one simple rule

Another day of sleeping like a human has come and gone and I feel good. I didn't accomplish nearly as much as I should've today, but I gave my permission to take it easy. Sometimes I can be such a harsh taskmaster over my projects and deadlines that I don't fit in any time to just recharge and have a day to regroup and refocus. Today was that kind of day and it felt good. I had work early and I did a few work things throughout the day, but mostly I just let the day flow. Watched a movie, read a book, planned a few future projects, thought a lot about vacations (fun fact: I LOVE daydreaming about and planning vacations. It's my goal in life to someday have the resources to follow through on all of those plans) and that was about it. I will say though, I'm very much looking forward to tomorrow and getting back on track. There's a tall stack of MUST BE DONE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE HOLY CRAP! things going on in my life, and they won't be ignored two days in a row. A few weeks ago I was feeling pretty overwhelmed by some of that stuff, but my brother and I had a breakthrough about how to deal with that stuff and it's been a major help to me. In a nutshell, it's just about doing what you can. If you can, awesome, and if you can't then you can't, and you deal with it. It's a very zen kind of approach that I find inspires me to work super hard but to do it from a place of calmness and not in this frantic state of "MUST GET DONE". So that's nice.

My roommate and I stayed up super late last week and were talking about lifestyle changes and reliable ways to work out and such. Mostly we were trying to figure out somewhere we could go swimming at this Summer, as both of us love to swim but didn't do it a single time last year (and I'm kind of thinking I didn't swim the year before that either). But anyways, while talking about diets and exercise regimens and such, my roommate came up with an idea of a system with a single rule. No matter what it is you decide to do to get in shape and get healthy, you have just this one single rule to follow. Don't Quit. That's it. One simple, powerful rule. It's something that I'm trying to apply to everything in my life that I wasn't doing a good job of controlling, most notably my nutso sleep schedule (or lack thereof).

Speaking of sleep, it's just about that time for me. Hopefully the week is treating you all well up to this point. I'm excited about Thursday. It's become family day for me, I go to my families house and hang out with everyone, play with my nephews, have a business meeting with my bro and then play a board game with my mom, sister-in-law and grandpa. It's always a great time and such a refreshing and recharging experience to spend a big handful of hours around the people that love you no matter what and you love them no matter what.

Day One

Well, day one of the new sleep schedule seemed to go really well. I felt more mentally acute than I have in months, to a degree that actually freaked me out a little bit. It made me feel like I had been seeing the world through a slight haze for the past month or more and now it was gone, and I was finally fully awake. I slept straight through the night, and honestly that's probably the first straight 8 hours of sleep I've gotten in over a year. I normally sleep 5 or 6 hours at the most. So yeah, I think I may be an all new, super powered version of myself if I keep this up. I'm weirdly excited that it's almost bedtime now. I'm about to lay down and turn on a show and just relax and welcome the end of a good day.

Well, good day aside from that horrible Texas Rangers loss, but we won't discuss that.

I did my first coverage of Benbrook City Council today, that was fun. I've wanted to branch my council coverages out to neighboring cities for a while now and this was the first time I've done it. They have an amazing website that makes it super easy to watch the council meetings and it was a good experience. I liked it a lot and had fun, which is weird I guess. I suppose I've missed writing council coverages seeing as the primary one I cover here in my hometown hasn't met but three or four times in the past four or five months.

I'm giving up on the book I was reading. It was so poetically written, so magnanimously worded, so full of fearful fire and geared with grinding grit, packed to the gills with packing tape and gusto, as if it were a box begging to be shipped to the top of the world, feet tucked in and diving off of the cliffside with a scream escaping from pursed lips as they prepare to plunge into the depths below; certainly, with no hesitation. Seriously, the book was all like that. In a way it's a beautiful work of art but I've been struggling for two months to read it and I just can't ever stomach more than a few pages at a time. The guy is so obsessed with crafting these insanely complex sentences that it takes fifteen pages for a character to go from point a to point b. I'm sure there's someone out there who thinks it's a masterpiece, but I prefer more story in my stories.

Now I'm faced with the daunting task of choosing my next book from the hundreds I've yet to read. I'm leaning towards "Sandman Slim".

Alright, I guess I'll shut up now. I'm kind of wide awake, which worries me a bit. I'm hopeful that getting everything quieted down and getting in bed will help make me more tired. I hope the week is rolling along smoothly for all of you!

Simple Math

So it's not going to win me any maturity points in the great game of adulthood, but today was day one of putting myself on a strict bedtime and wakeup schedule. I've always been an erratic sleeper, usually going to bed between 2 and 3am and waking up around 10am. But lately it's slowly edged later and later, with some nights seeing me up until 4 and 5am and sleeping until 11 or even noon. I'm blessed with a pretty freewheeling job that rarely sees me needing to be up early, but the schedule was just messing with me bad. Sleeping that late makes me feel like a big portion of the day is lost and I just hate how it makes me feel. So last night I made the decision and enacted my one day turnaround plan. I couldn't fall asleep until around 5:30am but set my alarm for 9am and woke up. That's made today... interesting. There were bouts of staring off into space and nearly falling asleep, but for the most part I held it together and had a productive day. Now it's midnight, which is when I retreat into my room and start the bedtime countdown and get ready to shut down and head off to sleepyland. I'm weirdly looking forward to it and hope to establish a normal sleep routine for the first time in a long time.

One thing I did today was finish my Earth Day story for Hall Brothers Entertainment. It should be up at hallbrosentertainment.com in the morning, so be sure you check that out and let me know your thoughts. Earth Day was a strange holiday to use for inspiration but I'm really happy with the direction my brother and I took our stories in. It's so weird how enjoyable the holiday stories are. I have a deep love of writing them and I feel like they represent some of our best work over at the website.

You'd think I'd have more to talk about than that, but I really don't. I spent some time mulling over the differences between baseball and softball on a long drive the other evening, that was interesting. Baseball is played pretty quietly, with almost a sort of reverence given to the game unfolding out on the field. Softball on the other hand is rowdy and loud, with the players singing songs and playfully taunting the other team and such. In a way it's sort of a gender role reversal, if you think about it, because men are generally thought of us rowdier than women but that's not the case in the baseball/softball comparison. That's about all I got on that one.

Alright, officially tired and going to bed. I hope everybody is having a great start to their weeks!