It’s been about seven months since I decided to hit the reboot button on my life, and it’s time to check in and see how I’m doing.

The real challenge this month, and the 54,000 dollar question is: is it worth it?

The fact that I’ve waited until the last day .. even the last half of the last day … of the month should give some indication as to where I’m at, emotionally, right now.

I mostly feel good. I’m mostly sleeping well (other than a couple of intensely terrible nightmare nights), I don’t feel like I’m missing out on any food I want, and I haven’t really missed beer that much. But I feel like the reboot curve has flattened out, and now I’m through the part where I see and experience dramatic results all the time, and I’m in the long dark teatime of the soul.

That’s, uh, that’s not where I really am. My fingers just typed that because it was amusing to me. I’m in the long and boring maintenance part of this, while I adjust to a new normal. I feel really good in my body, the exercise is actually fun, cooking healthy food is fun and delicious, and I can have ice cream almost every night, because I’m taking good care of myself in every other aspect of my life and if I want to have ice cream then goddammit I am going to.

But when someone tells me that I look really good (“ten years younger” is the most common thing, which is nice) and they want to know how I did it in such a short period of time, I tell them that I just took everything I liked and replaced it with water and exercise (which isn’t my phrase, I heard it somewhere else). It’s one of those funny-but-not-ha-ha-funny jokes that isn’t a joke. It’s true … but is it worth it?

I honestly don’t know. I know that I feel good. I know that I look better than I have in years. I know that I’m in really good health, so I don’t feel trapped in a body that’s aging and trying to prevent me from doing the things I want to do.

Strangely, that all feels external and not as important as it was four or five months ago. I don’t have creative and artistic satisfaction, and I know that that is entirely my fault, because I’m not nearly doing as much as I want to do creatively. I still feel like I’m doing other people’s work, even though a lot of that work is intensely satisfying and rewarding in every way. Maybe this only makes sense inside my brain, but I feel like writing for Tabletop and Titansgrave, and doing voice work for the projects I can’t talk about is work and I am expected to do work. Writing stories and making podcasts and putting together films and junk draws from essentially the same creative well, but … I don’t know, it tastes different. It’s more satisfying, I guess. It quenches a different type of thirst.

I’m doing that kind of work a very little bit at a time, but it really does feel like my phone and my email and my texts are constantly pulling me away from it, and the year is nearly half over, and I haven’t published a single short story.

Anyway, that’s a lot of first world problem complaining that I am reluctant to even share in public, but honestly assessing how this is all going is kind of important, so there it is. Let’s check in and see how my grades are for May.

• 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.

Drink less beer: A+

It’s weird how little I miss beer and alcohol in general. Occasionally, there are days when I’m like a beer would be nice but that passes really fast, usually, and I get this immense satisfaction playing the game of “how many days in a row can I not have any alcohol?”

Read more: A+

Every day I’m reading for up to an hour, it seems. I’m tearing through books and short stories and magazines, and I’m now making an effort to get out of the science fiction I’ve been immersing myself in, and get into other types of narrative. I’m currently reading a book about a con man called “Yellow Kid” Weil. It’s an autobiography about a guy who lived in Chicago at the turn of the 20th century, told to a writer in 1948. He’s a profoundly unreliable narrator, but that’s a big part of the fun in his story. He’s telling us how much he’s conned all these people, but it feels like he’s conning the reader, which should be off-putting, but isn’t (at least to me).

Write more: C

So I wrote about 20,000 words this month. Most of it was for Tabletop, some of it was for speeches, some of it was that flash fiction I like to write on my Tumblr, and some of it was even on these short stories that I’m working on. But it wasn’t nearly enough, and I need to see myself after class to have a heart-to-heart talk about what my goals are, and if I’m really committed to doing all I’m capable of doing.

Watch more movies: A

I’m watching almost a movie a day, and I’m working my way through some great old anthology television, like One Step Beyond, Night Gallery, and The Outer Limits. I’m finding inspiration in these little stories, and planting seeds that I hope will grown into my own version of them very soon. I have this dream of shooting little stories with a three or four person crew and like two or three actors, and releasing them online, and these shows are helping me learn about that type of storytelling and pacing.

Get better sleep: A

I’m staying up way later than I would like to, but I have no reason not to, honestly. I’m going to sleep between 11:30 and 1, and sleeping for 8 to 9 hours. Mostly, the sleep I’m getting is good and restful, and that’s in large part due to my diet and exercise.

Eat better food: A

Keeping track of my macronutrients, giving myself a cheat day once a week, and cooking my own food as often as I can is making a great difference. I rarely crave garbage, and when I do, it’s like one donut or a few Red Vines. If I have vices related to food at all, it’s popcorn and ice cream.

Exercise more: B

I can do better. I’d probably give myself a low C for this month, but I will allow myself the curve. I worked very long hours nearly every day for three weeks straight, and I just didn’t have the energy or time or motivation to exercise when I wasn’t on set. But I walked almost every day, and since we finished production, I’ve run every other day, at least. My time and distance is holding at about 35 minutes for 5K, but I’m also not aggressively trying to train, yet, for the 10K and then the half marathon that I plan to do later this year. I’m also proud of myself, considering that six months ago, I couldn’t run for more than a minute at a time, and didn’t have the motivation to even try.

So let’s total this up and see how I did: 27 out of 28 points for a very solid A. I’ll take it, and I’ll feel as good as I can about it, considering how unfulfilled I feel creatively.

Are you still doing this with me? If you are, how do you feel?