A Splintered Mind

Friday - Entry 15: With November winding quickly to a close, I have been reflecting on how well I have done using Lift to track my progress with NaNoWriMo . Given that I have freelance writing work and another book project that takes my time on top of being a single dad, I was asking a lot of myself to also work on NaNoWriMo. Yet, I wanted to train myself to work daily on my fiction. In the past I have wasted so much energy spinning in place and being distracted that I wanted an incentive to train myself for a higher level of functioning. After all, only by steadily moving forward can I make progress. Besides, it's not as if success will mean I'll have more time on my hands. I need to learn how to write both types of books simultaneously. I started the month off with a bang, and have really been racing along this past week, but there was a giant block in the middle of the month where I wrote nothing on my project at all. Not even 25 words a day. It is possible that I forgot to...

There I am, the glow of my iPhone deep in my face, as I snuggle into my pillow and update my task list for the next day. There are a lot of uncompleted items from today, so I dutifully move them into the new list. It's a long list. But I'm fully convinced that we accomplish great things when we make great goals, so onwards and huzzah! By the end of the week, however, my list is larger than the national deficit, and I'm not feeling very "huzzah!" anymore. There is an overall sense of failure. Sure. I have checked off dozens of items on my list, but there are hundreds left undone! Look at that! I haven't done my 3 hours of daily Japanese study yet. And there is the 1 hour of sketching uncompleted. 5 hours of web design…that site isn't going to code itself. I still have to write thousands of words today. Also, I haven't run yet, the kids need dinner, and there's a new episode of Grimm. Can't miss that. No matter how many times I live th...

Update 2016: This article was featured in my book "Saying NO to Suicide" , with added commentary. Sunday - Entry 14: Today is the switch, and I am prepared to not sink into depression tomorrow when my girls are not with me—which is a depressing thought in itself. I love my girls dearly and even a year into Life2.0 I still struggle with the switch. Before Life2.0 began I was a full time dad, so switching to single life two weeks out of every month has been a challenging task. The children define the rhythm of my life, and I find myself dancing haphazardly to an uncertain beat without them. The silence of my empty nest tends to trigger deep waves of Depression that, up until recently, took a few days to shake off. Fortunately, I have found that I can manage this gear shift if I mentally prepare myself. The secret is simple: I remind myself not to become depressed. That is a lot easier to type than it is to accomplish. Some weeks my brain feels determined to be sad. Throw in...

I've been recently going through old blog posts and consolidating blog labels. I've been creative over the years, which was fun, but I decided that having about ten specific blog themes might help readers find old entries better. I know, it sound horrifically boring, and it is. I do them in six month blocks because my attention span is crawling out of my ears and making it for the woods at that point. I came upon an old entry from November 2006 that surprised me. First, I had no idea I've been attempting to finish NaNoWriMo for six years. (No, I've never made it. Life is far too chaotic.) Also, I made some jokes about Depression that I still found funny and thought I'd reshare with you. I'm not married anymore, so the first one is a bit of a blank right now, but I imagine it'll be true again when I start dating. Poor dears. They have no idea what they'll be getting themselves into. My favorites are #6 and #13. I should warn you, however. My humor can be...

Wensday - Entry 13: General feelings of discouragement this morning. I'll take a moment to glibly express myself, then get busy. I'm super disappointed Mia Love didn't defeat Jim Matheson last night. She came so close. So close. To use the rhetoric of the left, that means everybody who didn't vote for her was a racist, I guess. Who knew Democrats were so bigoted? Shocking, really… Wait, does that work only for Obama? What a special guy. Mostly, I'm discouraged that I'm in a doctor's office again instead of working on my freelance job. Funds are sooooo low. I realize that the last thing the Leprechaun wants right now is to have a sore throat & a cough while in a neck brace. How unlucky! And she's already miserable, so I have expressed plenty of sympathy to her. I guess I'm just frustrated because the only thing that seems to be happening like clockwork lately is the constant march of medical expenses. I do actually need to work to pay for them. Ju...

Today is the beginning of NaNoWriMo, the internet shared insanity where people commit to write 50,000 words in 30 days. Are you sitting it out again? Every year I truly want to participate in NaNoWriMo, but family responsibilities usually interfere. Already this morning I have dealt with the Brownie's seizure activity, called her bus driver, called her school, then spent time on the phone with the Vice Principal for the Leprechaun's tardiness issues due to her own chattiness in school, but also in part to the Brownie's issues which make everybody late. The Elf was in bed—unable to wake up—and I was not even ready for the day. I needed to exercise to halt the broadening of my waist's horizons, I had six freelance articles to write and submit, AND it was a half school day. I may simply be too unorganized to manage NaNoWriMo on top of my hectic life. I've never managed it in any year that I've tried. 1667 words a day for 30 consecutive days is an enormous commitmen...