Ups and Downs – 333

I know how it looks, like I have gained back half of the weight I lost in Italy, but in reality it is much more complicated than that. I went down a little, and then back up as high as 339, and then down to 330 again, and so on. I am fluctuating.

Clearly, not everything here is fat, and I know that bloating was probably a factor on at least some of those days, so I have questioned whether weighing daily is truly helpful. My friend Karen is sure it is, and I tend to agree. For one thing, although some of the fluctuations may be mystifying, they are sometimes traceable to things I did or didn’t do, and that is good to know. It looks like I should swear off pop forever, which is hard in the summer, but it is probably for the best. Lack of sleep is a killer, but eating apples helps. Ultimately, I am still learning about what is best for my body, and my life.

There are still high points. Some clothes are actually fitting better, though there are still many others on deck. My blood sugar is doing pretty well. One symptom I had been having for several months cleared up. Those are all good things. Also, I kind of feel like I am now settling around 330 instead of 345, which is an improvement, if not my final destination.

One aspect that is hard is that I feel like I cannot give as much time to exercise as I would like. I am really trying to establish myself as a writer. It is a huge time commitment, but I feel like I need to make that my priority, so even though there are a lot of good things I could be doing, this is where I need to focus my time now. Fortunately, for women it appears that dieting is more effective for losing weight, although exercise is more effective for maintaining weight loss. Ideally I will have gotten the writing established before I am in the maintenance stage, and will have more time for other things.

For the writing itself, I finally went through and got the completed screenplay into the proper format. That was an amazingly tedious job, which, along with some other things, convinced me that I really needed to invest in screenwriting software. I was reluctant because I am cheap, and because when I had tried a trial some time ago, I hated it.

I can’t remember what that demo was, but this time I downloaded demos for both Final Draft 7 and Movie Magic Screenwriter. They turned out to be pretty similar, and neither was horrible. Maybe they have improved over time, or going through the formatting process increased my understanding, making me better able to use it. I liked the look of Final Draft a little better, and after downloading the demo they sent me a promo code for $30.00 off, so it was the obvious choice. I have now started my second script in Final Draft.

I had decided Monday that I really ought to try writing ten pages per day, and that I would start that night. Monday I wrote 0 pages, Tuesday I wrote 0 pages, and Wednesday I wrote 9. Clearly, I am still a work in progress. I think I may be able to do better tonight. Part of the problem was that I was hung up on finding the right last name for the female lead, and so I was doing searches on German last names and finally I just changed her first name too, and then it was okay. That should not be a problem tonight, but who knows what weird hang-up I will pick up on next.

Regardless of the frustrations, this is what I want to do. I feel good after I have written, and usually while I am writing too (depending on how crazy I am driving myself in a given moment). My day job just becomes more frustrating all the time, and that will probably get worse, but it isn’t even about that. It is more just about not falling into a rut.

I have been basically doing the same thing since I graduated from college. Sure, I completed that novel and sent it around, and I have completed other short stories and things, but I have never been really consistent. I am trying to act like the things that I feel are most important really are most important. Because I don’t really think watching another Law & Order episode is more important than a satisfying career, but on some nights you might not be able to tell.
It isn’t all laziness or exhaustion either. A lot of it has been a lack of faith in myself, that I even could have anything good happen to me, beyond a normal existence where I worked and survived. I had these dreams, or I probably would never have written anything at all. I certainly dreamed of romance often, but I don’t think that I believed in them enough to see where I could try harder or approach things differently.

Now, after much time, I think I know that my worst fears about myself are not true (you will notice the lack of certainty), but there is the accumulation of bad habits, and also starting to do new things that do not quite come naturally. I’m happier this way, but I am also feeling scared all the time. This is why I spent about an hour and a half Monday night vacillating between calming myself and feeling like I needed to throw up. But more on that later.