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Writers, put down the controller and write.

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Each of us fall behind our goals.

We stay up too late playing video games, watching movies or we read later than we planned because the book was just that good.

With the invention of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, among others, we’re bound to get sidetracked from the things we need to get done.

This is why a plan of attack is necessary. You must have a plan or there is less possibility you will achieve your goals.

The first thing you should do is decide what you’re going to do tomorrow and do it. Follow a path that leads you away from the temptations I mentioned above.

I’m not saying to do away with the fun stuff and give up on the things you enjoy, everything in moderation.

But when faced with sitting down to write or playing another round of Wii Golf, put away the controller and write.

There is no other way to do it than to put the things away or have your spouse, other half or partner hide these things when you need to write. This is truly the only way to keep your mind on track.

Sometimes it’s necessary when you can’t keep your focus on what matters to have someone take over the reigns from you and control the things you can’t.

Once you’re able to take control, there will be no need for anyone else to.

Back to your morning and following a path.

You should have planned your day out the night before and if you have day job it is best to plan around that.

Once you have your plan for your day job, plan your day and your writing around that.

Once you have that, your day should go along without incident…

5 Things which can change your life and how they changed mine.

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For most of my life, I’ve lived in the shallow end. I did only what I needed, I wouldn’t rock the boat and I never wanted to do the things which made me happy, I always did things which made those around me happy, or things I believed would make them proud.

Living that way taught me a few things:

  1. You can’t make others happy, regardless of how hard you try.
  2. You must to what makes you happy, to hell with everyone else.
  3. Your immediate family (which for me is my wife, kids and dog) are the ones who will support you no matter what.
  4. What you choose to do creatively can be the most important thing in your life and will give you more guidance than any book, speech of movie.
  5. You must find peace within yourself to do anything worthwhile creatively.

These five are the biggest things I’ve dealt with in my life and I’m going to go through them and tell you how I discovered the importance of each.

For Number One.

My biological dad has been out of my life for most of my adult life, this is a mutual thing and though I’ve tried and he’s tried, we can’t reach a point where we are amicable to each other.

When I was a kid I played soccer because my parents wanted me to, I was 4 and had no choice. When I was six, I started playing ice hockey, and though initially I did it because of my parents, I began to love the game and watching hockey, especially playoff hockey is a part of who I am today.

In my teens and toward my senior year in high school I wanted to do something which would make my dad proud, I enlisted in the Marines, and was discharged after failing tests in receiving.

I started college because I wanted to make him proud and it was my best way out of a bad situation, I failed at that too, completing only a year with poor academics.

When I moved to Las Vegas it was because I had no place to live as my biological dad and step-mom asked me to leave because of my relationship with my then girlfriend and present wife. Along with their not being happy with my relationship and my academics I left with my sister for Las Vegas, my girlfriend followed me to Vegas a month later.

I began writing again in 2001 after insistence from a friend and encouragement from my wife.

Initially I did because I wanted my dad again to be proud of me being published, but that never happened. After a reconciliation after my son’s birth in 2004 and eventual falling out, we didn’t talk until around 2009 when my daughter was born. That reconciliation like the previous one, didn’t end well and I’ve moved on.

I learned that my biological dad will never be satisfied with anything I do and the only person I should make proud of my achievements is myself.

For Number Two.

Along with the falling out I had with my biological dad, my sisters and a few other parts of the family stopped talking to me.

This taught a great lesson: Your family will not be there when you need them, and you must do only which satisfies yourself and ignore what everyone says about you.

I’ve since reconnected with my sisters and those other parts of my family and they are some of my greatest supports now. I don’t know how I could have dealt with my grandfather’s funeral without all of them!

For Number Three.

When others gave up on me for falsehoods they were told, my wife stood by me, and without her by my side the last sixteen years, I’m not sure I could have handled everything as well as I have.

For Number Four.

When I began writing again, I read books, watched documentaries and began following creatively gifted people on social media. I learned they are as clueless as the rest of us when it comes to how they got published or why they’re successful in their art.

Neil Gaiman said it best in his commencement speech, “Sometimes people get hired, because they get hired.” Which is the best example of how artists, writers and actors make it in their fields.

Neil Gaiman and others worry that they’ve perpetrated to some crime in their success and worry that their will come a time when someone will show up and take everything away.

I choose to write for myself, not because doing it for anyone else didn’t give me the results I wanted, but because I like to see the stories which come out and I enjoy coming up with the ideas, characters and worlds which come out so wonderfully on the page.

For Number Five.

Through all the things I’ve dealt with in my life, my parents divorce when I was eight, going to 11 different school and having to adjust to each, being discharged from the Marines, family giving up on me and being estranged from my biological dad, I no longer carry any resentment toward my family, my biological dad or anyone else.

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I learned this year that dwelling on anything never helps and that meditation and living for yourself and doing the things which matter to you are the most important things you can do in your life.

Your life is your own, no one else can live your life, no one can write your stories.

Your entitled to the life you want, and don’t let anyone, anyone tell you different.

Stemming the Tide of Depression with Transcendental Meditation

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In September my grandfather passed away and there were a few things about that which set me into a severe depression which no one noticed, not even my wife.

The depression lasted until late February, but it’s been a recurring thing for me since. I’ll get all melancholy, and now that my wife knows what I was going through, she knows what to look for.

Since breaking through the depression, I’d found myself going in and out of depression. Thoughts of suicide ran rampant through my mind on a daily basis during the depression, and lets just say it’s a good thing I don’t own a firearm.

My reasons for trying Transcendental Meditation (TM) stem a lot from the depression I fell into, caused by events following my grandfather’s passing.

In early November I got shingles, I knew this was from the stress of my grandfather’s passing. I also understood that I was beginning to spiral, though I hid it well from my wife, family and co-workers.

The catalyst to get me into TM was a breakdown I had at work, caused by an interaction with a co-worker, who said, “I don’t care what’s wrong with you.” His statement sent me over the cliff.

After work that day I cried in my car for twenty minutes. It was hard sobbing, uncontrollable crying. The type of crying you’d do as a kid. I called my wife on my way home and told her I needed to do something, and soon.

After that day, I knew I had two choices, be done with living, or truly start living. TM is my way to live.

When I attended the first introduction meeting I knew I would do it before I walked in. The next week I took my first lesson. That was one week ago. I feel more awake, and for the first time in a very long time, I feel alive.

TM is a lot like other meditations, except for the mantra. When you learn TM, your teacher gives you a mantra, it’s a word, phrase or combined words which create a tone, that centers you in a way that makes your body drop all its defenses and sends you spiraling into a deep pool of bliss.

I can’t tell you my mantra, because each one is special to each individual. I keep it as a sacred thing.

I can only speak of my experience, but TM was my last stop before jumping. I’ve backed away from the cliff in the last week and I’m now more comfortable in my skin than I’ve been since before my parents were divorced, when I was 8.

If you have any question or comments, please ask them.

 

Diving to the Source, my First Experience with Transcendental Meditation

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Have you ever felt like the world wasn’t what you were told? Have you ever felt that there was someone hiding behind a curtain and eventually they’d jump out and say, “Gotcha”?

I’ve been following a path that many of my generation have. I moved away from faith-based religions and into Eastern Philosophy and have considered myself Buddhist for at least ten years, maybe longer.

In the last few years that hasn’t been enough for me. My meditation practice had fallen off, or been non-existent.

A lot of this was because of a hectic life of a day-job, wife, kids, writing schedules and in not practicing my Mindfulness Meditation, I’ve become more angry and lost faith in who I am, was and where my life was headed.

I wanted something more than Mindfulness Meditation was offering.

My search began to narrow in the last six months.

I watched a speech by David Lynch about Transcendental Meditation, and from there I listened to his audio book of “Catching the Big Fish”, after that I listened to Transcendence by Norman E. Rosenthal on audio.

After listening to those as well as reading Science of Being and Art of Living: Transcendental Meditation I found myself in a place I hadn’t been in a long time; I was without direction.

On Monday I had my first TM session and though I was a bit apprehensive and thought that maybe, just maybe there would be a man with a small alien which he would attach to my spinal column, nothing close to that happened.

The truth is, I’ve never felt something as profound, spiritually like TM. The session was easy and transcending was easier that I thought it would be.

It was as though I were on an elevator and the cable snapped, but I could still control the descent.

The closest feeling I can compare it to is the sound of my kids the first time I heard their cries, it was that life altering.

This post is different from my usual writing posts, because honestly, after my first TM session I feel different.

Going forward I believe my sessions with TM will help me along my path, as well as lead me to new ones, but going forward my perspective is forever altered.

If you have any questions, please ask them below. If I can answer them, I will.

Writing and Ignoring the Grand Bargain

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What reality is this? What fantasy have we created that makes us feel more important than those around us?

The dawn comes and with it the light, the brightness and the foundations of who we are. Throughout our writing there are two things that come together as a means to halt our writing.

  1. Our lack of faith in our writing.
  2. Those who wish to distract us or deride us from the task of writing.

Each of these are part of the Grand Bargain of Writing.

The bargain is that we knowingly accept what we’re getting into, even if we don’t understand what we’re getting into.

We knowingly accept that we may become famous as other writers have done. But, we also take into account that we’re alone in our task of writing.

The solitude of writing is one the things a lot of people either can’t handle or they’re worried about other things going wrong.

For myself, the things I worry about are the ability to multitask all of the things I have going on. From day-job, blog, wife, kids and my fiction writing.

My biggest worry is that something will get lost in balancing act.

My reason for this has a lot to do with childhood and the things I’ve dealt with my entire life concerning abandonment issues, which plays into the worry of losing my wife or kids through the solitary life of a writer.

I risk losing things I care about because I’m a writer and have known that for over twenty years, it just took me a while to take a chance on it, and that my wife supports me and tells me she just wants me to write makes the risk less, but it’s still in the back of my mind every time I sit down.

My day-job isn’t much of worry and honestly if it weren’t for the healthcare I’d quit.

But a lot of day-jobs are like that.

Reality and the life we choose as writers, the solitary life of doing something we love, something that we feel in our soul, is enough for us to say to hell with the Grand Bargain and do it anyway.