I Went to Sprouts and Whatnot

I went to Sprouts to get hair vitamins and chocolate covered cherries. I made the mistake of trimming the sides of my face, so I wanted to see if I could correct my mistake and make it grow back fast, plus make the goatee area, grow faster too.  I get in line, because some crazy lady is complaining about her change, and then some weird creepy dude with a lot of ear hair cut in front of me in line.  Sprouts is full of uppity people.  And the creepy dude bought Michelob Ultra.  Who freakin' buys Michelob Ultra in public?  Now for the important part, I've been trying to figure out how to wrap up my first couple of stories.  I bought some more books to research some historical and technical background for a couple of stories.  It's tough to read all this stuff and try to fit in time to do things.  My reading list is up in the hundreds now, what with all the projects I'm looking to do.  How are you supposed to have time to rest from a manual labor job of 50+ hours a week, 20 hours of commuting back and forth, or have time to read, to write, or have some semblance of a life?

Stuff

I broke the glass in my new iPhone that I've only had for two weeks.  I managed to get my phone fixed, but it sure was a hassle.  I also have enflamed tendons in my arm, and it's tough to work and do things. I'm not able to weightlift the normal little bit I do because my arm hurts so much.  This has been going on for about now, I don't have health insurance right now, so I'm checking to see how it goes.  And of course today I slipped and fell and wrecked my knee pretty horribly. It's got a pretty nice bump on it, I guess that's what happens when you're not paying attention.  I did manage to get a three day weekend, so hopefully I can rest a bit, and get some writing in.  I've got the ending worked out I think for one story, that has really turned out better than I thought it could.  The entire thing is written in the present tense, which took some time, because you have to stop and think a lot harder about what you're writing.  Most stories are written in the past tense, it's often taken me a week to finish a sentence, because it would take me so long to figure how to convert something into present tense language. I think the idea going forward is to put two or three stories into my first book, and then jump onto some other things.  There's literally a dozen things piling up because I finally got my act together and came up with some things to write about.  Too bad there's not enough time to finish them.

6th Place

Last night I found a medal for a 6th place finish, for a cross country meet for junior varsity conference championship.  To put this in perspective, I think they gave out medals to the top ten. In junior varsity.  Oddly enough I think this is the only thing I've really won.  A friggin' 6th place medal.  I was a high school senior, and I wasn't even good enough to be on varsity, and the sad thing was I think I could've placed better, because I still had a little in the tank, at the end, to hold off, some guy coming up behind me.  How embarrassing.  6th place in a JV race, is rather embarrassing to say the least, and as far as I can tell is the only thing that would go on a "trophy" shelf.  I'm 34, which is like 24, but you move slower, have kids, and the beginnings of grey hair.  It means if I want to do something important there's less time to do it in, I've been trying to write books, and scripts, and novels, most of my life, only recently have started finding my work coming together on some things. At 34.  And I don't know if there award winning projects or not, and frankly, that's not the point.  I'm still trying to do things I love, because I love them, and I want to do something important, and even that process is way better than 6th place.  Don't be in 6th, keep going at whatever it is you're doing, because it's important to you, and can leave a bigger stamp on the world than sitting home doing nothing, or taking a runner up to the runner up to the runner up to the runner up to the runner up prize.

Non-Working Weekend

I managed to get about 15 pages of reading done this weekend, when I was supposed to get done around 200.  I'm severely behind on my research as I've been trying to relax more on the weekends, because my workload at my paying job is ever increasing.  I suppose that's a good enough excuse, but it's more likely I'm just being lazy.  For instance, I got my income tax refund, prior to this past weekend, and I bought some comic books, 4 novels, a sign at Hobby Lobby that shows all the Batmobiles from the comics from the 40s to the present, a couple of movies, a Batman nightlight that projects the Bat-signal, and some things for the wife and daughters, including $150 of Barbie stuff for the soon to be 8 year old.  Still, I'm regretting not getting more reading done, and I'm realizing I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to properly organize the notes for the next project I'm working on.  I should be getting more done, but it's tough working 50 hour work weeks, with 20 hours of commuting thrown in, to find motivation to finish things.  I should figure this out better. There's a lot to get done, and time seems to go by a lot faster as you get older.

A Bunch of Little Things

I got my hair cut this week, and I've been letting my beard grow, so I'm starting to look like a Viking with his hair buzzed. I think in some weird way it makes me feel a little freer and a little more comfortable. I've been getting more reading and writing done, I don't know how that works, maybe I feel like a wild man, and it's coming out in my writing or something. I did get sort of a wacky idea today. I remember hearing how there have been movies filmed on iPhones and I was thinking, why not write a book on one? I managed to download a word processor onto my phone, so I'm going to give it a shot. I suppose I'm trying to keep my mind going, since my body's been getting a beaten from working so much lately. I'm really tired, and finding I've less time to do some of the things I want to do, so I've been trying keep occupied and focused on writing instead of how tired I am. Pretty clever if I do say so myself.