Day Zero

I decided it was time to try something new with my life. Nothing too drastic, of course. After all, I’m largely stuck with my family — which is good, because I kinda like the goofballs, even when they are driving me batshit crazy — and I actually do tend to both enjoy my coworkers and derive a reasonable level of satisfaction from my work. Come to find out things apparently make me either a fool or a fictional character from a 1950’s sitcom depending on which cable news channel you’re watching, but that’s neither here nor there.

At any rate, ever since New Year’s, and the end of the Great Sock Adventure of 2018, I’ve felt kind of like I’m treading water. Obviously, that ain’t a Tesla-coil shocker when you consider that before, I was working daily towards the achievement of a well-defined goal. Yeah, maybe wearing a unique pair of socks every day for a year isn’t exactly solving the Midwestern divide between Democrats and Republicans (it’s really all about broccoli vs cauliflower, btw, despite what the pundits on TV say), but at least it was a thing to focus on and accomplish.

In contrast, so far in 2019 I’ve mostly been working towards seeing how many chicken wings I could consume in a year. And, I mean, that’s probably already been done. Also, chicken wings are somehow even more expensive than socks now? I don’t even understand this world anymore.

Point is, I realized over this past weekend that I’ve been doing the aimless Blutarsky drift through existence much of this year, and as any self-respecting Dean will tell you, that’s no way to go through life.

In other words, I needs me a goal, something to provide direction and act as a motivator against my, um, well, my lazier instincts. Otherwise it seems I’m content to hop a float and ride life’s lazy river around and around and around.

And around and around.

And around.

So! A goal! Yes! Huzzah! But…what? I mean, I don’t really want to see how much more mileage I can get from the sock business, yanno? I kind of covered that. And I’m not sure I need a thing that requires 12 months of dedication either. I’ve been there. More than once.

No, what I really need is a kick in the less flattering side of the ol’ underpants to get me writing every day, no matter what. Because when it comes to me and goals, the big one has and remains to be the publishing of one (or hopefully more) of the novels I’ve written. Unfortunately, they’ve been collecting dust since my former agent and general life-wrecker’s house of cards/literary agency collapsed under the weight of years worth of lies last July*.

Which brings us — via my usual 18-step journey through madness — to today, and what in the Eight Gopher Hells I’m prepared to do to both get back on the damned donkey and also bring a little more forward progress to my daily life. And I believe I’ve found the answer.

Well, maybe not the answer. But an answer.

And that answer can be found in Whole 30.

But no, not actually Whole 30. Because voluntarily giving up coffee and beer is clearly foolishness**. But, now, what about a Goal 30? Such a scheme could potentially combine several of my favorite things, namely, word play and a bloggable, daily motivator to get off my ass and do something productive.

Here’s it us, then. Every day for the next 30 is going to get an individual, moderately achievable goal to be pursued in concert with a month-long endeavor to both read and write something daily. And, of course, because I’m me, I have a moral obligation to write all about it while boring you poor people with my most recent Goal Of The Day. And, yes, that includes what I managed to read and write that day. I’m optimistic some of that writing isn’t only going to blog posts, too.

Alas, today is Day Zero. A long winded blog post is all I’ve got. I will tell you that today’s goal is to eat only food I made. But you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out how it went.

In the meantime, please enjoy a picture of the socks I wore today (purple argyle…what a surprise, right?) and the Kindle I was using to read a friend’s recently published novella while the bugs feasted upon me on our back porch.

Pud’n

*Yes, that event left me suddenly without an agent and instead in the possession of a roiling bellyful of anger and resentment. No, I haven’t spoken much about it, but, yes, I did put some effort at various times through the end of 2018 to find a replacement. But I’ve been realizing lately that I wasn’t actually ready at the time. I think it might be some five stages business or something. Anyway! Onward!

**I’m kidding. I have both friends and family members who’ve done the Whole 30 and totally recommend it. There obviously millions of people who find value in it. I’m just…not likely to ever be one of them.