s not why I started this. I’m tired of feeling a little hurt if one entry didn’t get as many Facebook likes as I would’ve liked. I’ve had a link to an RSS feed for this site on the navigation bar since pretty much the beginning, and that’s the best way for people to get my stuff. And also, it feels like I’m writing to an audience and not for myself. That’s where I think I’m better as a writer. Maybe that’s why I like writing novels more than screenplays.

We all need to reboot our lives sometimes.

I have doubts about, frankly, everything. I don’t know if what I’m doing is the right thing I should be doing. I don’t know if I should write about things so personal to me on a blog. I don’t know if I should keep posting my entries on Facebook and Twitter. I don’t know if my novel is any good. I don’t know if I’m capable of doing a good job at my job. I don’t know if I can truly be honest with myself, let alone with anyone else. Everything I want to do is difficult and requires time that has recently felt like it’s been slipping through my fingers.

I want to be better, but I don’t know how to get there. I’m on this journey, but I don’t know where it leads or what awaits me tomorrow, next week, or next year. I finished Day 19 of the Asylum workout, and I’ve never expelled so much sweat in my life. I love pushing myself, but I have doubts it’s actually doing me any good. I know I can’t sustain the intensity of these workouts for long, and eventually I’m going to have to find something else to do to keep healthy. I’ll be lost like I’ve been so many times before, and I don’t know if I’m capable of finding my way on my own.

Recently I’ve been obsessed about buying things. From a wallet to computer peripherals to clothes to gadgets for my car. I really don’t need anything, but I want them because part of me feels like I’ll look more interesting with them in my life. Of course, all these things I want to buy will be used daily, so they have their practical utility, but I’ve lived this long without them, and I’m relatively happy. I don’t think these things will make me any happier, but I don’t think it’ll make me any sadder, either. Again, I have doubts, but knowing me, I’m sure I’m going to spend the money and buy these things.

We all have doubts, right? How do other people deal with them? I believe that everything happens for a reason. I don’t believe that getting rid of doubt will make me any better. I believe the opposite, actually. I believe every emotion I’ve ever felt is important and essential for me to have while I’m on this journey toward self-improvement, including doubt. Doubt, I think, is my mind’s way of telling me to slow down and think some things through. I feel like I’ve been going full speed for the past 42 days that I haven’t stopped to just think about what I’m doing.

I’m a man of routine. I’ve said that so many times before, and I think that’s a big reason why it feels like time is slipping through my fingers. I don’t stop and just think about what it is I’m doing. No matter how hard I try to move away from all the flaws that prompted me to start this blog in the first place, I find myself easily falling back into those same self-destructive rhythms without question and not finding anything wrong with it.

I mentioned in my very first entry here that this year I became someone I didn’t like. That there was always the possibility that I didn’t become this person but have always been this person. I’m finding the latter to be so much truer than the former.

Is there a point to all this? Am I destined to always be this man I constantly seem to try and run away from? Or do I actually have a chance to improve? I hope for the latter, but I have my doubts.

I woke up this morning later than usual. Since getting my new job a few weeks ago, I changed my phone’s alarm to only go off at 5 am on weekdays. Therefore, I slept in today, and I allowed myself to sleep in today.

Allowed? You allowed yourself to sleep in today? Who allows themselves to sleep in?

I do, voice in my head. After today, though, I’m questioning this decision.

So you’re questioning yourself now?

I am. It’s called experimentation. I’m a man of routine. I wake up every morning at 5 am, make some coffee, and start writing. Then I make breakfast, meditate, study some flashcards in Anki, and then go to work. During weekends, the only thing that changes is that I don’t have to go to work.

Obviously.

I’ve developed this rhythm. Each action flows into the others, and I create this harmony to my days that makes whatever it is I’m trying to do easier to do. If not easier, more pleasurable to do. Then usually after work, I start working out.

No you don’t.

Okay, fine, I go to bed and start watching some television while also gorging my mouth with some food.

That’s better.

Then I start to work out. After I finish, I make my protein shake, drink that, then I take a shower, change, and then start dinner. By this time it’s around 7 or 8 pm. I clean up, brush and floss my teeth, go to bed, and start reading for about 30 minutes. Then I play some music and think about what I’m going to write on my blog. Once I write it — either in Scrivener or Byword — I check the Markdown in Marked 2, re-read the entry a few times, correcting any typos, and then I post it. I also save it in Day One because I do consider these entries personal enough to include in my journal. Then I go to sleep.

That sounds like a very boring life. You need to go out, meet a girl, have some fun.

I know you’re right, except that I am having fun. I’m improving myself every day, even though I have this pretty standard daily routine, and seeing the improvements feel awesome.

Is that where the title of this entry comes in?

That’s right, voice in my head. I like looking at myself in the mirror before, during, and after every workout. Sometimes I don’t like what I see, but I like doing it anyway. Years ago, when I weighed over 230 lbs, I took pictures of myself without my shirt on. Compared to how I look today, it looked like I wore some sort of fat suit back then. I look nothing like I did back then.

You’ve kicked my ass many, many times.

Yes, I have, but you still won’t shut up sometimes.

And I never will. You best recognize.

Yeah, yeah. Anyways, the mirror doesn’t lie. It reflects everything that’s put in front of it with zero distortion. My scale has told me I’m 10 lbs heavier than I was a few months ago, and I can see a few places where those places could be. Some of it is fat, but a lot of it is muscle.

But some of it is not.

I know. I don’t look like I wish I do, and I know how vain and petty that may sound.

And very shallow. Are you really doing this just to look good in front of a mirror?

No, not really, but it is a contributing factor. My dad died young because he didn’t take care of himself. He struggled with diabetes for most of the time I knew him, and I used to be haunted by all the images of him in the hospital, tubes coming out of everywhere, his body unaware of anyone’s presence, including my own. I don’t want to end up like him. I want to be healthy. I want to live a long life. And I want to look good. I used to joke with a friend in college that I wanted to look like a Greek god, my body sculpted to perfection. Funny thing is, I used to believe back then that I could look like that, if only I worked hard enough.

You haven’t.

No, not yet, voice in my head. But I know I can. If only I work hard enough I can accomplish anything.

That’s what they all say. Truth is, not many people like working. They love daydreaming more. They love thinking that one day everything will turn out great for them. They’ll be rich, they’ll look great naked, and they’ll be with someone hot and accepting. They believe they deserve a fantastic future, but no one realizes how much work is required to get that.

It’ll help if you were more supportive.

You do not need me to be more supportive. Hell, you need me to be an asshole residing in your head because if I wasn’t, you wouldn’t do anything. You would be content with mediocrity and bullshit. You need me to discipline you, to keep pushing you to be better because nobody else will, human.

So you’re saying I should thank you for everything?

Not in so many words.

Even though we have our differences, I do appreciate everything you’ve done for me. If you had your way, I would probably weigh over 300 lbs, still be living with my mom, have no job, and have nothing worth being proud about. Hell, I might even be dead.

You’re very welcome. Step in front of the mirror.

Why?

Just do it.

Okay. Wow. Damn I look good.

Yeah you do, you sexy beast.

I thought of writing about the concept of being burnt out, but as I kept thinking about it, I totally changed my view on it. I’m tired. I came home from work today ready to watch some TV and then work out after, but as soon as I lied in bed, I grew tired. My eyes would not stay open, and all I wanted to do was sleep. And I did. I took a nap for about fifteen minutes or so, and it felt good, but I knew I had to work out. It was Day 17 of the Asylum program, and I knew I had to see this through. I worked out for about twenty minutes, and I was dead tired and my performance sucked. But then my landlord knocked on my door, and we talked for a good five minutes, giving me a well-needed break. When I got back to my workout, I noticed I performed better. My energy was high, my body was warm, and my motivation was stronger than it was when I first started.

Being burnt out means doing more than just being exhausted. It means losing interest in whatever it is your doing. I’m definitely exhausted, especially when my body feels sore and stiff, and my mentality is just not focused enough to work out. Except, I love it. I love it when I work out, especially right after I’m done, when I know I just did something good for my body. I also love nourishing my body with a healthy shake and a delicious home-cooked meal. That whole routine is a joy to do every day. I thought I was burnt out from writing for my blog every night, and there are times when I don’t want to do it. Once I start, though, I realize how much I love writing. I love writing fiction in the morning, and I love writing about something personal at night. It’s a good way to both start and end my days. I really fucking love it, even though it takes a lot of energy and motivation to just start. But there’s something to be said about writing when you’re tired.

Finally, I like my job. It can be stressful, especially when I’m the only tech guy at the school, so I have no one to talk to and bounce ideas off of, but then again, I have an office all to myself, and I don’t have to talk to anyone about making changes or trying some stuff out. In total, it takes away about nine hours out of every day, but it is my only source of income, which is awesome since the job is both fun and challenging.

These three things are my big rocks. They’re the main things I have to do every day for me to call that day successful. Everything else is just filler. I’ll be adding more things to do later. Some may become big rocks, and others may be real reasons to feel burnt out. I’ll just have to take that wait and see approach with them. In the end, though, I love what I’m doing, and I know that the work doesn’t start until I’m tired.

It’s becoming more difficult to write something new every day while trying my best to not repeat myself. There will be days like this, where nothing eventful happened or where I was too busy to even stop and breathe. Today was one of those days.

It was the first day of a five day weekend for the students at the school, so I had the chance to do some maintenance on the servers. During this, I discovered how long it’s been since any maintenance was done (mainly because the last guy was useless), so this process took me a lot longer than I thought it’d take me. While I dealt with that, I tried breaking into the NAS (network attached storage) that the last guy (again, useless) password protected with a password no one else knew. During that process, I thought I had screwed up and somehow lost everything in those hard drives. I quickly panicked. Every file from every student and teacher was on there, and I thought I lost it all. Luckily, I didn’t lose anything, and I was able to recover quite quickly and get access to the NAS. Now I know what not to do. While all this was going on, I tuned into the Apple keynote and was utterly disappointed at the announcements. I have the iPad Air from last year, and besides the TouchID, the new ones don’t excite me at all. OS X Yosemite is a great update (one I installed at the end of my shift, and thanks to the great battery on my mid-2013 MacBook Air, I was able to install it in my car while I drove home). And the new iMac is way out of my price range for me to even want to want it.

And that’s kinda it. That was my day. It’ll be more of the same tomorrow, except this time I’m going to learn how to quickly deploy about a dozen iPad’s, and see how my servers are doing after the hours of tender, love, and care I gave them today. I worked out¹ , read some more from my book, meditated for 15 minutes, and wrote another 300+ words in my novel.

If I’m being honest with myself, I could’ve been better today. I could’ve read a little more. I could’ve written a little more. I could’ve definitely watched less TV and maybe talked to people. I could’ve done more, and I feel like that all the time.

One of my biggest aspirations in life is to understand integrity. I don’t mean knowing its dictionary definition. I can read dictionary definitions all day¹, but that doesn’t mean I understand the word’s purpose completely. I want to know its application in the lives of men, to know what it means when someone says this person’s integrity was never doubted. I try to be honest with myself and with others as much as possible. I’m not perfect, and its foolish to think I’ll ever be perfect, but that’s always how I understood the meaning of integrity to be. A person full of immutable honesty.

I’ve been told a lot in my life that I’m a good guy. That I’m trustworthy, easy to talk to, and honest. Since we’re shaped by the people we surround ourselves with, I believed them. I began to cherish this trait, and I would take great care to uphold this image my friends created for me. At least that’s how I thought of it. I doubt everything about myself. I don’t remember all the details but a few years ago when I was in college, my friends and I were going to do something special for another friend. I don’t remember if it was her birthday or what, but it was supposed to be a secret. And of course the situation came up when she asked me a question where I had to lie to her to keep this secret, and so I did. Later on, when the secret was revealed and she realized I had a hand in it, she told me that she couldn’t believe I lied to her. It was a white fucking lie, but I did lie nonetheless. I still feel bad about it. I used to lie profusely when I was younger, mostly because I liked crafting the lie and getting away with it. It meant the lie worked, that it was believable. Lying is fiction, and I love writing fiction. No matter how hard I try to be as honest as I possibly can, though, I will always have my doubts because of the life I’ve led.

I’ve lied before, and I know I will lie in the future. Yet I still aspire to lead a life of integrity. As I understand it, that means living honestly. It means being hard on myself, especially when I know I’m giving myself bogus excuses to not do something when I know if I just start, the doing of it will be easy. It means being honest with the people in my life. Most of them like me for who I am so lying seems pointless to me. If they don’t like the truth, I guess they can just go fuck themselves. It also means living a life that I want to lead, and that’s not dictated by anyone else. If you offer me a drink, I will say no. If you tell me to live a little, I will tell you I’m living a lot. It means being true to who I want to be and coming closer toward becoming the man I know I can be.

Yet I still don’t know what the fuck integrity means. That’s where goal #3 comes in: start building the framework to what my personal philosophy can be. This obviously needs a lot more thought. That’s what I have the next three weeks for.

I call her maybe five times a week, but since she blocked my number on her iPhone, my calls go straight to her voicemail. In the beginning, I kept calling her because I was hoping that maybe she unblocked my number, and we could finally talk. But as the days keep ticking up, I find myself calling her out of routine rather than the sheer desire to talk to her. The same cycle repeats when I’m on Facebook. She blocked me from there, too, and I keep typing her name, hoping that her picture will pop up at the top of the results. She doesn’t and part of me doesn’t care anymore. That’s a good thing — hell, it’s a fucking great thing. Yet, I still feel blue about it.

Change sucks. We are all hardwired to love and desire a homeostatic existence, and we fight anything that threatens that. It’s been 37 days since I last talked to her, but it’s been 83 days since I last saw her. Yes, I know the last day I saw her. It was July 24th. That was the last day we hung out, and I wrote about it in my private journal. I guess it took me a little over six weeks to ruin our relationship. It went from such a great height to a low I never want to experience again. Life without her was hard in the beginning, and I still find myself wishing she was here with me, but I’ve grown accustomed to her absence. Hell, I’m on a journey to be better than I’ve ever been in my life, and that’s been difficult to sustain over the past five weeks, yet I’m still on the road.

I didn’t want to do my duties today because I was tired and unmotivated. Fall is here, and that brings both a colder climate and new television shows. All I’ve wanted to do for the past week is lie in bed, cuddle up beneath my blankets, and watch some TV. I even bought hot chocolate packets last week to satisfy this picture. But I can’t stop now. I’m literally just getting started. I’m only 10% into this one year journey. There’s still so much more to do.

First big thing I wanted to do today was improve my OmniFocus workflow. I’ve mentioned how my whole life is in there. But just like my life, the application was super disorganized. I created a few new perspectives that hopefully helps me tackle that. Only time will tell. I’m excited, though, and I’m sure that’ll last.¹

Reading: The Practice of System and Network Administration (2nd Edition) by Thomas A. Limoncelli, et al. I bought this book today after seeing it come up so many times during multiple sessions of research while at work. It’s huge (at least according to my Kindle), but it contains so much useful information that I’m super eager to get through it quickly. The more I do my job and the more I keep learning about it, the more I’m loving what this job is and what it could be. I feel fortunate and lucky to have found this job when I did.

One day, all this, all these things I’m doing every day, from writing to working out to eating right, will end. I know it is. I’m expecting it to end. I can’t keep it up forever, nor do I want to. I’m getting tired. Sometimes I want to sleep early, but because I have to do things I know I need to do, I don’t, so I pry open my heavy eyelids and push through the fatigue. So, part of my drive, especially recently, after all that excitement waned, has been to push myself as hard as possible so I can take a break at some future date and not regress that much, if at all.

By essentially making my journal public and writing it all on a blog, I intended to make this new exposure a catalyst toward forcing me to change, to keep me accountable to my actions in some form. I don’t want to disappoint anyone, and I’ve learned that that drive is stronger than my own internal drive that cares whether I disappoint myself or not. Call it a personality quirk. For so long I’ve kept many of these actions and methods to myself. Nobody cared if I worked out or didn’t work out today, my past self believed, because nobody knew I set that goal in the first place. Same thing with every other goal I’ve ever set for myself. It’s different now. No matter how much I want to quit — to go have that drink or to lie in bed all day and not do a damn thing — I feel responsible to this somewhat imaginary public I’m spewing my words onto. I know most of you guys reading this are friends or family, but that doesn’t diminish the fact that I’m opening up so much of myself to an essentially anonymous readership.

I gained 2.8 lbs in the last week. I’m 99% sure that most of that was muscle, but I still feel bad about it. I’m going up when my goal was to go down. I feel stronger, and I feel fitter than I have in a long time, but I don’t see that right now. I’ve always had body image issues, and now I see this bigger weight when I look at myself in the mirror. It’s ridiculous, I know it is, but it’s a genuine emotion I don’t know how to handle. Going back to pushing myself as hard as possible before I inevitably regress, I’m going to keep working out and drinking my protein powder enhanced shakes so my muscles can benefit with that pure influx of extra protein. My first check should be coming in on Wednesday. I can use that peace of mind to focus myself on bettering my diet because I know it’s not as good as it could be. I also want to buy stuff for my house because… this actually deserves a new paragraph.

I have no idea if I’ll ever see her again, but I big reason why I needed to start this blog and needed to start improving myself as much as I can is because if we ever saw each other again, I wanted to show her that I didn’t need her. I want to make her jealous. I want to look amazing, I want to be amazing, and I want to show her that I’ve moved on. Part of that means furnishing my stark home with some expensive items and some creativity. And that my new job is amazing, it pays way better, and I can actually afford some of these choices. It’s petty but oh so human.

And if I’m nothing else, I’m human, flaws and all.