Wil Wheaton's Blog, page 43

welp

Lots to say, but I just can’t right now. I’ll try again next week.

pages upon pages

From my Tumblr ask thing:

It’s kind of random, but I just wanted to let you know that you’re helping me not lose my drive for writing. I’m doing nanowrimo and I’m already worried about making the 50k word count, but then I look at your posts about your novella and how even your word count varies and it’s totally normal to not write the same amount of words every day. Anyways, I hope you have a great weekend and thanks for unknowingly helping me de-stress about my writing.

This ask made some stuff wake up in my brain, and I wanted to repost it here for easy reference in the future, when I need to be reminded. I said:

So first off, I’m really proud of you for doing something you love, even (especially) when it’s hard.

If it makes a difference, I advise you not to worry about making the 50K word count, because the important thing is to be creative, to tell your story, and to push through the challenging parts so you can get to the parts that are fun. I’m relearning this almost daily, while I work on the short story that wanted to be a novella that is trying to be a novel.

It sounds like you’re on your way to enjoying the journey and telling the story, but you inspired me to share some thoughts about my current process and progress:

I have to constantly remind myself that it isn’t about the word count or the number of days in a row that I write (I realize NaNoWriMo is set up to make those things important, but stay with me for a sec). I have to constantly remind myself that this is the first draft! This is the puke draft. This is the draft where all the ideas come out, all the bits fall onto the page, and I just go until it’s finished. We have to remember that this draft is going to have big holes in it. We’re going to come back to it in a month or so and realize that we wrote the same scene twice, or that we had something in our brains that we forgot to tell the reader, so this scene doesn’t make sense. But all of that is okay! We can fix it when we do our second draft, and the second draft is so much easier than the first draft, and almost always more fun.

But! We’re never going to get to the end of our story if we worry about how close to finished the first draft is. We’re never going to get to the end of our story if we judge ourselves the whole time we’re writing the first draft. We’re never going to get to the excitement and satisfaction of doing the rewrites if we don’t let ourselves just WRITE.

So try not to worry – wait, there is no try, only do and do not – DO NOT WORRY about the word count. Some days are going to be epic word dumps (Scalzi does 10K words in a day from time to time, for crap’s sake) and some days are going to be epic struggles to finish with 290 words that we aren’t that crazy about but at least it’s something.

Maybe you’ll get to 50K by the end of the month, and maybe you won’t, but if you focus – wait. WHEN you focus on telling the story and listening to your characters, when you test and challenge and reward them, the total word count is a bonus. But the story, as they say, is the thing.

Keep writing!

If anyone cares, I’m currently at 37970 words on the short story that wanted to become a novella that’s trying to be a novel and still needs a good title. I wrote a thing two days ago that I like. It sounds like this:

“Are you okay? You seem weird today.”

I didn’t seem weird. I was weird. And hormones and pre-teen angst and my general level of constant anxiety were all just wrecking me.

Those two lines capture precisely who I was when I was 12 so perfectly, it’s almost embarrassing and maybe even a little painful to read them.

I’m somewhere in the third act of this thing that refuses to cough up a title. I have two main story things that I need to wrap up, one character thing that I want to put in but don’t need to put in, and then I leave it alone for a day or two before the rewriting begins. It’s equally frustrating and exciting and scary to be this close to finishing the first draft, and that’s okay. It’s a good place to be, practically and emotionally, because it’s what I have to do before I can get into the part where it starts coming together into one whole story, instead of a bunch of things that may or may not hang together.

But, anyway, for everyone out there who is writing a story and feels like they’re never going to get to the end, or that it’s no good, or any of those things our brains tell us to protect us from taking the creative risk of finishing something: you’re not the only one. Hell, I bet even Neil Gaiman feels stuck and frustrated from time to time, and I’m pretty sure that he’s an actual, living god.

So just keep writing until the words pile up around you, because that’s when you take the words and rearrange them into something beautiful.

Tabletop Season 4: LANTERNS

Well, we had to wait an infuriatingly long time, but it’s finally here! Season Four of Tabletop kicks off with Lanterns, a delightful tile-laying game that’s super easy to teach and learn, and a great infection vector for introducing new people to our hobby.

For those who aren’t familiar with Ivan and Becca’s great show, Game the Game, it’s sort of a sister show of Tabletop. They play games every week, live on Twitch*, with interesting people. I remember when we were in production on Titansgrave, I saw Ivan during lunch and asked him if he’d ever played Lanterns, because I thought it was a great fit for his show. He told me that he thought it was a great game, but that he didn’t want to play it because he didn’t want to take something away from Tabletop.

I reminded Ivan that I don’t believe we’re in competition, and that I thought it would be awesome to see him play it on his show, even if I was going to play it on Tabletop at some point. They also do a really cool thing on Game the Game where they talk about strategy in front of each other, because it isn’t about winning, it’s about the experience of playing the game.

“Do you want to come play it with us?” He asked me.

“Yeah, I’d love that,” I said.

So I did, and Becca cheated because that’s what she does.

During that episode, I realized that I could invite them, and their Twitch overlord, Zac (who worked his ass off to get the Twitch channel up and running and was instrumental in helping it grow to the amazing thing it is) to come play Lanterns on Tabletop, as a rematch, and a fun way to launch the season.

All of that was nearly a year ago, and today you can finally watch us play.

Here’s an embed:

And if you can’t see it, just click this link to watch Lanterns.

*or they did, at least. I don’t know if Legendary has moved or canceled it since Alpha happened.

Tabletop News: season four starts on November second

Some damn fine TableDerp.

 

Hey look, Legendary decided to release Season 4 of Tabletop tomorrow … sort of.

The first two episodes of the season will be on YouTube as usual, then Legendary’s moving the show to their Alpha subscription service.

The show will continue to stream on Alpha, and then, on January 30, 2017, the Alpha exclusivity window will end, and show will pick back up on YouTube with episode 3. So if you choose not to sign up for Legendary’s streaming subscription service, that’s when you’ll be able to find our show where it’s always been.

At the moment, I can’t really share my personal feelings on this whole thing, but I’m pretty sure that I can say this: however and whenever and wherever you choose to watch our show, I hope you enjoy it. It’s a good season, and I’m really proud of it.

Here’s the trailer for S04:

busy busy busy

“Busy, busy, busy” – what a Bokononist whispers whenever he thinks about how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.

I’ve traveled over 10,000 miles in the last two weeks, which sounds like a lot, but to be honest I mostly sat in a seat while it happened so it isn’t that impressive.

If you follow me on social media, which I’ve told you not to do, you know that I have been doing some campaigning for Hillary Clinton, part of operation Do Whatever It Takes To Prevent The Worst Human Being Ever To Run For Public Office Yes That Includes Joe Arpaio And David Duke From Being Elected.

I have so much to say about that, but I feel like I can’t do it in less than an hour, and we’re past the point where anyone is going to change their mind so it’s not really worth the time and effort, and I really want to get to work on today’s writing, so I’ll just say this: there are hundreds of reasons to vote against Donald Trump, but I have some very good reasons to vote for Secretary Clinton. Everyone has their primary reason, from equal pay for women, to family leave, to college debt relief, to electing a massively qualified woman, to simply keeping Donald Trump out of the White House. My primary reasons are The Supreme Court, and Hillary and Tim Kaine’s support for mental health care. As most of you know, I live with chronic depression and generalized anxiety disorder. I suffered for at least ten years longer than I should have, because I was ashamed and embarrassed about it, and I felt like it was something I should just get over. I felt weak, and I was afraid that getting medication would change who I was at a fundamental level. But when I heard people who I respected, who were successful and amazing, talk about how they lived with their own mental illness, it gave me the courage to seek help for myself.

It’s a really big deal that people in positions of power and influence, like Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine, talk about removing the stigma associated with mental illness that prevents people from seeking help. It’s a really big deal that she has made mental health treatment and access to affordable mental health medication a part of her plan for her presidency. It’s a really big deal that they look at people like us who live with mental illness and say, “We see you. You matter. We’re going to do what we can to help you help yourself.”

So I could go on and on, but l’ll wrap up with this: you all know that I was a massive supporter of Bernie Sanders in the primary. I’m proud of what we did to help him, and I still believe in his mission and his revolution. I can’t vote for him, but because Hillary listened to Bernie and to people like me who voted for him, I can vote for nearly all of the policies he promised to fight for. And if Democrats take a majority in the Senate, he’ll be in charge of the Budget Committee which is a really big fucking deal to borrow a phrase from Joe Biden.

Also, what scalzi said.

Anyway, I’m home now, and working really hard to finish a short supernatural horror story before Halloween, so I can get back into the short story that turned into a novella that is creeping up on becoming a novel.

 

 

in a pub, in portree

Anne, in Portree

I can not believe that I have managed to trick this amazing woman into staying married to me for seventeen years.

We have returned to Castle Wheaton. Here’s a story about a different castle.

Driving on the left side of the road was nerve wracking as hell. The roads in Scotland seem to be much more narrow than the roads I’m used to, and Anne kept telling me that I was veering close to the left shoulder, almost letting the wheels go off the road.

It took me nearly two full days of driving, but I did get used to it, and I even figured out the proper way to navigate a roundabout, which was not the victory it may sound like, because it was the final roundabout I used before we returned the rental car.

Scotland was the most beautiful place I’ve been that wasn’t in the South Pacific. The highlands were just breathtaking, and for some reason we got perfectly clear skies and sunshine the whole time we were there. The thing I wasn’t prepared for at all, though, was how dark it got at night. There weren’t any streetlights. Now, Americans, let me be clear: I don’t mean that there weren’t a lot of streetlights, or that the streetlights were dim. I mean that there were literally zero streetlights. When we drove back to the house we were staying in after dinner in Portree one night, I could only see as far as my car’s headlights, which wasn’t even 30 feet, before the darkness swallowed up the light.

“I keep imagining what it must have been like to live here a thousand years ago,” I told Anne, as we drove slowly through the absolute pitch black of the moonless night, “like to be a spy, or to be a bandit, and to be just moving across these fields and trying to not get lost.”

“It was probably the same as it was a hundred years ago, or ten years ago … or like right now,” she said.

We had GPS on the car, which is the only way I was able to drive around without feeling massively stressed out and constantly in fear of getting lost.

We got back to the house, and got ready for bed. The house is like 800 years old and allegedly haunted (there’s no such thing as ghosts, people) so walking through it in the dark was fun for my imagination.

In fact, just being in Scotland was fun for my imagination, but that’s not what this is about.

This is about how Anne woke me up in the middle of the night and said, “I just looked outside and there are a billion stars!”

I got out of bed and we walked outside, stepping as lightly as we could on sharp stones that made up the driveway. I looked up, and saw, as promised, a billion stars. The Milky Way ran straight over our heads, and the air was so clear and still I felt like I could reach out and grab a handful of stars to take home with me.

“This is unreal,” I said.

“It’s like we’re on another planet,” she said.

“Except the stars are exactly the same as they are on Earth because if we were on another planet the stars would be in a different position,” I said.

Then: “Sorry. Pedantic. It’s a nerd thing.”

“I know.”

We stayed outside for several minutes, then went back to bed.

The next day, we went to look for the ruins of a castle our friend had told us about. The ruins aren’t on a map, he told us, so we were to go to a house, introduce ourselves to the owner as friends of his, and ask for directions.

So we drove down tiny, winding roads that made their way across low, rolling hills, dividing sheep pastures, stopping for the occasional herd of cows to make its way across. Around the time I was certain we’d gotten lost, we saw the little house he’d told us to find. There was a dog in front, and a man standing on his porch, drinking out of a mug.

I parked the car, and as I opened the door, congratulated myself on getting as far out of my comfort zone as I’d ever gotten. That part of my imagination that Scotland woke up? It was busy telling me that this guy had a cellar full of ancient spirits who demanded the souls of tourists in exchange for the lifeforce they’d been giving him for two centuries.

We got out of the car and introduced ourselves. “I’m Wil,” I said.

“I’m also Will!” He said with a smile. We shook hands. His was huge and soft where it wasn’t calloused.

“May I say hello to your dog?” I asked.

“Aye,” he said, “she’s a good dog.”

I reached down and let her smell my hand, avoiding eye contact so she knew I wasn’t a threat. She sniffed me and then began wagging her entire body before she licked my hand and crashed her head into my leg, just like Marlowe does when I come home.

“I think she likes you,” he said. It came out: Ah tank she lakes ye.

“We were hoping to walk up to the castle ruins?” Anne said.

“Ah, ’tis nothin but four walls,” he said. “It’s just a wee thing.” Et’s jest ah wee tang.

“We’re easily impressed,” I said. “Being from America, and the young part of America, at that.”

He laughed. “Okay. Go to that road and follow it for about twenty minutes. You’ll see it. But it’s just four walls.”

“Thank you,” I said. I realized that I’d been speaking as slowly as I could, and wondered if my accent sounded as thick and inscrutable to him as he sounded to me.

“Yeah, thank you,” Anne said.

I pet his dog again and she looked at me like she was going to go with us on a walk. That would have been fine by me, but he called her into the house. When he got to the door, he said something to us, but the distance and the thickness of his accent made it impossible for me to understand. But he said it with a smile and a wave, so I imagined that it wasn’t, “when the spirits rise from the bog to eat your souls, try to face North so it goes quickly.”

Anne and I walked up the road, and followed it across and around and over some small hills. There were sheep everywhere, and these short, stone walls that could have been hundreds of years old. We were close to the sea, and the smell of the salt was heavy in the air.

After about twenty minutes, we came up the castle. It was, as described, just four walls, a small square not even twenty feet tall, sort of like something you’d build to survive your first night in Minecraft. It was across a field, about two hundred yards, from where we were.

“Do you want to walk over to see it up close?” I asked Anne.

“Yeah,” she said, “it seems a little dumb to come all the way here and stop this close to it.”

So we started across the field, and that’s when my foot sank into the bog.

It happened slowly, then all at once, as the saying goes. My foot came down on some grass, it squished underneath me, and then in a sporp of mud and a splash of water, it sank.

“AHH!” I shouted, convinced that I was going to sink into the bog and drown. I planted my other foot and yanked my foot out of the mud, jumping back in one motion that I’d like to describe as fluid, but was anything but.

Around this time, Anne was sinking into the bog a few feet away from me.

“Shit shit shitshitshit!” She shouted, dancing her way out of the mud in a manner that I am confident was more graceful and elegant than mine.

“Are you okay?” I said.

“Yeah. My shoe is soaked, though.”

We looked at each other. Each of us had one mud-soaked shoe, and we were out in the middle of this field that, in my imagination, was the dead marshes from Lord of the Rings. The sheep all around us were laughing at us.

“What do we do?” Anne said.

“Well, we can go back the way we came,” I said.

“No, let’s just find a way across that’s dry.”

“And watch out for the ROUSes.” I said.

We looked around and saw that maybe we weren’t in the middle of a bog, but were on the edge of some soft ground that was covered with slowly running water. We saw that there was a fence to our right, and we could walk along it, as it was in ground that was slightly raised and at least looked dry. So we did, and in short time got to the castle ruins, which was just four stone walls, each not more than thirty feet to a side. It didn’t look like a castle as much as it looked like a small fort, probably to look out onto the sea, but it was older than the oldest thing in my entire country, and I could put my hands on it, and that made it worth the whole muddy bog thing.

We walked around it, took a bunch of pictures, and then noticed that there was an entirely dry field, full of sheep, that we could walk through to go back to the road.

“I can’t believe we didn’t see this on the way here,” Anne said, as we walked through it.

“Counterpoint,” I offered, “we did get to walk through a bog to see the ruins of a castle, and that’s a story we get to tell for the rest of our lives.”

“I don’t know if stepping into mud actually qualifies as walking through a bog,” she said.

“Never let the truth get in the way of a good story,” I said.

Hello from Birmingham

British Industrial Town from the train.

No, not the one in Alabama. The one in England.

We took 8 hours of trains yesterday, from Scotland, to get here for Destination Star Trek, the only Trek convention I’m appearing at this year.

It was an amazing and beautiful ride, and it made me wish that America had a train system that was even half as useful and relevant to where people actually travel as the British Rail System is (I don’t know if it’s supposed to be capitalized, but it earned it, so there.)

We are now in a hotel, and I said to Anne this morning that it feels anticlimactic to be here. After several days in the Scottish Highlands, sleeping in cottages, and driving down tiny sheep roads to get from place to place, it just feels … plain. It’s nothing against the hotel or anything, but if you have an opportunity to travel, even though hotels are familiar and predictable, I highly recommend giving the alternative a try.

Scottish countryside, from the train.

I’m going to miss Scotland. In fact, I already miss Scotland. It was so beautiful, and it was such a wonderful experience for me, I feel like I recovered a lot of HP and Mana that I didn’t know had been depleted. I’ll have more pictures to share and more words to write about it once I’ve properly processed and reflected upon the time we spent there.

Hello from Scotland

Anne and I have spent two days in the HIghlands, and we love it here. We will return someday, when we can spend more time and do more things.

I took about 5000000000000 pictures, but the Internet is slow and wonky where I am, so I can’t upload them at full resolution. Here’s a few of them, resized:

This castle is very old.

This is Urquhart Castle, which is on the shore of Loch Ness. That ruined tower has been ruined longer than my country has existed.

That’s Loch Ness, as seen through an ancient window in the castle.

They’re very good castles, Brad.

This is Eilean Donan, which is famous for being in many movies including Highlander. I’d list the others, but there can be only one.

We didn’t go into this one, but we did have tea in their little restaurant and it was awesome.

There really are sheep everywhere in the Highlands, and no matter how much I try to befriend them, they aren’t having it. I’m kind of glad they always run away when I get about 30 feet from them, though, because there aren’t many things in the world as funny as watching sheep run, with their stupid little legs.

My incredibly small sample size of about a dozen people indicates that everyone here is incredibly kind, and they don’t make fun of my accent.

One year ago, I rebooted my life. Has it worked?

Sometimes, I feel like I don’t look terrible in a photo.

Just about one year ago, I took an honest look at myself and I didn’t like what I saw. I needed to reset a lot of habits, make some significant changes to the way I approached just about everything in my life, and keep working at it, even when it was hard.

I can’t even believe that it’s already been a year, and that it’s only been a year, because time feels like that when you’re 44, I guess.

Here are the things I decided to address:

Drink less beer.
Read more (and Reddit does not count as reading).
Write more.
Watch more movies.
Get better sleep.
Eat better food.
Exercise more.

Some of these things have been easier than others, and from month to month (and even day to day) what happens to be easy and what happens to be hard are constantly changing. I know that’s an obvious thing, but I say it because we can forget that, and consequently be unfairly rough on ourselves when we don’t live up to our expectations.

But most of the time, I look like this.

I know a lot of you who are reading this have been doing reboots of your own, and I want you to know that, no matter where you are in your personal journey, I am super proud of you. I’m not the boss of you or anything, but I give you permission to be proud of yourself. Go you!!

So let’s dive in here and see how things are going:

Drink Less Beer: Zero is less than all positive integers, and while there are brief moments when I miss having drinks with friends, they are fleeting.The very best part of drinking less and then not drinking at all is how I have had more productivity in my life in all areas. I’ve lost all the weight I wanted to lose, and my overall quality of life is vastly improved. There is also this profound clarity in my life that I never would have found if I hadn’t made a decision to quit drinking entirely, and face things that made me feel unhappy, or overwhelmed, or just some version of not good. I’ve talked with professionals and concluded that I never had a drinking problem like people who go to meetings to get sober, and I may decide that I can have a beer or a cocktail every now and then at some point in my future. But right now, I honestly don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything. Grade: A+

Read More: I set my Goodreads Challenge to 30 books this year. It’s always been 20, and people who have lots of time to read or who can read incredibly fast and not miss out on things have been kinda judgy at me about that in the past. I always felt like 20 was more than zero, and it was about two books a month, which seemed reasonable and achievable. This year, I upped it because I wanted it to be more of a challenge than a goal, if that makes sense. So I’ve been reading like crazy, carrying a book with me everywhere, and branching out from the stuff I usually read. This last month, I read Mara Wilson’s magnificent memoir, Where Am I Now? which I give 5 out of 5 and 12 out of 10 because it’s a very good book, Brent. I’m also still in William Gibson’s The Peripheral, which is still a bit of work to stay connected to, but not in a bad or unsatisfying way. I’m also doing lots of magazines and short fiction, because that’s the sort of writing I’m working on. I’m on pace to make my goal for the year, and I’ve kept my reading pretty diverse, so I get an A.

Write More: I haven’t finished anything for my short story collection, but one of the stories that I thought would be about 3500 words is now just over 32000 words, and is maybe even on its way to being a novel. I’ve been writing about it here and sharing little bits of it as I work on it, so I won’t rehash all of that. You can look at those links if you want. I don’t know if it all holds together, but I’m pretty sure that I can make it hold together in rewrites, if it needs me to do that. The important thing is that I’ve been enjoying the process, and I’ve been growing as a writer the whole time. I hope that I can get it finished soon, though, because it’s almost October and I have a scary story that I want to write and release before Halloween. A+

Watch More Movies: I don’t feel like I’ve watched as many movies as I could have, but I’ve watched a wide variety of movies, from silent movies to Kenneth Anger art films to exploitation movies to some very good recent releases. Anne and I have been watching a lot of super good quality television, with great storytelling and writing, though, and I’m getting out of it what I wanted to get out of watching more movies: I’m inspired to create, and reminded why I still care about being an actor in an industry that doesn’t want to return my calls right now. A+

Get Better Sleep: Last month, I wrote about how frustrating this part has been for me. The last couple weeks have been marginally better, mostly because I stopped trying to fight my idiot brain that doesn’t want to power down and go to sleep when I do. My nightmares are still pretty intense and I’m currently experiencing that unsettled weirdness that comes from a couple nights of vivid terror that feels real when you’re asleep and can’t fight it. I read somewhere that our bodies don’t know the difference between imagined emotion and real emotion (this was in the context of being an actor, who spends all day pretending to fight with someone, and has a hard time letting go of that adrenaline when he gets home because his body’s fight or flight system doesn’t know the difference between real and pretend) so my stupid brain is making me feel like I was actually in the movie Green Room, and then actually missed a flight home. Yay for stress dreams, I guess. So I’m still doing what I can do to get better sleep, like not having late day caffeine, wearing the dumb orange goggles before bed when I read, and hitting the sack the instant my brain even suggests to me that it may be willing to go to sleep, whether that’s at 9pm or 1am. The only thing that I think I could do that I’m not doing is just force myself to get up at 7am when I want to get up, and force my body to get on board with this, so it’s tired when I want to go to sleep, but I just can’t bring myself to do that right now. So I’ll give myself a B.

Eat Better Food: My only vice left is ice cream, and I have ice cream almost every night. I’m not going to feel bad or apologize for it, or make any excuses. All my other meals are really good, and we are cooking our own food at least three nights a week. I track my calories in and out, and I’m staying right around 1300 calories every day, which I guess is good for a guy my age and activity level and all that stuff. A.

Exercise More: I really want to be out running at least four times a week. I haven’t done that, because it’s been miserably hot here for no good reason. But when I do run, more like twice a week, I’m going for anywhere between 30 and 45 minutes, doing just over 20 minutes without stopping, and even getting my 5K time down to just over 30 minutes without really pushing myself like I would in a race. My goal is to increase my time and distance so I can do a 10K, then a half marathon, and a full marathon next year. I’m on pace for that. I’m also walking with Anne for about 3 miles on days I don’t run, and we walk our dogs every day. I’m adding a tiny bit of strength training, mostly just pushups and squats and planks in the house, and that’s making a positive difference. Without getting all obsessive about exercise, I couldn’t do better than I am, so I get an A+.

Before I total up my points and give myself a final grade, I want to do one more thing, and look at why I chose each of these things to reboot, and see if I am getting what I wanted out of them.

Drink less beer.

I wanted to be more present in my life, lose a bunch of bloated weight that I was carrying around, and clear my head so I could honestly assess what I liked and didn’t like about myself. Is it working? YES.

Read more (and Reddit does not count as reading).

I wanted to nourish my brain and my spirit with narrative fiction, non-fiction, graphic novels and other comics, and find inspiration in those creative works. I wanted to be Someone Who Reads again, and I wanted to not spend a lot of time err, waste a lot of time doing Someone Is Wrong On The Internet. I wanted to be informed about current events, have a better understanding of things that I don’t know enough about, and be a more well-read, well rounded, and interesting person. Is it working? YES.

Write more.

I took this whole year off from a lot of work so I could be a writer. I was depressed and unfulfilled and unhappy and sad, all the time, because I felt like I’d spent years doing other people’s work. I’d lost my way, creatively, and I know this sounds wanky but it’s true: I needed to find my way back to The Art. I needed to write stories and tell stories and finish stories. I needed to grow as a writer so I had the confidence to start a thing, and keep going when it got tough. I needed to develop the discipline to put down words without judgement and go back to fix things later. I needed to be the Writer that I was telling people I was, before I got distracted three years ago and didn’t write every day. I needed to do something to express myself creatively because I want to be a writer when I grow up. I need to honor the very good writers who I know and love and respect who tell me that I am a good writer, and that I need to write more. Is it working? HELL YES.

Watch more movies.

I needed to stop playing arcade games and pinball. I needed to stop goofing off online, reading Fark and Reddit and Hacker News and Imgur. I needed to rediscover the art inside of making movies. I needed to find a connection to the part of me that wants to be a filmmaker, that loves to bring characters and their stories to life, even though the part of me that needs to Prove To Everyone That I Can Do It is constantly in my way. I needed to remember why art matters, and why there is room for everything from a shitty Michael Bay movie to a deeply moving little indie. I needed to watch things that are great, to get inspired, and I needed to watch things that aren’t great so I didn’t judge myself solely against Kubrick and Welles and James Gunn. Is it working? YES.

Get better sleep.

I needed to stop staying up late just because, and sleeping late just because I stayed up late. I needed to stop having nightmares and panic attacks every night. I needed to get more out of my days, feel more productive, not dread turning out the light every night. Is it working? NOT LIKE I WANT IT TO BUT IT ISN’T MY FAULT.

Eat better food.

I had to stop having a #burritowatch every day, even though they’re delicious. I needed to lose weight and get my body fat down. I needed to lower my cholesterol, and I needed to start respecting that my body is older and that the food I put into it is fuel for this meat sack I rely upon to move my consciousness through our shared reality. Is it working? YES.

Exercise more.

I had to get off my ass and move my body. I needed to acknowledge and respect that, even if I am mathematically in middle age, whether or not I was “middle aged” was up to me. I needed to put in the work now, so that I’m strong and healthy and not prone to injury in ten years when I’m in my fifties. I needed to do this thing that is actually productive, that was hard, that gave me immediate and tangible results, because most of what I do feels like it isn’t real. I needed to assert control over my body and my health, because I have a long time left in my life and I want to enjoy it. Is it working? YES.

So before I even get to my grades, I know that this has been totally and unquestionably worth it. I also know that it’ll continue to be worth it, and probably next month I’m going to add some new goals, because I feel like these are now a solid foundation that I can build something awesome upon.

OKAY GRADES! 36/28. Um. Hell yes go me that’s an A+ and I think I might even make the Dean’s List.