5.20.18 - Blog Post #11

Today was hard.

My autistic brother and I went to visit our octogenerian grandmother just diagnosed with Stage 4 Renal Cancer.  Our mother, who moved back home last year to repair that relationship between mother and daughter, let us know she's been diagnosed with Rectal Cancer.  We find out the stage of it Monday.

I believe we say things out into the universe hoping anyone will hear us.  People want to know they're heard, that they matter more than the atoms that make them.  Maybe it's the lost love we're hoping will be listening, or a deity to offer kindness, or a voice of hope, but we say things like the starting second and third sentence hoping it finds the right amount of probability and luck that helps save those we love.

Can I just say though, and maybe this won't be judged too harshly a decade from now when someone actually reads this:  My grandmother on her deathbed said some racist shit.  The Texas school shooting was on in the background.  She tried to blame it on the de-segregation of schools in the fifties: "We want to educate the blacks sure but it takes more than a generation to breed the violence out of them."  

Never-mind that the majority of all school shootings and gun death violence is at the hands of white men, but whatever, you're on your deathbed.  I didn't know how to respond.  It's been a fucked up day, leading to all kinds of bourbon-drunk anxiety that I can't manage right now.  

I just want to write a book that gets published and marry a girl that loves me; and have my mother live long enough to be proud of both events.

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?