I have to admit, I’m a little worried, and I think it’s making me have trouble sleeping. It’s 519am on the 26th of September 2018. It’s now been about 88 days since I last had a job. This is part of the plan; I want to be a free agent for about 6 months, and I’m almost 3 months done. I was in that job for about 64 months, so 3 months of downtime doesn’t seem all that bad.
And still, I’m getting a little worried. Why? Because it feels like… I’ve been really sloppy about everything. Again, this is part of the overarching plan. I wanted to give myself some freedom from having to be focused and methodical and rigorous and all of that stuff. But if I’m honest with myself I think I’ve gone a little too far with that. I’ve wandered, idled and dawdled long enough, and it’s time to “bring things back to earth”.
What does that look like? What will I have to do to rid myself of this feeling that I’m veering off course? Well, put simply, I need to reacquaint myself with what the course is, set targets along the way, and make a little progress towards my goals each day.
Twitter Analytics tells me that I’ve sent over 2000 tweets in the past 28 days. 2.4k in August. 2.1k in July. 1.6k in June. 1.1k in April. 900 in March. 600 in Feb. 930 in Jan. I’ve been tweeting like 4 times more than I used to. I know there’s a lot of good content in there, but I’m upset and frustrated about the fact that… I never made much of an effort to catalogue what I was tweeting as I was tweeting it (on a day to day basis, let’s say) so it’s difficult for me to “know at a glance” what the good stuff is. There’s definitely some “forgotten good stuff” that I don’t even know how to find any more. I have to make my peace with this, improve my process moving forward (that means cataloguing what I’m tweeting each day, loosely and thematically at least).
I posted a meme on the Jibabom Facebook page that got a bunch of shares. That felt good, that feels like a step in the right direction. I mean, not that I want to make a meme page, but that I want to build the brand, and it feels right to build it in a way that’s engaging.
I haven’t made a lot of progress on my book of essays, which is stressing me out. I’d like to publish it by the end of the year. I keep thinking things like “well I could write a whole bunch of them in a single day”, but that hasn’t happened yet, and the longer it takes to happen, the more it feels like I’m going to find out that actually I’m full of shit. And I don’t want that. So I really really need to start getting things done at a daily tempo.
The funny thing, the irony, is, that I know that I have many word vomits that articulate all of this already. That I should have some sort of daily practice. That I should review my work regularly. I could be doing this in a calendar, or a spreadsheet, or notes… I just need to PICK ONE and STICK WITH IT. So which should it be? Well, what’s the thing that’s going to be stickiest? When I start my day, what am I going to look at? I think a pinned tab in my google chrome with a google drive spreadsheet is the simplest thing.
I would really like to be done with my word vomit project this year if possible. There are 97 days left to 2019. To get there, I’l have to write 3 vomits a day. I know it’s within my capacity to do so. I wrote 50,000 words in November last year while I was holding down a full time job. So surely I can do double that if I don’t have a job. A part of me is like, “nooo, why don’t you write a novel instead…” – but fuck it, would I rather have the draft of a second novel, or have completed this massive project that’s been weighing on my mind since 2012? I would like to be done with the project.
It’s now 805am. I haven’t slept all night and… a part of me still doesn’t feel like sleeping. Something is really off here but I’m not quite sure what yet still. But I believe that I’m going to figure it out and that I’m going to fix it. I think I may have gotten a little bit too feral, a little bit too detached. It’s time to get grounded again.
I want to start working out again. Keep meeting friends. Start writing for publications. Start getting paid. Keep deleting, editing and cleaning out obsolete notes. I’ve been improving my blog’s categorization slightly – a simple yet powerful realization I had was that I should be framing each category as a “column” for readers – previously I had been framing them in terms of the stage of development they’re in. But no reader cares about that. They want to know what’s in it for them. And I think a big part what I need to learn in the coming days and weeks is how to focus on other people, help other people, sell to other people, be useful to other people.
I guess I also feel like… there’s just so much shit, you know? All my notes. All my vomits. Wow, I should ban myself from the broader internet while I sort through all my stuff. I think that’s why I’m procrastinating. There’s such a massive volume of things to go through – 700+ word vomits!!! that it somehow feels easier to just… sit on twitter and respond to feedback as it comes. I need to stop that. I think it’s time I get off Twitter for a few days. Or, probably better still, stay off Twitter for a few hours each day while I get my minimum work done. Let’s say 4 hours a day. That seems reasonable.