I Am Lunatic

I am a writer.

That's what I'm supposed to tell myself if I feel the writing urge. I fear there is a book in me, one that I did not eat. I am consumed with story ideas, some good, some bad. I'm positive my brain coughed up some of these things like a smoker's hack.

Vivid scenes have played through my mind for years now, all without the aid of hallucinogens or pizza before bed.

The whisper of God to write has largely been ignored, yet He still whispers, sometimes strongly.

I have an artistic temperament without the artistic ability. Never satisfied with much of what I do, I also understand much of what I've done is quite rubbish. A few sketches I've done are okay. While I have a highly-negative weighted view of anything I do (on a good day, I have a 1.5% approval rating of myself), if I say something I've done is okay, that's generally a fairly realistic assessment: just okay.

I entered Jeff Goins 500 words a day challenge a two or three years ago. I got 100 words the first day, 25 words the second day, and blocked completely.

The only thing I do that I consider myself good at is programming. I've done some amazing things. I wrote a program once to build a ladder in a 3D model by selecting three points. Not such a big deal now, but 25 years ago, that was amazing.

I've done some VBA programming to extract PDFs from servers based on links in system-generated emails, saving and renaming them in seconds rather than minutes. The first person I did this for estimates she saved nine hours every two weeks. I'm extremely proud of this.

Abrupt conclusion: I'm good at some things. I wish I were better at some other things. Practice, patience, persistence, presence -- all these things play a part. Pessimism and petulance do not.

Resolutions Meh-solutions

I don't make resolutions because I never keep resolutions. My life hasn't been so great of late, so I decided to make a resolution this year. Two, actually. I'm taking action by the horns!

1. I need to do something creative every day. I have so many ideas of things, but I never act on them. It's never going to just happen, so I want to do something about it.
1. I've already broken this resolution.
2. I'll have to modify this one because I have this deep seated yearning to do something, but maybe every day might be a tad audacious. Given my schedule of needing sleep, 3 times a week might be more acceptable, more if possible.
2. "Lose weight." The most ridiculous resolution ever because it has no meaning in and of itself. It needs something specific. So, more specifically, I want to lose 20 pounds of fat by my birthday at the end of May.
1. I say 20 pounds of fat because I don't believe my weight is a problem in and of itself, but I have fat to spare, a good 40+ pounds.
2. 20 pounds is very aggressive, or 4 pounds a month, roughly 1 pound a week. That's very aggressive, and given my physical condition (bad knees, ankles), I'm not sure I could keep up that pace. Ten pounds is a better attainable goal. Ten pounds it is.

Look, Ma, I wrote a blog post!