Author: Jonathon

What I did today: The short version

1. listed my blessings, or a list of good things in my life. With Carri’s help I got to 21. It may be a record for one of my grumpier days.

2. looked at pictures of men to find artist references for Stephen who is making his debut in the Anita Blake comics. We’re working on Circus of the Damned now.

3. Worked on editing the wonderful script/lettering that Jess does. It was due today, as was the above reference.

4. Spent a lot of time looking at men, semi-nude, and nude today. Art/model photos as opposed to porn. Try to avoid the porn-ado attack.

5. Went to doctor. Found out I have a virus that is effecting my allergy induced asthma – peachy. Meds to take will breath better tomorrow. Cough and tiredness are the most irritating symptoms.

6. Looked at lion and leopard photos for on-going research for my shapeshifters. This was in between all the beefcake. The images began to sort of blend after awhile so I looked at very different images to refresh the visual palate. Other people look at flowers and kittens, I like men and predatory cats. Hey, everyone needs a hobby.

7. Now listening to Disturbed, loud, letting the music help with some of the frustration of the day. It was 4:30 before lettering was done, and after 5:00 before the image references for the artist were found, compiled, and sent off. Finals for the comic were gone over one last time and now are gone away, for this issue anyway. My hat is off to everyone in comics the deadlines are relentless for a monthly, or bi-monthly book. Every time I entertain the idea of doing an original comic idea I hit a couple of days of these kinds of deadlines and the urge goes away. That may partially be the whole me being sick thing, but then again, maybe not.

8. What I have not gotten to do all day: Work on the next book that is due. That deadline comes up less frequently, but it is every bit as relentless, and it, like the comics, if missed bumps your pub date. Months away from the deadline, but I’m beginning to feel that hot breath down my neck, and it’s not a love bite coming, it’s that fang set in the back of the neck and the crack before it eats you.

 

So many of you want to be writers, or seem to be interested in what I do on a daily basis that I thought I’d tell you. Really tell you, so here goes.

Alarm 6:00 AM -Ouch, because cough from yesterday has persisted. Chest tight, tired, but too full of nervous energy to sleep or even lie in bed. Must get up. Jon, my husband, is up and dressed first to fix breakfast and help do the first morning call to our daughter, Trinity, to rise and shine. I’m a little slow out of the gate this morning. Trinity passes in hallway and her outfit doesn’t quite work. I suggest a different jacket. We end up with her changing everything but the shirt and the head band both a deep shade of pink, now paired with black jeans, black shrug, and boots. Perky Goths get more color choices to break up our black, but it does take a bold Perky to do pink. *laughs* Trin will also offer me advice on outfits, mostly shoes. She’s liked shoes since she was tiny. We are perilously close to the same size in shoes and the rest will come eventually. I’ve told her my New Rocks are never to be borrowed, but we can negotiate other things. The rule, when it becomes pertinent, is if any of my clothes leave my closet without my permission then all borrowing privileges are revoked. She knows I mean it, because I seldom say anything I don’t mean. It makes things clear.

Finally downstairs, and huddling over fresh tea. I huddle over that every morning. The cold just makes the huddling a little more hunched. Morning Tweeter & Facebook hellos. Check out a limited amount of on-line comics, or funny sites. Limited to get me to desk sooner. This morning Devil’s Panties by Jennie Breeden, and Oglaf. The last is very definitely not safe for work, no really, depending on the rules at your job full frontal nudity of men and women could get you in serious trouble so save Oglaf for at home, unless your office has our rules, which is, frontal nudity not really a problem just don’t share with co-workers who don’t want to see it. Jon had the website Ugliest Tatoos up, and that’s a trainwreck that’s hard to pass up. Morning funnies done, first tweets and messages done on the kitchen computer. Breakfast sausages which we get once a week now that new nutrition plan has realized it does not have enough protein for this little carnivore. In fact I’m allowed toast with organic nut butter, too. Need to look over revised colors of the latest Anita Blake comic. Only question left is Bert’s hair; is it too blond? Everything else all fixed and lovely. Check. Bottle of water, another cup of tea, and my briefcase and it’s off to the office. The commute totally rocks since I just walk through the walkway in our garage to the other side of the house.

Jon walks me over since both our offices are over here. It means we can blast our music without bothering everyone else. Music for me this morning is Shinedown, which we saw last Friday live in concert. Very cool. Cool enough that I bought an album, which for me is pretty cool. Jon puts on hot water for more tea before retiring to his office. A few more tweets and facebook, and now I’m doing this blog. Had to cancel a dentist appointment because of the cough, not a good mix with drilling teeth. *shudder*

Looked over to-do list and had to message Jon to make sure he had taken something off of my list, for sure, since it’s due tomorrow. What? UK page proofs for Bullet since it’s being simultaneously in UK and United States. Now editing two chapters that I took from Bullet, which is the June 2010 Anita Blake novel, to be in this new novel, the 2011 Anita book. Jon messages me back that he forgot to tell me that the page proofs are on his to-do list, but they are, he has contracts for me to sign. I tell him bring them up, he does, and while I have my computer wizard with me I ask him to help me save some images and quotes that I’ve found. All done, he’s taking the contract to our comptroller, and I’m finally alone and theroetically can get to work. What was I doing? Oh, that’s right, editing the two chapters to make sure there are no mentions of Bullet’s plot that doesn’t work with the new book where the chapters are being placed. It’s very rare I have three big chapters that get to change books with so little reworking even in the same series. So, nice when I can add about a hundred pages to a book so instantly.

Still not working on new book. The comic WIPS, work in progress, need to be gone over so the artist, the wonderful Ron Lim, can stay ahead of the deadlines. I have now checked Tweetdeck again, which means I need to change desks. My second computer has no access to the internet so I can’t be tempted. The cold makes me sluggish and less likely to be displined. Gotta do better than this. Evil, tempting, internet.

Have realized this blog is just another way for me to procrastinate today, so enough. I’ve edited the chapters, sent off numerous comic notes, still have the lettering to double check, but now time for lunch. This is just the morning, a not atypical morning actually except for the cold/cough. Now rinse, shampoo, and repeat tomorrow.

 

I am currently writing the next Anita Blake novel. Yes, the one after the June release, Bullet. The new book had been going along at a nice pace. I’d been doing about four pages a day which used to be my page count at the beginning of most books. It’s a comfortable pace while my Muse and I get our feet under us. Later the page count will pick up to between four and eight pages a day, and then sometimes ten to twenty, but you can’t count on that. I did my four pages early today, but the pace isn’t flowing. Why not? Not sure, but I think I need new music.

I always write to music. I used to pick an album to write to, but when the books began to grew from four hundred pages to between six hundred and a thousand, no single album could keep my interest. I’d change part way through the writing process. It usually meant that the album that came in late was the music for the beginning of the next book. Then the iPod and iTunes came into my life, and suddenly creating my own playlists was easy.

I’ve learned that the right music for a given book is absolutely imperative for me. I can spend days arguing with myself that I don’t need new music or a different order of older music, but in the end, I do. My muse runs on music, and so do I. So, I’ve been creating a playlist for the new book today. I wrote most of Skin Trade to Drowning Pool and that band is still almost useless to me, because it’s associated too intimately with that book, those characters, that plot. But Disturbed which came in just after that for me has come and gone as a favorite, but I’ve never been without some of their music on my playlist since a good friend recommended them to me. Daven, the friend in question, has a real ear for music for my muse and me. Drowning Pool had one album on Bullet’s playlist, but not this time. Still tired of their most excellent music for writing to, but Disturbed has come back in a major way. I’ve got most of their albums on the list. Korn which was my mainstay for the last book is nowhere to be seen. I’ve just overused them lately. Godsmack which came in at the end of Bullet is still on the playlist, but not every album. Flyleaf is the only girl fronted band right now. She does her own growling, I like that in a female singer. Though subsequent albums seem less hard edged and are not on my playlist. I’ve got one song from Hinder and Saving Abel respectively. I’ve got one Chevelle album, so far, but will be listening to more. I’ve got two albums by Hurt, and I think that will do for them for this book.

I’m still tweaking the playlist, and may add some harder stuff. I have a playlist that’s simply entitled, Hardcore which is Lamb of god, Killswitch Engage, and Chimaira. I may mix some of that in with the above playlist, or keep it for late night wake up call. But either way I have the beginnings of the music that will sing me through this next novel. I’m listening to the music as I type this, trying to decide if I want to keep the album order, or mix it up more. I’ll be rearranging for a few more days, but it’s there, the theme music for the book, the background music that will become so much a part of this book, these characters, this plot, that some of the songs will be forever wedded to it, and them. There are still songs that I can’t hear without thinking of scenes I’ve written, because the music simply is part of my writing process. Some writers run on nicotine, others on caffeine, for me, it’s music.

 

The last blog about what I have been reading went up without being spell checked. That’s always a bad thing, but when the writer is dyslexic, as I am, it’s worse. As several of you pointed out the misspellings, the mistakes, I thought, “Crap!” But the very complaints let me know that you all understood exactly what books I was talking about, and the fact that I had misspelled my own state incorrectly seemed to amuse more of you than it upset. I was glad for that. Jon said he could go in and fix it, and I started to have him rush to do it, then I thought, no.

The blog on reading with all it’s mistakes makes a very important point. Perfection isn’t the goal. The goal is to get your information, your stories, told as clearly and interestingly as possible. Everyone understood what I’d meant to say. The information was successful passed from me to you. It was entertaining, perhaps not entirely in the way I had intended, but you all enjoyed it, or enjoyed complaining about it, either way, fun was had by all. I will endeavor to spell check from now on for the blog, but I hope this oversight on my part will finally make the point that I’ve been making to would-be writers for years. If you wait for perfection you will never finish that article, that story, that book. You will polish, and rewrite, and there will always be something that isn’t perfect. There will always be some tweak you can make. The point is not to be perfect. The point is to finish and try to publish. Let the editor worry about polishing it more. She will certainly send it back to you if she thinks it needs work, but by the time she does that she will have bought it, and you will know that you will be published. If the book was still sitting in your computer being made “perfect” that wouldn’t be happening.

When I only had a couple of stories published, I had a saying on the wall in my office. It was a piece of paper that I’d written in big letters. It read, “Perfection is an unattainable goal.” I purposefully spelled “perfection” wrong. Yes, knowing it was spelled badly bugged me every time I looked at it, but that one imperfection made it’s point to me, and my very perfectionist brain. I wasn’t trying for perfection. I was trying to succeed.

 

I’ve gotten so many comments on line that I wanted to clarify a few things about yesterday’s blog. It’s always the problem with blogging, or writing in general. What you mean as a writer isn’t what everyone takes away from the writing. It is the nature of the beast, but in my fiction I’m used to it, blogging, not so much.

I am not now, or have I ever advocated anyone to tone down their personality in order to date someone. Never pretend, never be other than what, and who, you are, not for anyone. First, it’s a lie. You are pretending to be a different person than you truly are, and eventually that lie will break down, and then your boyfriend/girlfriend will wander what the hell happened. I am very intense and that is very true when I am intimate with someone, but for those that are okay with that the rewards are just as intense. I know I’m a high needs item so I do my best to give as good as I ask from the other person. So far, everyone that’s gotten that close to me has eventually regretted their decision to distance themselves from me and come back wanting another chance, so I must be doing something right.

The history with men and intimate relationships was just the pattern that made me turn to Jon, my husband, and ask why this had happened so often. But it’s not about the men and the dating, it’s about the realization that I do this level of intensity in nearly ever damn thing, or did. I’ve actually toned it down in the last couple of years, relaxed a little. I haven’t actually made a waitress cry in over three years, so I have been getting better, but I still get too upset over smaller things. I still expend that life or death, fight or flight, energy into things that don’t need it. That is what I am working on changing.

I suppose if I were capable of truly casual sex that I could, for a night, tone down the intensity of myself, but why would I want to? I’ve never had a one night stand in my life. I don’t judge that as good or bad, it’s just not something that has interested me up to this point. For me to want to sleep with a person I’ve always needed to be interested in that person, as a person. A pretty face, and a nice body, has never been enough without a good mind to go with it, and a good personality. Never underestimate the attractiveness of being an intelligent, decent human being. Nice, interesting, men that can make me laugh always got further with me than the handsome bad boy. If a man was rude, or impolite to me, that was a deal breaker. Respect yourself, or no one else will.

Am I intense? Yes. Has that cost me more than a few relationships with men? Yes. But in the end, I would rather have the relationships end than compromise myself as a person. When my first marriage ended, it was like a kind of death, but when the dust settled I was still me. I was still Laurell, and to have compromised enough to make that first marriage last I would have had to give up being me. The same is true for the other relationships that failed. But were they failures? I learned something from each of them, and what I learned has helped make me more of myself, and helped make Jon and I a happier couple. It has made me more aware of what makes me difficult for most men, and what I needed in a man for things to work better. Jon and I have been together almost ten years. He loves me the way I am, and we can talk honestly about the problems we both had with each other when we were first dating. I was never going to marry again, and Jon wasn’t sure he wanted to marry anyone. Six months later, we were engaged. I learned it wasn’t marriage I didn’t like, it was marriage to the wrong person, just as Jon learned that marriage wasn’t a trap, or a cage. We both learned, and grew as people, and we continue to learn and grow. Marriages, like people, don’t stay the same. They grow, they evolve, and I work at seeing that I hold up my side of the marriage, as Jon does to his, because though you can hold up a marriage single-handedly for awhile, in the end, the weight will crush you. Jon and I work together to hold it all up. Part of what holds it’s together is the very intensity that almost frightened him off in the first place.

 

I was raised in an abusive atmosphere by a woman who had, herself, been abused. It meant that she panicked easily, or she didn’t react much at all. She would work herself up into near hysteria if a family member that had promised to drive her/us somewhere was late. She’d be convinced they weren’t coming, or something bad had happened, so that by the time they arrived she’d pretty much ruined her mood and the outing. The more she panicked the calmer I became. I’m damn good in a crisis because I was raised in one. The older I got the more she allowed herself to be hysterical, because she counted on me to be calm, to think. Many of us raised by abuse victims even if no actual abuse occurs are very good in a crisis, but suck at ordinary things. So, we create crisis, because we understand that, and we’re good at it, or at least it’s familiar. Familiar things, even bad familiar things, can be very reassuring. Unless you get therapy or have an Epiphany, or both, you will repeat this pattern for your children. I hit therapy and had several Epiphanies, so didn’t think I’d repeated this pattern. Trinity, my daughter, is a much happier kid than I was by this age. Though she asked me the other day, “How did you get to be so strong?” (she wasn’t talking lifting weights)

“I had to be strong to survive and get myself out.”

She basically is concerned that by not being raised in a crisis, or having bad things happen, she’s somehow not as strong as I am. I didn’t know what to say to that, really. In a way, the bad things make us very strong, but the price can be very high. I am only now recovering some of the joy that was lost in my childhood.

But, one thing I congratulated myself on was that I didn’t make crisis happen just so I’d feel safe. I did not catastrophize, or so I thought. One of the ways I cope and don’t catastrophize is by thinking things to death. I will knaw and worry at something months, or years, in the past if I don’t understand it. In that vein, I recently asked my husband, Jon, “Why do all the men I’ve ever tried to be intimate with follow the same pattern? They are very close, very happy to be with me, and then they begin to retreat. Emotionally, physically, in some way.” I finally realized if the only consistency is me, and they’re very different men, then it’s me. So what is it? What am I doing consistently that illicits this response. Jon did it when we were dating, and now, ten years later, I could ask, “Why did you do it?”

His answer, “Most people aren’t as intense as you are. It can be scary to have that kind of intensity aimed just at you.” And he added, “It actually can raise the hairs on the back of your neck, and men remember a time when that level of intensity meant something was looking at you to eat you.”

I blinked at my husband. “You mean the intensity makes you worried I’m going to kill you and eat you?”

He shrugged. “A little, but I know now that you aren’t planning to leap on me, bite through my skull and carry me off to your cave and devour me.”

“Good that you know that now,” I said, perplexed.

He then compared me to Galadriel in the “Lord of the Rings” movie, beautiful, lovely as the morning star, but terrible all the same. He’s also compared me to the Eye of Sauron in business dealings, but this was personal life, and I was a little puzzled. But I’m a big believer that if I ask, I want a honest answer, if I didn’t want it, I shouldn’t have asked. So I went away to puzzle at it.

I finally realized that though I don’t make crisis in my life so I feel at home from my childhood, I do still bring the intensity level that most people reserve for true life and death crisis to almost every aspect of my life. It’s a behavior that has allowed me to succeed beyond my wildest expectations, and certainly beyond the expectations placed on me by my family. This intensity has been one of the keys to my success in business and to an extent in my personal life. But, I believe now it is part of what cost me my first marriage. My ex just couldn’t stand up under the level of scrutiny and intensity that I brought to our relationship. It was too much for him. I was too much. He didn’t do therapy like Jon and I do, so he didn’t have the ability to explain what was wrong, so he retreated emotionally, physically. He shut me out, because he was burning to death under the glare of my spotlight. I’m lucky with Jon, because a part of him is flattered and enjoys that level of attention, but even he when we were courting, would retreat emotionally, physically. Once I reassured Jon that I loved him and was keeping him and it wasn’t just about sex, he was cool about it. It’s one of the reasons we’re married. I have yet to have sex with a man for long without having to reassure him that I’m not just in the relationship for the sex.

I grew up only seeing two ways of dealing with life. My grandmother was either panicked, afraid, and not dealing well, or she was cool, calm, and so unemotional that it was almost unnerving. There was no middle ground for her, and none growing up for me. I learned to be calm in a crisis, emotionally distant even, and then only fall apart after the crisis, sometimes years after. But the intensity level is a crisis level. I bring to almost every thing in my life the level of energy that most people reserve for car accidents, tornado’s, physical violence, and other genuine emergencies. I didn’t know I did that until yesterday. It is both an amazing character trait, and a great strength, and a way of still living, always, in crisis. It is exhausting, and uses up way more energy than is needed for most things. No wonder I’m tired.

In business I’ve been told many times that I’m intimidating. In “dating” I’ve had a pattern of men being very intimate and happy to be with me, and then retreating in some way that left me confused and hurt. Their retreat made me persue them harder. I realized it was the metaphor that Jon, my beloved husband, used. The men fled, and the chase response kicked in, because I’d seen something I wanted and I freaking went for it. In business this is good, in a personal life it’s only good if it makes sense to the other person. The truly sad part is the men didn’t know why they retreated or what bothered them, they just knew that it didn’t feel good, it scared them. I scared them. Well, fuck.

I went back to Jon and said, “But I can’t stop being this intense it’s who I am.”

“I know,” he said, “and I love you just the way you are, but you are intense.”

Give it a few more hours, and a night where I dreamed of my grandmother, and woke anxious and afraid. I realized that for a main relationship, a marriage, that the intensity is what I am, and what it has to be for me, but for other relationships it doesn’t have to be do, or die. I finally understand why I’ve made waitresses cry, when all I asked for was the fries I ordered on the side. It’s not what I say, it’s how I say it, because this level of intensity hits a lot of people’s radar as anger, or crisis. Either way, it makes them feel like somethings wrong. All I wanted was my fries.

I’ve worked my anger issues and I’ve worked at being lighter, having more fun in my life for the last few years. I’ve made great strides, but my intensity level, well, I didn’t see it as a problem. In most things it is still who I am, what I am, and people will have to deal, but in other things I will strive to monitor myself. I will try to make it not an emergency to do ordinary things. I will try to give the appropriate amount of energy to things, and let the last of my crisis thinking go. How do I do that? Honestly, I don’t know yet, but I’ll work on it.

 

It is a gorgeous day outside after a very long, very cold, very snowy winter. I’ve had a lot of disruptions today, so I got no pages done this morning. Normally, at the beginning of a book I’d be done for the day and be able to go out and enjoy all this warm sunshine. But I have no pages, and I owe myself pages. But sometimes it feels like I’ve spent most of my life watching beautiful days pass by my windows while I played with my imaginary friends. Tomorrow is supposed to be colder, rainy, and not pretty. I want to go outside and enjoy the day not sit here in my office and work. I want to play. Oddly, I am only now learning how to truly play. The test now is to find a balance between this new play and the old work ethic.

I think one of the reasons I resisted playing for so long was a fear that it would damage my work ethic, my productivity. But, it’s more than that, I sat down at the other desk where I sat to write the last four books, and it still hurts. I still feel that soft, rolling panic of the insane deadlines I’ve survived in the last twelve months. It was a wonderful year, and a terrible year. We lost people we loved some through death, and some through just deciding that they would no longer be who they said they were. Death is not the only way to lose someone, it just seems more final. I sat down at the other desk, opened the file which I wrote 18 pages of on the plane coming back from Paris. I have a good start, a good scene, exciting action, and the panic came. It’s a beautiful day, and I’m not ready to work. My muse and I are still hurt. It’s the only word I have for it.

Paris filled us up again, thus the 18 pages, but also I was riding the fear of my flying phobia. Anger, rage, fear, even sorrow, translates into energy for me, and I most often pour that energy onto the page. But even Paris, that lovely city, did not heal all wounds. I didn’t understand until I sat down today to try and make myself get back up on that bucking bronco that had become my schedule, that I’m afraid to get back on the horse. I don’t wanna, not yet, not yet. It’s like being forced to ride again when your arm is still in a cast from where it bucked you off last time. No, not bucked me off, because I stayed and broke that damn horse. I tamed it, bridled it, made my deadline again and again last year, hell, the last two years. I rode, and rode well, but like all big, powerful beasts it didn’t go quietly, and in the end it pressed me against the fence rails and busted through them covering us in wood and splinters and nails, and when I had mastered it, brought the beast panting and head hung down, broken, something in me, on me, broke, too.

I am not ready to write again. I am not ready to get back up on another charging, snorting, beast. It prances before me black coat shining in the sun, tossing it’s head so it’s midnight mane flares around the muscular arch of the neck. It’s nostrils flare scenting my fear. It’s eyes show white. It’s hooves pawing at the dirt, nervous, warning, all it’s body language saying, “Come closer and I will kick you. I will kill you, because I’m scared of you, and I will not be ridden.” For some reason it has one white hoof, pawing the dry dirt, that seems important, some symbol, but I don’t know why, or what. I just know that I do not want to sling my leg over the back of the midnight steed. I fought the last one, bay coated, like rich wood polished and gleaming in the sun. It’s gone off to all of you so you can enjoy it’s story, but now here’s another one, and I am not ready yet. I didn’t realize that I was still heavy with bandages and wounds. I thought I was well, healed in the chilly air of a Parisian spring, but it is not so. I am hurt. My muse stares at me, and looks at the great black, beast, and with the raise of an eyebrow says, “You’re joking, right? This one, this soon, we’re not well.” She’s right. She’s so right.

I can either go out into the sunlight and give up all pretense of working today, but if I do, then the beast will have won, and I’ll be more afraid tomorrow. Fear grows if you feed it, and cowardice feeds it. I will give myself a few minutes to sit in the sun and weep, and then I will come back and I will mount the beast. I will let it shake and batter me, until my teeth ache in my head, and I feel my spine will snap from holding onto all that muscled death, because make no mistake it will kill you if it can. Maybe not a death of flesh and blood, but I am hurt. I’m going to sit on the patio in the sunshine, and unbandage some of the wounds. Maybe what they need is a little air.

 

This morning was the kind of morning that separates the adults from the children on an exercise plan. I did not want to get up at 5 AM. I wanted to cuddle next to my warm, softly sleeping husband, Jon, and just forget the whole thing. I made the mistake of rolling over and cuddling closer to him. God, he was so warm. I snuggled against him and it felt so good, and I was so tired, and it was dark, and . . . whine, whine, whine. It took twenty minutes for me to actually get up, but I did it. I got dressed in exercise clothes, made my way through the pitch dark house. I was up so early that for once Sasquatch, our pug, was still sound asleep in his crate. I actually had to wake him up to scoot him and me outside into the soft unlight of predawn. I say unlight because it’s not dark, really, but it’s not dawn either. The air seems to shine around all the black outlines of things, but it’s as if the light comes from everywhere and nowhere: unlight. It was enough to see Sasquatch as a pale shape as he wandered through the yard. Then back inside, treat the dog, grab two bottles of water and over to the other side of the house and the gym. Yes, we have an in-house gym, but I only use it for predawn treadmill. I prefer to go out of the house to a gym, because as I work out of my house, I need the social interaction of a gym. It gets entirely too lonely, and isolating, without seeing more people on a regular basis. The gym has the extra benefit of me not having to talk to most of the people. The best of both worlds, but then I have an exercise partner, Carri, so I get enough talking. Though some days we work out like guys, very little talking, and just lifting the weights. Some days, we work out more girl, and it’s a little slower, a little more friendly. Yes, there are plenty of women who work out very seriously with little visiting, and there are men who are Chatty Cathy’s, but general;y it works the other way.

This morning, wouldn’t have been any more pleasant with a workout partner. Carri and I would just have growled at each other. It was most definitely a morning not to inflict my mood on anyone, but me. I stretched out, very slowly, very carefully. I’ve had some friends that have injured themselves stretching out before hand, and our new trainer would prefer we stretch out after a warm up, but I’ve found my injury rate less when I stretch out before I hit the treadmill, but the theory of warmer muscles stretching more easily is a sound one. I’m willing to try both.

I turned on lights as I went, too sleepy to wander safely in the dark even in my own house. Stretching done, and I was finally on the treadmill. Some mornings I’m eager at this point to get started. This morning it was about just doing it. Headset on, music chosen; I started with Godsmack. But I’ve been listening to it too much, so I went back to my treadmill standard, Korn. I did a slow warm up and then hit my speed. I was able to do a sustained 3.4-3.5 and then I was able to up it to 3.6. A personal best walking on the treadmill. I finished one bottle of water on the treadmill and started the second as soon as I was done. I did an hour and just a few minutes over, because my twenty minute cuddle-a-bed had taken my chance to do an hour and thirty minutes. I haven’t actually made it to 90 minutes yet, but that is the goal.

Did I feel better for having done the treadmill? Yes, and no. Yes, I felt good that I’d done it on a day when I was so not motivated to do it. No, there was no burst of energy, no endorphin pay-off. That’s unusual for me, actually, I usually hit an endorphin rush about twenty minutes into it, but not this morning.

I’ve been getting a lot of people telling me how great I look, and how did I lose fifty pounds and how do I keep it off? This morning is an answer to that. I’ve worked my ass off, literally, well, okay plenty of curves left on me, and I like it that way. I want to lean down, and muscle up, not be skinny. I don’t give a damn what I weigh. I care how many inches I can trim and how I fit in my clothes, and let’s all be honest, how we look out of our clothes motivates us a lot. I’ll admit it if you will. People also ask me how I can keep up the quality and quantity of all those books I write, well, the exercise is one of the ways I do that. It energizes me, normally, gives me better stamina for everything in my life. I also find that one of the ways I relax best is to do something very physical, and get out of my head and into my body.

Why wasn’t today more fun? No idea, and I am tired of water, but by 4 this afternoon had my sixty ounces done. I ate nuts, fruit and some Kashi cereal for breakfast with almond milk. Lara bars have become my friend. Lunch was not so healthy so I ate less of it. Dinner was very healthy and the beginning of our new nutrition plan. Did I want to eat something else? Yes. But it’s all about the goal. Set your eye on it, commit to it, and freaking do it. It’s the same way I write a book. I set my goal, I know my deadline and I do it. I write on days when I am not inspired. Waiting for the right mood to write is for amateurs. Ray Bradbury said it years ago, “The Muse cannot resist a working writer.” I find my muse and I like to be busy. Well, exercise is the same way. You do it because you have a goal, not necessarily because it sounds like a barrel of fun today. I also worked out with a new personal trainer in the afternoon, but some of the new exercises didn’t work with my healing, but still gimpy ankle. He is going to modify the program to take it into account. I hate breaking in a new trainer, as I imagine he hates breaking in a new client. Why the trainer? Because I’m a writer, not an athlete, I know words, not exercise. I want to learn more about how to move my body and make it stronger, healthier. To do that I’ll probably see O-dark-thirty tomorrow morning, too. Or maybe, the warm and sleepy cuddling will overwhelm me tomorrow, and that’s okay as long as it doesn’t happen too often. Like writing a book, building a better body, is all about how much consistent, day in, day out, you put into it. Tomorrow after treadmill and breakfast, and our daughter, Trinity, is off to school, I’ll be starting a new book. By 9 o’clock tomorrow morning I want to be at my desk working, with exercise and a healthy breakfast behind me, and water, mustn’t forget the water. Here’s hoping the endorphins get up with me tomorrow morning. It’s lonely without them.