4.20.18 - Blog Post #10

What is it about a toxic combination of depression, guilt, anxiety, embarrassment, and loss that makes me feel I have to chronically apologize for my existence?  I'm quick to apologize when I do things wrong, but as I've been told more often lately than not, I'm also apologizing for things I do right or things I have no part in.  

There needs to be a DSM condition for chronic awkwardness and insecurity.  

Example:  Every day after the gym I usually go to the Smoothie King a mile or so down past my house.  I get the same smoothie every time.  It's rote, routine, but I've lost fifty pounds this way.  There's no basis to it as I doubt the staff there knows my name, but I struggle all the same feeling like I'm taking to long, or I'm slurring my words (combination of fatigue and endorphines), or I cant put my wallet in my damn bag fast enough cause I'm holding up the cars behind me oh God here I go spiraling again.

It's the dumbest thing, but I do things like this all the time.  The best way I can describe it is that I feel like I'm a fraud and a horrible person and I'm just waiting for someone to expose me for what I am.  None of this makes sense if I look at it logically, but the tremors running up my veins tell me I'm wrong and bad and am wasting everyone's time.

I feel guilty for things I have nothing to do with, for things I didn't even do.  I feel guilt that I'm not doing more, that I should be further along.  I feel guilt that I'm letting people down.  

Mathematically this makes no sense.

I have a stable career, do well at my job.  It doesn't bring in the money I want but I somehow make ends meet.  I feel guilty that I don't devote enough of myself to this job or these kids.  I feel guilty that I also do photography on the side that at worst would be characterized as saucy.

I work out daily, a routine that is at it's kindest described as obsessive.  At my worst, it's compulsive.  I feel guilty that I haven't gotten my brothers to join me.  

I write six out of seven days of the week.  At least a page, hopefully more.  It's not enough to have the draft finished by December, and I realize that.  I feel guilty that I'm not writing enough.  That I'm writing crap.  That no one will read it and I'm wasting my life chasing a fruitless endeavor.

I help my family as best I can.  I get out and go to blues at least once a week, as requested from various friends I have there.  I feel guilty leaving the guys alone, that I don't call mom and dad enough.  I feel guilty that I didn't talk to the pretty girl that I have amazing dance chemistry with, and I didn't ask her out because I'm so terrified of being hurt again.  I feel guilty about my long distance relationship spanning six thousand miles, that I'm wasting her time and feeding her promises I can't deliver. 

I feel guilty for feeling alone.  I feel guilty for wanting to be alone at times.  I am a paradox of the dumbest, most self-defeating order.

J said I needed to stop saying "I feel."  She's right.  

155 finished first draft pages.  294 total pages written.  80 of those are liner notes and long scale outlines, the bible if you will.  The rest are hit points I'm aiming for.  I'm guessing the first draft will be between 600 to 800 pages.  There will be a lot to cut.  Maybe this summer, in the one month I have actually off, I can ramp up the scale of writing and knock out the majority.  Maybe.  If I'm lucky, if I work hard and stop being so hard on myself.

4.6.18 - Blog Post #9

I finished a scene tonight, something really really hard to write.  It's for a character I really think is the most pure and noble in the story, also the most tragic and short lived.  The topic it'll broach, and the concept behind it... controversial.  But I want to try to make this about how this character makes choices as best she can in the time she has.  She is the most tragic, most worthy, and she gets cut short.  Without spoiling anything, I have reason,  an entire other possible series of books that would allude back to it, and her.  Killing her here to resurrect her somewhere else.  It might add an extra layer of possibility to the mythology and prophecy I'm trying to create.  But, in the end, I'm writing a scene about rape.  i hate it.  It hurts so bad, but I feel like it's something that needs to get exposed.  There's so much vulnerability when it comes to money and privilege.   There's also what it does to the victims...  

Thankfully, I have the best possible person coaching me through that psychology.  A woman I admire who has been through so much.  She is acutely and uniquely aware of how PTSD works.  Once she reads through the draft, she needs to approve before it goes to print.  Maybe one day I'll ask her another question if all goes right, if we're lucky, if we work hard enough, if we don't stumble too much.

I want to prove to her that I can do this, that I can write.  Hell, really I want to prove it to myself.  I hope she proves herself capable of what she aspires to be.  I want, in 2021, to look back on this passage and smile knowing I was on the right track.  I want to be humble in success and learn strength through struggle.

Hootie & The Blowfish -  Let Her Cry

This is what I need to remember at the end of the day, a sense of progress and drive.  A feeling of small success, another bit of stone chipped away from a sculpture I see in my head.  I feel better more often than not.  

I'm still sad, but I've kind of accepted I'm just going to be sad all the time and I'm okay with that.  I can use it to motivate me, to push me.  I've found comfort in the daily struggle, the idea that pain is a form of progress.  I have to thank the gym for that.  Every day I learn the same lesson about pain and gain.  It's true in so many stereotypical ways.

While folding my laundry and putting it away, I had the following thought exercise:

What does Sysiphus think about for eternity?  Assuming he gets used to the strain and daily struggle of rolling the boulder up the hill, he's got a lot of free time for thought.  Kind of like how a runner uses the boring act of running to let their mind wander.  Sysiphus has the ultimate ability to let his mind wander, so what does he think about?  How many inner truths has he discovered?  How many stories has he created in his head just to pass the time?

You can survive doing very little.  But I hope that feeling alive is the product of hard, focused work and what it must bring.  That will make the sadness okay, knowing I could use it to make me better.

3.13.18 - Blog Post #8

Productivity is a silent thing.  A chrysalis of a kind, grinding away at this big block of stone.  Every day chipping away hoping in the end it'll mean something.  

Always afraid you're wasting your time.  Doing everything you can to believe you're right.

Taylor Swift - I Almost Do

Music helps really.  It's kind of great, one of the roommates playing a video game (currently Dragon Age Inquisition), the other watching a video on his phone.  The dog letting me use his back as an elbow prop.  I have my headphones on, and just write a page or two a night if I can.  Some nights are better than others, some are easier.  I try not to feel too bad if I don't get it all done.  I figure it's like the gym; it doesn't matter how great it goes, what matters is you get it done.

So I'm averaging around a page a day, give or take.  Some days I won't write at all, but I'll think about it at least five times and send two text messages to myself with small notes.  Other days I'll sit down on this recliner and bang out five pages straight.  But I'm committed, good or bad.

The gym helps too.  I'm beginning to fear I talk about it too much and I'm becoming one of those bros.  But... I'm proud of myself.  Which is something I don't know if I've ever really been.  I'm still insecure and worried as hell about the future and finances, but I feel good and I'm starting to look better little by little.  I have been in the gym two hours every day since New Years, except one day when I had to go to urgent care.  My chest hurt like hell, and after an EKG and X-Ray the doctor concluded I tore a pec.  I felt stupid. 

Magic - No Regrets

I've lost around 40 pounds of fat gained maybe 5 back in muscle.  Quick observation: fat seriously does store so much heat.  I am so much colder all the time now.  I had to go outside at work and I'd only brought a fleece jacket because this idiot forgot to check the weather before leaving the house.  It's freezing in March.  Figures.  I ask my colleague if I can borrow her massive winter coat.  She giggles and says, "if you're cold enough to go out in a woman's coat it must be cold."  I was eternally grateful.  I also looked ridiculous.  Whatever, it was warm.

I have a long long way to go in the book.  I have a long way to go in the gym.  I am better about recognizing this undercurrent of sadness, and doing more to face it head on.  I have time to think this way, to learn, hopefully to grow.  It's time to be better.

Like I said, chrysalis.  If I can be smart and nothing goes tragically wrong this year... maybe I can make this real.  I just want to make them proud.

The Fray - How To Save A Life

But it's funny, while I'm here I'm choosing isolation.  I think I'm getting flirted with more but I respond negatively.  I panic when women talk to me.  I don't want to be flirted with?  Like... I'm lonely but it's not worth putting myself out there just to get hurt again, or even worse, hurt someone else.  Also, I'm living in the margins right now but it's way tighter than I want.  I don't think I could invest in a relationship, so why try?

I figure it's all a discipline game.  Grind away and you have something one day.  If it's good, someone will buy it.  At least I can say I tried.

That's all any of us can do.

2.16.18 - Blog Post #7

I often wonder how I'm going to look back on this.  Ten years from now, how will I feel about my choices right now?

I'm pushing so hard.  Two and a half hours in the gym daily, wondering if someone will finally ask, "Who hurt you?"  Averaging a page a day, more or less.  Spending Friday nights with the boys at the house, going to a Marvel movie, or practicing Road Atlanta on Forza 7.  Am I going to be proud of the choices I made?  Will they have been the right ones?

Past third person direct tense is hard to write, I've noticed.  Especially when I'm converting from single person present.  It's getting there, and I'm fleshing more things I knew needed to be fleshed out.  The 'villain' of the first book isn't really a villain.   I hope I can humanize him a little and make it appear that we're all cogs in a machine, with free will to clog of speed up.  

Taylor Swift - End Game (ft Ed Sheeran and Future)

I wonder if this is how George RR Martin felt when he killed characters like Hodor.  Innocent, seen the future.  Could save everyone, save for the fatal flaws.

It makes me sad to the point that it's sometimes difficult to write her scenes early on because I know I don't get to continue that path past the first book.  

It's even crazier when you're me, and you know who each character represents.  

It's kind of fun.  Maybe therapeutic?  I hope if people read it, and figure out who's who they are happy with what they read.  Because it's only the important people that have left an imprint, that's who I include.  

Elmore James - It Hurts Me Too

Will I remember the the work, that it lead to success?  Or will I remember the loneliness, isolation, and see it all as another waste of time?

Charlie Puth - How Long

Either way... I want to remember it was worth learning I could do it.  That I could commit to a goal for longer than I ever planned and I'm even more committed after feeling progress both physically, emotionally, and writing-wise.

Now... what to do about next year?

1.2.18 - Blog Post #6

Not the first time I've tried to short type 2017 into the date for 2018, probably be doing that the next month or so.

First, a song from an album that's been pretty much on constant rotation for me this past week.

From the self-titled debut album from Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats Video directed by Greg Barnes.

The album is amazing, really speaks to me.  I think the past year has kind of been revelatory of the depths of what I've been going through, and I'm able to appreciate, and maybe recognize others that are struggling on occasion too.  Maybe I'm learning to be more empathetic, that's what I want..  Or maybe I'm just projecting.

Plus the lead singer reminds em of this dude I went to high school with, if he'd been an artist, this is the kind of guy he'd have become after a mistaken stent in metal.  Probably similar stories of depression and fighting a possible substance abuse problem.

Man isn't that an understandable struggle, now.  

The whole album, and really the genera at large, I owe to a late discovery of Alabama Shakes.  The radio station on Google Play associated with them, not once have I skipped a song.  Even good gym music for where my head and heart are lately.

Irma Thomas - Wish Someone Would Care

Only the second day into the year, which really is a superfluous demarkation of the passage of events in one's life.  Really I feel like my season changed a few months back, I decided to be progressive in dealing with my free time and anxiety.  I told myself I needed to actually take agency of my own path, something I hadn't really been doing.  So, after a heartbreaking catalyst, I've been in a gym at least an hour a day three days a week the past six months, usually more.  I don't know the weight loss yet, but I'm seeing results.  I kind of don't want to what my weight is for a while.  I joined a gym, and now think I can manage six days a week.  

It leads to the second goal.  The treadmill time helps me focus my thoughts, get my imagination to run through it's usual mill of dreams and move towards writing scenes and pages, fixing problems.  If I can learn to write while on the treadmill, I'll be able to lose so much weight.  But I told myself that starting winter break I would write at least a paragraph a day.  I force myself to write at least one paragraph.  Most days, it's been at least a page.  Today it was four pages, I think good ones.  I want to treasure these days of small successes, and mark them.  I wrote the Wen and Gre intro, and I'm kind of proud of it.  I took a while, focused, and came up with a different way of doing it that gave me good characterization of these two diametrically opposed characters, a different view of a character that was introduced earlier.  I'm hoping it's good.  I think it is.  I figure if I can keep this pace... maybe I can actually do this.  

Darondo - Didn't I

So many dreams and things to want to do.  I think I'm also afraid of all the aloneness I'll feel on nights like this.  Writing is a really lonely process.  I get lost in my thoughts, but then I realize that I've been here the whole time.  And while I have ideas of who I'd want to see and talk to, and reasons why... I think I just feel the fact that I'm single a lot more when I'm writing.  I'm more... aware of it.  Or... I'm just getting more aware of it all the time.  Like... is this gonna be my future?  A lot of lonely nights writing after heavy workouts.  It's not the worst life... but it's... isolated.

I don't know if it helps or not for me to type here.  I know no one's listening yet, despite my hopes, fears, and sometimes ambitions.  

The Isley Brothers - Fire and Rain

I just hope I can keep this pace up with work.  

I want to be that guy that succeeds at all the things, for me... you too.