Tag Archives: self-improvement

Life is the true test.

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Every day we go through our daily tumult’s. They drive us crazy as we feel manipulated by something we don’t see and possibly never will.

The friction of what we find within the strangeness and cavorting in the space of a day enlightens us and makes us new but there is also the other things.

We find them when we’re trapped in our own mind. Searching for the words, the way, and the exit from our current headspace.

Once we’ve reached or more appropriately, attained, the required ability we forget who we once were, or at least we should.

The trouble with entering a new dream of vision of who we want to be is the leftovers.

Those we’ve left behind in the shadows of the life we once lived.

It’s a strange and ill begotten thing to trivialize such a thing but we must do it in order to reach the necessary plane of existence our mind, and more necessarily, our soul.

These are not the same things and within the world we travel we must learn to absorb and realize our path is treacherous and because of that we must be the person we’ve needed to be, not for anyone but ourselves.

Taking it on…

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When we see the world a certain way it clouds our mind and we try to adjust it to a world view.

It’s this word view that changes, or should.

It’s not the words of others we should take upon the mantle of who we are but the truth of who we are, and who we’ve always been.

It’s the rights of our souls or fabric of our humanity that blesses us and we take it upon our lives as if it’s the word of some sage or soothsayer.

Our breath, our very lives are the choice of our mind, body, and soul.

Our mind may try to resist what our soul wants and it’s only in the death of a part of our soul that the mind wins.

But the body. It knows. When we get sick, is it because of some bug, possibly, but there may be a deeper cause. Our mind.

Within our mind and it’s many machinations, we sometimes learn to trust things we shouldn’t, believe in people who aren’t trustworthy and we falter because of that.

We suffer through our lives because our true calling isn’t one of the mind but of the soul.

Our mind can resist for our lifetime, but why should we let it when we can live such a fulfilling and engrossing existence?

Do as your soul wishes.

The Revelations…

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Each day I wake up, have my coffee, get my words done and read.

Some of those days are filled with swapping between writing and doing the outline for the project.

I’ll see the end point of the story, sometimes. But while I’m writing I’ve always had a notebook close by. It’s how I work and it works for me.

There are other days when I just write. I’ll make notes on characters, their issues, what’s going on in their heads, but those days are creating days.

They are the heavy lifting days.

As I’ve grown as a writer I continue to grow outside of the writing desk.

It feels weird to say it but quitting has been at the forefront of my mind lately.

It’s something that when I have those heavy lifting days occurs to me.

They are the work days. The hard ones where the words come slow and the coffee never hits the spot.

But I know I’ll keep writing as surely as I know I’ll continue to have depression issues for the rest of my life. I’m working through those.

It’s the writing and reading that give me peace. It’s the reading that gives me guidance when I have none.

The world comes at me harder than it seems to those outside my head. They oftentimes don’t understand but it does.

I’ll keep writing because I feel it’s the only thing I’m truly good at. When I stop for any length of time, my mind doesn’t work properly.

I know it’s rough and I know I’m getting better and that’s all that matters to me.

I write for me now, though I do throw a few bones to people in my writing.

For the most part I write what scares me, what troubles me.

Writing is difficult but as with anything else, the effort shows the results and I’ve been putting a lot of effort into stories.

I hope you’re having a good day and I’ll talk about something(not sure what) on Wednesday.

Coming to terms with addiction and finding my way.

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As I said on Wednesday, a game took away from my writing time.

Oddly enough, this initially happened when I went sober the end of July.

I swapped one addiction for another.

Instead of blinding myself with alcohol, I shut the world off and buried myself in leveling a character online.

This led me to taking up the bottle again the end of October.

I did this for many reasons but mainly because I have always needed to bury my emotions.

It’s been that way for as long as I can remember.

As a teenager, I would keep to myself, not wanting to let the world know how depressed I was. That led to issues with relationships in high school.

I wasn’t mature enough to handle a relationship with myself, much less another person.

Thankfully, as I got older, met my wife, who has kept me safe from my worst tendencies, I was able to understand a few of those things.

But there was always something to subvert, numb, or chasten myself with.

It was either drowning myself in a bottle, burying myself in the pages of a book, delving into online games. In my blindness to these things I kept myself safe from pain.

I was obliterated at times because of family problems.

The bottle has been there since my late teens.

The feeling that one thing gave me led me to run off the tracks and nearly destroyed my marriage.

I try to keep myself safe and I have a tendency to bury myself in things that aren’t as good for me as I would like them to be; the bottle, video games, and other distractions.

I feel it’s necessary to bury myself in one thing that will help me get through all of this. My writing.

Writing gives me a similar high as alcohol, without the side effects.

I have this tendency to latch onto something and it can control and affect my entire world.

I’ve chosen to latch onto my writing and work it for all I can.

I’m sober again and though I’ve fallen I got myself back up.

I pick up the pieces and find new things daily. This journey will lead me to better places and better states of mind. Both of which are needed.

I’ll do my best to write for myself and will continue to write this blog.

The words are important and the message is as well.

I hope you’ll continue to read, continue to follow me on other platforms, but this is where I intend to spend my time.

I have Twitter and Instagram, but I’d rather use this blog. It gives me a bigger space and on days like today I need that.

I let myself down.

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The last five months of 2019 I didn’t write as much or read as much as I should’ve.

My focus left me because of a game.

I don’t know why I let it control those last few months, but I did.

It took control of who I wanted to be. What I wanted to accomplish and I became detached from all of those things.

I realized that I had to do better for myself.

Besides my wife and kids, my writing is the most important thing in my life.

It’s changed how I deal with society. It’s caused me to reevaluate my depression. I no longer look at it with a singular moniker of, “depression.”

There are many subtle levels of depression and they take over parts of my writing and how I deal with the day-to-day machinations of it.

In the end we are at the mercy of what we focus on though I finished a novel during those five months–I’ve determined that it’s quite good–I also learned a lot about myself and why the littlest distractions can detour my writing as well as the balance within my brain.

I’m determined to get something out that can be read by everyone as well as to continue posting on here.

I still have queries out with three agents and when I hear something, good or not, I’ll let you know.

Happy writing and enjoy the rest of your week.

Day by day…

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There is this thing I have a problem with and it needs to be solved.

It’s editing and planning/plotting.

The first part is the hardest since I actually hate, loath, despise(you know, those feisty words)editing.

But there’s this thing I need to do this year. I have to publish and at this point it’s something I have to do for my sanity.

As to plotting/planning, I’ve learned the hard way that rewriting draft after draft doesn’t work. It just pisses me off.

I know better. Or at least I like to think after 43 years I should.

These two things throw off my progress, traction, and screw up my head.

I will continue to post on here because it’s cathartic. I know you’re all tired of hearing about my editing issues. I’ll put that to bed this year.

Happy writing.

2020 and doing the hard things.

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This last year I pushed through a few issues.

I found my writing groove and I was distracted at times by video games.

But I didn’t do the hard things.

I didn’t publish because I was undecided and nervous about the quality of the book I planned on putting out.

I made a promise to myself I wouldn’t do that. I did it anyway.

I also had a few personal victories.

I pushed past the things I felt comfortable writing and wrote some truly freaky shit.

I sent out more queries than I ever have and I plan on doing the same in 2020.

I decided my writing and my time to write is worthy and needs devotion.

In 2020 I’ll make priorities for that time and not let others take it from me. My writing and editing time is me working even if I’m not currently published.

That will change and the mindset I have going into the new year changes too.

I will not be held back by things or people.

I will move forward, ignore and resist what others think of me and will never let people in who don’t understand those things.

I fought with a few demons, found a couple more and I’ll kill every last one of ’em until I’m where I believe I should be.

Go out and get it and take no prisoners.