"We all have wings. But some of us don’t know why"

I’ve been in a sort of funk lately. This isn’t really new, although I’m unsure if I’m explored it much on the site yet.

The weeks fly by with little or no progress on the job hunt, the book, the weight loss… it’s just a blur of days and nights with not much marking them as different from each other. It would be easy and superficial to blame them on being unemployed, since this is an entirely new phenomenon and I’ve been without a job for ten months now. It is decidedly recent.

When I’ve posted things about feeling anchorless on here before, I think I overemphasize moving cities as part of this lack of connectedness, with most of the responses I get (mainly in private e-mails) rooting for one city over another. I suppose it is a good thing that people tend to root for me to move closer to them, at least.

But I think the location change is the superficial part of the equation. The restlessness and rootlessness go deeper than all of that.

It might have been when my savings dipped under $10K, that could have been the trigger. It was certainly a moment when it became apparent that this is a temporary situation. That soon I need to have money coming in, not to mention that once my finances dip under $5K, it would become decidedly harder to move and get restarted anywhere else. So, pretty soon, I will be locked into making San Francisco work.

I think the money is a big part of it, but also insomuch as it relates to my drifting through some middle ground at present. I’m no longer an overpaid corporate writer, but I also don’t have some new paycheck coming in to define my budget, my schedule, and my standard of living. I can still go from a week of tight budgeting to an amazon.com binge to a fancy dinner, and it all plays out fine, because there is no actual budget to weigh it up against.

I think the biggest thing I have learned about myself lately is that my life works best when there is a certain rigidity and order. When I cook a lot of my meals, I lose weight. When I have a clear plan of what to do when I wake up, it will get done. When I wake up with my bag packed and ready to go to the gym on the slightest impulse, it occurs much earlier and painlessly during the day.

That anal-retentiveness is also why the book is meandering a bit. I think I adopted the work habits and writing processes of people with a decidedly different vibe from myself. I looked to people I admire as writers and worked similar to their patterns rather than realizing that recognizing that my approach to life and theirs are decidedly different.

People like Chuck and Stephen King and others seem to revel and delight in the things that make me crazy. They like sitting down at the screen and saying, "Let’s see where this goes…" Jonathan Safran Foer describes it as walking down a dark hallway, and at the end there is a light switch and you get to look back at where you’ve traveled.

Again, this could be entirely related to the fact that this book has taken too long from inception to delivery. That crazy McCaughey lady in the Midwest could have almost had eight kids individually, carrying each to full term, in the time it has taken me to deliver this one lump of text. So, it is hard to be in the middle of a self-induced quagmire and try and find your way out from being lost in the middle. And I have to do it without Karl Rove helping me!

Last week, Bret Easton Ellis was in town, and I’ve always loved his work. Rules of Attraction was always a big book for me. And what I learned is that he always outlines every book, almost the same way Robert McKee does, with the mega kitchen sink outline that doubles or triples the length of the book. The outline is the inspired bit, where you lay down all of the characters, settings, motivations, scenes, subtext (Ellis said he does some dialogue at this point, McKee advises against it), and that separation of the inspiration and the technical aspect of writing really appeals to me.

I often find myself in the middle of a scene now wondering if it can be cut, whether it matters, can it be moved to a move effective place… and at the same time, I’m supposed to be making the prose sing, because this is an editing pass. But, that tug of war usually ends up with me dropping both ends of the rope and doing anything but launching Microsoft Word.

I think it’s because I am different from a lot of the writers I admire. There are lazy bits, and superfluous bits, and uneven passages, and weakly-drawn characters in so many of the books I love, because the vibe and the bravado carry it with such a force as to not make those things matter. You don’t even note them as much as not even care.

Sometimes I feel like the kid I cursed under my breath when I saw Bambi in a movie theater, and when some random rabbit with no dialogue would stomp by, he’d ask "Where does that rabbit live, Mommy?", forcing her to say that he lives in the forest with the rest of the animals, while under my breath I was muttering "Who cares about some background animal with no lines?" Only now, looking at my own creation, I want to know the same stupid shit.

But even beyond writing methodologies, it’s time to click "Zoom Out" one more level on the online map of what’s been up with me lately. And, I think the decided lack of structure in my life has had a negative effect on everything. The dwindling funds and laughable job hunt have combined to frame the perception for everything else. Which is, of course, ironic because what’s better than a lack of productivity when you’re running out of the free time to work on the stuff you’re supposed to be doing?

I feel like I’m in limbo, trying to put together an upside-down jigsaw puzzle with no end pieces most days. Some days a corporate job, even with its inherent negative energy and soul sucking nature, would still be structure. It would clearly mark out when writing has to occur, and where the gym fits in, and everything else. It isn’t really about the money yet. The structure is the key.

Lately it just seems like everything I do is more of a hobby. All of the things that most people try to fit around the core elements in their life IS my life. Writing, gym, yoga, cooking… on many days, that’s a full schedule.

I also debate certain things like how a Trader Joes run can be a two-hour event, walking to and from, with all these bags of groceries. While I like the walk (well, not the from, if I’m weighed down too much), I almost have been considered joining City Carshare, so that going to Rainbow, Trader Joes, and Whole Foods would be a 90-minute event, rather than three separate afternoon jaunts.

I know it seems strange that while I am somewhat complaining about having too much free time, I am also trying to compact my schedule. But, I think this is about the fact that nothing is dominant. On a typical day, my to-do list of "gym, groceries, reading, editing, etc." is all weighted equally. The problem is that the book needs to be the "job," and the rest need to be the things that fit in around it.

And, in some strange way, the book is weighted heaviest on the schedule, but in some backwards logic, most other things are done to "get them out of the way," so I have time for the book. But, as you might expect, many days, by the time everything else is "out of the way," I don’t have the energy or desire to work on the book, because I’ve been going non-stop. Or I just shut down and nothing happens.

So, I have my mother and stepfather in town as of tomorrow, so I’ll be playing tour guide for a week. But, the morning she leaves, it is time to shift gears in a big way. And here is the plan as it stands so far…

I will start setting an alarm and take a shower.

Within an hour of waking up, I will take my iBook (which has already been stripped of e-mail and chat programs) to the public library (with a bag lunch, thankyouverymuch) and work on the book for a significant period of time every day.

Once I come home, I swap backpacks. iBook stays here. Gym clothes in another backpack go back out with me and I go to the gym (too paranoid to leave my iBook in the unsecured gym locker room, although I suppose they do have a wireless network in the library, so I can backup before I leave each day).

After the gym workout, that is my window of free time. This can be groceries, movies, TV shows, applying for jobs, whatever.

Then dinner. Must be cooked from scratch, and served on ceramic plates in the kitchen with no radio, TV, or computers involved. I need to focus on my food, reflect on things, and give the meal its moment, rather than shoveling things down my throat as a background task. There will be candles, soft music, even dining companions invited on occasion. Each week must contain TWO new recipes, since I’ve been in a culinary rut lately.

After dinner is time for re-reading that day’s work, mainly for typos and to pull it back up in my head.

After dinner, unless I am doing something involving another person (movies alone do not count as a social event, but bars on weekends alone are fine), it is time for reading, because the only way to improve as a writer is to make reading a core part of my day. It is just as important as my writing to be reading, consistently.

TV is an empty activity, although I do enjoy it. But it can’t pollute my brain before bed. Whatever I don’t watch in the afternoon will wait for another day. I intentionally bought TIVO to make TV a non-issue. It will know what shows I watch, record them, and I will watch them whenever they fit into my schedule.

Then, bedtime. And repeat.

Writing needs to become its own job before I actually get a paying job.

Of course, once I *do* get a job, then writing will get the bulk of what is left in the remaining schedule. I just don’t do well with randomness. Well, that’s not true. When I embrace randomness that is what happens. But I want results.

It is time to end my life of equally weighted hobbies. I have a job. I have goals. I have desires. And it’s time to make them happen.

The only way to make this dream a reality is hard work. Trader Joes and Chapter 2 can’t get equal time in my life. I plan to up my game across the board.

The gym is going to get more difficult. It is going to take up more of my day. I am going on the record that I plan to achieve my goal of 180 pounds by Thanksgiving. It will be rough, as I will also be adding weight training into the mix at the same time.

There is a solid chance that I will be purchasing a bike in the next month, to make the insane walk I did recently into a refreshing bike run that will happen early in the mornings at least twice a week before I get to the library. I want to get my physical activities out of the gym, and start building up things I like to do that aren’t repetitive cardio motion for 45 minutes.

I plan to look into some sort of regular sporting team in the near future (have to explore what I would least suck at yet).

These changes will all affect my diet, because as it stands now, I eat too much because I am always in the house, and with nothing bigger picture to focus on, I think dwelling on food has actually become a derailment of my diet moreso than a help. If I am going somewhere, I will preemptively eat in case I might get hungry and all this is pure inertia insanity (because, as you might remember, a lot of my "outings" are going to grocery stores to get produce and such). Not to mention, I am in an urban area, so there is never a moment where I will find myself more than a block away from food. And, you know, hunger is kind of, like, natural anyway?! It’s OK to be hungry…

I guess the overall plan here is to not be trying to write a book, but to be a writer. Not be on a diet, but just eat meals. Not achieve a weight loss goal, but be active. In my own strange way, I’m creating a plan whereby my life isn’t a series of compartmentalized, interdependent goals, but rather, all trajectories toward living a more enriching, fulfilling life. Where it isn’t about the ends justifying the means, but trying to bring purpose and joy into the means. The ends will take care of themselves.