I had more fun in the kitchen today. That right there is Sweet Potato Has topped with a Pork Chop seasoned with Paprika and Cayenne Pepper. It was delicious. The spices were perfect and tasty and I didn’t have to top it with any condiment. That’s huge for me.

And this right here was my dessert: Summer Berry Soup. It has red grapes, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, some honey and some lemon juice. I blended it in my food processor and it turned out summer tasty and super refreshing.

I’m having a lot of fun doing this. I doubt I’m going to do much of anything new this week considering the amount of time I have during the weekend to devote to this compared during the weekdays, but I have at least one more dish to make, and that’s some Cauliflower Rice. I’m also considering making Paleo Banana Bread, but that’s something I’ll go more by feel than anything else.

It’s also really late because I’ve spent the last 3 hours or so watching the finals of Evo 2015. It was more entertaining than I imagined it would be. I thought I would just pop in and watch a match or two, but I quickly got sucked into the drama and the amazing talent these players from the around world had. I sat in awe as I watched Gamerbee fight to the very very end, only to lose in the last round of the last match to a much better player. It was a lot of fun.

And now I’m tired, and I’m halfway toward my 500 word goal, but I’m not going to make it. Have a good night, everyone!

That right there is my first attempt at making Paleo-approved banana strawberry ice cream, and it was delicious. The only ingredients were organic bananas, strawberries, coconut milk, and vanilla extract. I added them all into my food processor (!!), blended them for a few minutes, and presto blamo, ice cream. It was, I have to say, really really good. It tasted nothing like ice cream, but it was still really good. It was more like a thick smoothie, a bit sweeter, and with a fluffy texture that was really interesting and attractive. It made more than I wanted to eat in one sitting, so I have more chilling in the freezer for tomorrow. That’s so awesome.

I also made some paleo salsa, but it didn’t turn out as good as I would have hoped. The recipe only asked for two jalapeños, and I don’t know if it was because I chose two very mild tasting jalapeños or that two jalapeños just aren’t enough heat for me, but the salsa wasn’t spicy at all. It smells great, and it tastes good and I can’t wait to try it on my eggs tomorrow, but I know I’m going to have to modify the recipe next time I make it. I love my salsa’s hot and spicy, and this wasn’t it. I did use scallions and whole garlic cloves for the first time in my life, though, so that’s some great experience I’m going to cherish for a while.

I had fun making this stuff today, and using and learning my food processor, and I really can’t wait to do more. I think I’m going to give in and buy a few more tools that I want, like a grater and a julienne peeler. I want to make gluten-free spaghetti out of squash or cucumbers. I really want to cook every recipe from one of my cookbooks just to see what that’s like and to improve my culinary abilities. Just seeing that picture of ice cream I made from scratch is inspiring and motivating enough for me to do more. This is fun.

Day 6 of Insanity Max: 30 went well. It was only the 20 minute Pulse workout, which is a slower yet still sweat-inducing workout. The calendar says this workout is optional every Saturday, but I’m glad I did it because it made me sweat, and sweat makes me feel good. And the fact that my fridge is full of fresh food and every time I open the door and smell that mixture of delicious aromas makes me want to take care of myself more. Mind, body, spirit: that’s the goal.

Tomorrow I’m going to try to make cauliflower rice and sweet potato hash. I bought the ingredients today, and I hope to make something completely new. I might also make more ice cream because it’s delicious and I love my desserts after dinner, especially after a hard workout. I fee like I deserve it, and after this week, I think I deserve to do more.

I spent close to $700 at the mechanics for my fourth — FOURTH!! — power steering pump in less than a year: the original, the one from California that crapped out on me in Idaho, the one replacing the California one from my super shady and crappy auto dealer, and this new one from a more reliable business. I think this one will last until my entire car dies out. And $700 isn’t that much money, when it’s all said and done. The guys in California charged me a few bucks short of a grand, so I’m okay with it. Besides, I need my car. There’s no way in hell I’m not paying to get it repaired, regardless of the costs. I need a car to go to work and to go to the Division of Fire for when another fire breaks loose. Speaking of which, IT’S RAINING AND IT HAS BEEN FOR THE PAST FEW DAYS AND IT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE THERE’S GOING TO BE A FIRE ANYTIME SOON. What the shit?

Even though I spent that much money, a huge weight is off my shoulders. I was worried I wasn’t going to be able to go grocery shopping this weekend, but now that my car is fixed and I trust it again, I feel better. I’ve been perusing through my Paleo cookbooks I received earlier this week, and it’s exciting me. There’s this super easy and amazing looking ICE CREAM recipe in one of them that looks delicious. I want to make that. I might have to slow down on buying any new kitchen tools, until I catch up with my finances, but that’s okay. I’ll make due with what I’ve got. I did just buy a food processor, after all.

Day 5 of Insanity Max: 30 went well. It was Friday Fight: Round 1, and boy was it a fight. I was exhausted six minutes into it, and I had 24 minutes to go. By the end, I was just dripping in sweat, and I felt amazing. I had steak for dinner, for the first time in over a month, and both my belly and my soul are satisfied. I’m still weighing in the high 170s, but I’m okay with that because it’s not going up. I’ve got some fat to lose, and once I do, I’ll be back to normal, and I hope by then I will have momentum with my newish routine. I’m reading more, which is making me happy, and working out, which is making me happy, and I’m going to start cooking more soon, which I know will make me happy.

I’m excited to start this last leg of my journey that I started ten months (!!) ago. I swung from one extreme to the other, and I’m ready to find some balance, and so far, I think I can do it. I have to fill a good chunk of my day with downtime, like watching TV, or fun, like playing video games, but I also have to fill it in with reading and working out and writing. And I have to be less strict on doing things daily. If I find that balance, I think I’ll do fine for the next 365 days come September. Lets hope, right?

ARPANET came into my life from two different sources of media: from the Americans TV show and Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon. Strange.

Day 4 of Insanity Max: 30 was a success, and I feel better. I still feel heavy, which sucks, but I’ll slowly lose this weight. It’s an inevitability at this point. The one thing that’s worrying me is that I won’t be able to lose it all before I go out on another fire, and since they feed us shit, I’m bound to gain it all back. It’s not helping that I’m refusing to go 100% Paleo this week. I need snacks in between my meals, and since I don’t bring a lunch to work, I go hours and hours without food, so when I come home, I buy crap and eat crap and I feel like crap afterwards. Time to start cooking some Paleo food!

I have to take my car into the shop tomorrow morning. Something is up with my power steering pump again (yes, for the third time this year!), so I’m hoping these mechanics will be able to fix it once and for all. I’m worried they won’t because I want to go to Safeway this weekend and buy my Paleo-friendly foods so I can start cooking. My food processor is amazing and I want to use it to its full advantage. God, I hope my car’s okay.

I honestly don’t know what else to write about. I was sitting here for about 10 minutes trying to come up with something to write about, and I couldn’t come up with anything satisfying. I have a few more months of this, and honestly, you guys, I can’t wait till it’s over. I don’t know if I like writing a blog, at least a daily one like this one. I’m a better writer when I have something to say, and I take my time trying to say it. That’s been one common theme throughout this whole journey: my dissatisfaction with so many of my entries. Many of the ideas weren’t fleshed out, and many of them eventually sortakinda got there across multiple entries across days, even weeks apart, but I know they could’ve been better if fleshed out into one, definitive entry. But since I pigeonholed myself into doing an entry a day for a full year, I’ve written a lot of shit. Maybe if you’re really really interested in me, these entries seemed entertaining and informative. But to anybody coming off a Google search or something, there’s nothing in here of value enough to keep them interested and engaged. I don’t know… it’s just something I have to get off my chest every now and then to make me feel better since I always have this gnawing dissatisfaction with all that I’m writing. It’s different when I’m writing in my journal since that’s just for me, and I know I’m just writing down the facts of the day to keep me entertained when I read them again in the future. Like, “oh yeah, I remember when I did that,” or “man, I’m glad I don’t think like that anymore,” or even “I’ve grown up so much since then.” That last one’s the best. I know I’ll feel like that a few years from now when or if I read these entries again.

For now, here we go, world. This is what you get. For now.

I wish I could dance like Samuel T. Herring.

Day 3 of Insanity Max: 30 is in the bag, and I started feeling it today. I did not want to work out today, but I just did. It was Sweat Intervals, which had me sweating 7-8 minutes into the 30 minute workout. I could hear my rug squish underneath my feet by the end. After the workout and before stepping into my shower, I decided to weigh myself for the first time in over a month. I was in the high 170s, which isn’t that bad, considering I hovered around the mid 170s for so long, so I only have to lose 3-4 pounds before I’m back to where I would like to be. But that’s still kind of amazing to me, the fact that I gain weight so quickly and easily. Well, it doesn’t help that I didn’t workout and didn’t eat that well during my sabbatical. I’ve lost 3 pounds before, sometimes in one week, so I’m not that worried about it. But still. Jeeze.

It might help that I received my food processor today along with two Paleo cookbooks. After trying to figure out how the food processor worked, I tried it out and was amazed by how awesome it is. I ca do so freakin’ much with this machine that the possibilities are exciting me so much. I can make banana bread easier than ever! I can make sauces! and purees! and paste! and soups! and whatever else! This is going to be fun. I still want to buy more tools, like some tongs, a better skillet, and some other tools, but for now this will keep me occupied. I can’t wait to get started beyond what I did today. I signed my time for the Sunny Camp fire I was on last week, and it was only 27 hours, which isn’t that bad of a fire, but still. I can use that money to invest in my culinary pursuits. Yeah.

I started Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon and holy shit. Holy. Shit. What a wild ride the first two chapters were. I love it. I love love love it. I’m doing something somewhat new and somewhat anal: I’m setting a timer for 1 hour when I read. I want to read for at least one hour every night, and that timer will keep me in check. I will like to read more than that per day, but I’ve been catching up on my New Yorker magazines, but I finished the most recent one today, except that I will get the new one tomorrow, so that will take up my morning. The more I read, and the more I workout, the more happy I am. That’s a simple fact. I wasn’t happy during most of June and the first week or so of July. I was drowning in distractions, not doing anything but eating and watching TV. But now, now I’m reading, now I’m working out, and I’m still writing, which I love, so I feel happy.

Happiness in my life doesn’t come easy. Sometimes I don’t let it, sometimes I can’t help it. It just comes at me like a tsunami and I’m drowning in it until I come up for air, and that struggle for it takes a lot out of me. Sometimes I simply give up and let it drown me; but when I fight, I feel better, exhilarated, and alive. Feeling alive makes me happy.

Day 2 of my rebooted Insanity Max: 30 workout regiment is in the bag, and I feel good. I forgot how confident I feel after working out. I guess I only noticed it when I felt bad about myself these past few weeks, and I was able to compare that with how I’ve felt the past few days. It all starts with fitness for me. A good workout makes me happy and motivated enough to do more. I want to start writing again, even though I want to wait until late August at the soonest. I will be done with fire season by then, and I’ll be able to ensure a long streak of uninterrupted productivity for a good ten months or so. That should be enough time to rewrite my novel and hopefully apply to grad school. Shit… I need to work on my writing samples.

I’m having trouble with my car again. The damn power steering pump is acting up again, the same god damn issue that caused problems on my trip to and from California last December/January. I’m going to have to take it in this weekend to get it checked out. It doesn’t feel as bad as before, but I know the more I drive, the more it’s going to worsen. That’s more money I’m going to have to spend on my car. Jeesh. AND, to top that off, my packages didn’t come today because FedEx needed a signature from me, so they left me a note on my door, which I signed and will ensure my packages get delivered tomorrow. I was really expecting them today.

This also marks the second day since I’ve deactivated Facebook. I’m still finding myself compulsively checking my phone but quickly realizing I don’t have that outlet to waste time on, so I shut my phone off and get on with my day. This happened at least a dozen times today, but I’m quickly getting used to the fact that I don’t want Facebook in my life anymore. I just don’t. It’s a waste of time, and it causes more harm than good. I still have Twitter and Instagram, and that’s enough for me. Also, as I wrote about who knows when, I quit reading RSS feeds, and that habit to check my feeds on my phone has gone away, so I know it’s possible. Speaking of that, I replaced some of my sources to email newsletters, and their newsletters are better than the RSS feeds. Most of the sites send a newsletter once a week, while others send them a couple of times a week to daily. I feel like I’m learning more and reading more by doing this, and it feels like I have more time to devote to reading than before. So I know quitting RSS feeds has been super beneficial to me, so I know quitting Facebook will be, too. I’ve also bookmarked and visit those other sites that don’t have newsletters on a regular basis, so I guess I’m not entirely shutting down my compulsivelycheckingtoseewhatsnew tick. I did rediscover the pleasure of visiting websites and noticing their design and style more so than a generic and uniform style from whatever RSS app I used. So another win. Yay.

I don’t know what the point of this entry was other than to prove to my readers that I’m still alive. Still here, you guys.

There he is! I’ve missed him.

I’m happy right now (I’m literally dancing in my seat right now to some Janelle Monae) because I performed my first Insanity workout in over a month, and I feel GREAT. I’m definitely going to be sore tomorrow, but it’ll be a good sore. I know I’ve praised health and fitness here before, but again, oh my god, I forgot how good it feels. I’ll say it: it’s orgasmic.

Okay, okay… seriously, it’s orgasmic.

I’m not back to my stuffed to the gills insanity of before, and I won’t even say that I’m back to some sort of a routine because I’m not. I did wake up this morning at 5 AM (I thought we were being bombed), made my coffee, and I did begin to read the New Yorker, but then I wanted to watch some TV so I watched some TV. I made breakfast, drank more coffee, and went to work. Came back from work, watched another episode of TV, worked out (!!!), showered, made dinner, ate dinner, watched more TV, read a little bit, played some Alto’s Adventure on my iPhone, and now I’m writing. It was a simple day. I hope to do a bit more reading tonight before watching yet another episode of TV (I’m watching the Americans and holy crap it’s good). Maybe tomorrow I’ll do more reading in the morning. Who knows.

I expect to receive two cookbooks and my food processor tomorrow. I don’t know why I thought I would immediately start cooking awesome Paleo foods tomorrow, but I did, and I feel silly. I will examine these books, though, ensure I buy all the ingredients and equipment I need, and then start cooking. I want to cook things I’ve never cooked before in ways I’ve never even thought possible. I want to develop this foundation as best as I can because I want to fall back on it when I don’t feel like working out on any given day. When I feel lazy, I don’t want to go full-lazy, just half-lazy. I still want to be healthy and feeling good. Is that too much to ask?

It’s raining right now, which is kind of ridiculous, but whatever. I kept hearing it was supposed to be an intense fire season this year, but they say that every year it seems. I’m honestly not too antsy to go out, not like I have been in years past, and that’s mostly because I don’t necessarily need the money. It’ll be awesome to pay off some debts and whatnot, but I’m not in want of money. But if I get called out, and I make a a grand here and a grand there, I won’t be complaining. At least I’ll feel good going into it.

God I feel good. I’m going to do this again tomorrow. Hell, I should do this every day. What was that? I did this for over 200 days straight? Shit, well… day 1 is in the bag. Only a shit ton more to go.

Tomorrow I’m going to try to eek out every last ounce of productivity I can get from the moment I wake up to the moment I fall asleep. I’ve been too complacent and lazy these past couple of weeks, and I’m, frankly, fed up with it. I know I’ve written about this a lot only to fail quietly and without any fanfare, but I really hope to change things tomorrow. The few things I’m planning to do is working out, eating better, and reading more. I don’t plan to write yet because I’m in the middle of fire season, and I don’t want to gain momentum only to lose it once I’m called out on a fire. And I don’t feel ready to tackle the rewrite of my novel yet. So many other areas of my life need work and attention before I should delve right into the biggest project of my life.

I cleaned up my phone, my iPad, and my Mac really nicely, and I like the simplicity and focus of it. I deactivated my Facebook account today. I’ve done it many times in the past, but every time I reactivate it, I feel like quitting it again. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s the waste of time it is, its addictiveness, its futility, or something else, but I don’t like it. Granted, I do have that twitch to check it every few minutes, especially when I turn on my phone, but that’s just something I have to slowly control. I’m re-starting Max: 30 again tomorrow. I’m going to go until I’m called out on a fire, and then I’m going to start over again. I’m going to stop starting over once I go through both months without an interruption. While I’m doing that, I’m going to figure out how else to be healthy and fit by doing a lot of research and watching a lot of videos and trying out a lot of things. This needs to be my new lifestyle, and I have to do all the work to make it so.

I haven’t set my alarm for 5 AM for a long, long time, but today I set it again to 5 AM. It’s back to start the day early and well. Instead of writing, though, I’m going to read. That’s why I subscribed to the New Yorker magazine, to read it every morning with a hot cup of coffee and the whole day ahead of me. It’s also why I have so many books, to read them while I can. And since I’m no longer packing my mornings with tasks, like transcribing a book and meditating, I can spend more of it reading, and simply getting a lot of that done in the beginning of the day so I can spend the rest of it trying to live healthily. I’ve also been thinking of writing at night, but I will start experimenting with that later.

For now, I have to regroup and refocus on being the best me I can be. Ever since April, when shit hit the fan, I haven’t been myself. It’s time to buckle up, stop being such a pussy, and get on with it. Hoorah.

I went ahead and bought a food processor along with a couple of Paleo cookbooks. They should arrive on my front door by Tuesday. That should be good timing because I plan to reboot my workout regiment on Monday, and I hope to start fueling my body tasty and healthy meals. I’m going to try to be as serious about cooking as I’ve ever been with anything important in my life. If I need a tool or an ingredient, I’m going to acquire whatever I don’t have and not let anything stop me from cooking. I haven’t weighed myself since June 1st, over a month ago, and I’m afraid to step on the scale since June was very passive fitness-wise. I know, though, that the numbers won’t be too kind on me.

I’ve been in a very minimalistic mood today. I get like this when I need to focus and get more disciplined than I have been. I began by trying to delete as many unnecessary apps on my iPhone, iPad, and Mac. I like the streamlining process of doing this every now and then as it makes me focus on what I find most essential. I’m even going to try and use the default apps that come on all of these platforms instead of third-party alternatives, just to see if I even need any of these extra features or if a simpler alternative is just fine for my needs. One of those apps is replacing Vesper with the default Notes app. Vesper is iOS only, while the Notes app is available on iOS and the Mac, and that appeals to me more right now. I know the new Notes app in iOS 9 and El Capitan received massive updates that aren’t in the versions I’m using now, but it would be nice to go into these upgrades with momentum.

I guess this only applies to my digital world. In the physical world, I’m adding more stuff, but more stuff that will be beneficial and useful. Books and kitchen gadgets seem necessary. I still don’t have a TV… yet. My mind has been dwelling on moving for so long now that I think it’s going to happen, and today I even considered LA as a viable option. Yes, it’ll be more expensive, but if I find a good IT job there, maybe things won’t be so bad. But it’s LA and there are millions of people there, a good fraction of those looking for jobs in the IT field, so maybe that won’t be a viable option. I don’t know. If only things didn’t require so much money…

Oh, before I forget to mention, I’m fazing out all non-Paleo foods from my diet in an attempt to go full-on Paleo for the foreseeable future. I’ve been eating a lot of wheat this past month, and, although delicious, it has made me feel very bloated and soft. Time to go back to an all-natural and very physically active lifestyle. It’s time to settle down and focus.

I spent the first half of my day at work unpacking and setting up 22 new desktops for one of the computers labs we have at school. I spent the first hour or so unplugging the old computers and cleaning up the surfaces they were on. It then took me a few hours to simply unpack everything and plug them all in. I then had to join them all into our domain, set them up properly in Active Directory, and finally make sure SCCM worked correctly on all of them. It did. This was the first time I’ve ever done this, and it was easy, after it was all said and done, but it took me a long time. Well… the new superintendent thought I did it really fast. All about perceptions, I guess.

I started to watch Wayward Pines on Hulu, and I was hooked immediately. It’s about this secret service agent, played by Matt Dillon (!), who’s investigating the disappearance of two agents. He tracks them to Wayward Pines, but he’s involved in a car crash, and he wakes up in a hospital, and that’s where things start getting weird. It’s an amazing mystery show, and it’s so much fun getting caught up in the mystery and how all the answers they give us only make us ask more questions. It reminds me a bit of Lost and Twin Peaks, which is awesome.

One of my favorite songs on Miguel’s new album is “what’s normal anyway” simply because it describes exactly my feelings from the past few weeks. I don’t belong here; hell, I don’t know if I’ve ever found a place I truly belong in. College was the closest thing, but I was such a different person back then, so shy and quiet, that I didn’t live it up as much as I wished I did. Now, I’m in Montana, not sure what I’m doing anymore. I like my job, and I like the money it gives me, and it sure beats McDonald’s, but this is not a place for me to set down roots in. This is more of a town you pass through than settle down in. It’s even on a damn highway, so even its early settlers thought so.

I know I should stop bitching about that. I’m slowly trying to figure out what to do. Grad school is always there, but I don’t feel as confident as I used to that I will get in to any school. I still need to go through the process of applying, and I don’t even know how well I’m going to do with that. No, part of me wants to stuff my car with all my stuff, rent a U-Haul to shove the rest of it in, and drive somewhere new. Chicago and Seattle are close and New York City seems so tempting. These are just feelings, though, and I know how fleeting they are. I know that about myself, which is great. Not many people know themselves. I guess not everyone’s normal.