Good morning Crickets. Welcome to day number seventy-two of Operation Achieve Anything. I don’t really know what’s going on with my head at this moment but things seem to be getting back to normal. I think the problem is that I was ramping up for another productive phase following a New Year’s break only to have the wind taken from my sail when a cold/flu had me in bed for over a week. I recovered from this illness right before getting a case of the birthday blues that led to another week of being sick from a pretty big weekend bender. Since then, I’ve been getting back on the ball, but with the thoughts that have been running through my head has been making this a slow process.

Keep in mind, I’m only sharing my excuses as to while I haven’t started to take on the extra work that I want to get into because as far as what needs to be done, I’ve been on top of my game throughout it all. I’m beginning to see how the way that I beat myself up over not starting extracurricular content while not giving myself enough credit for continually completing established projects may lead to the unwarranted low opinion of myself that’s felt like a curse throughout my entire life.

Over the past couple of days, I’ve been double down on my work in order to build a surplus of content in order to rebuild my safety net, instead of sitting around and staring at the computer while wishing that I felt inspired enough to start another new project. This feels like the right approach at this time since there is no real urgent need to start these new projects other than the hopes that having more busy work will validate my time and/or existence.

This approach of getting ahead of the game rather than adding new players is helpful in two ways. For one, it’s priming my productive pump because I now feel like I am making actual progress instead of just keeping up. The second part is how the surplus of content that I’m creating is creating the safety net I mentioned up above. This surplus allows me to wake up each day knowing that most of my deadlines have already been met which leads to much less of a stressful day. Minus the stress, I’m more enthusiastic about taking on more work and since I’m already ahead, that more work may be a new project.

My surplus isn’t quite to the point where I want to get it to yet considering that I’m going to be using two days worth of my extra work in order to take off this weekend. This break will be good because I need to get out of this room because I’m starting to feel like it’s a prison, but again, that’s just because I’ve been too focused on what I want to do and not what I’m actually doing.

This long intro kind of plays into yesterday’s assignment where I was supposed to let my cynical side shine as the book continues to focus on integrity. The introduction just sets up the back and forth that goes through my bipolar head that pulls me back and forth when it comes to every aspect of my life and not simply just my mood.

I personally feel that unless you are willing to live a normal life, integrity can only get you so far. If you just want a family and a nine to five job, working with integrity can lead you to keep your job and get promoted from time to time, but if you have any interest in breaking the mold it feels like your integrity must go out the window unless you want to end up a failed dreamer like myself.

That’s not to say that you have to do the actual dirty work to win but you do seem to have to team up with some despicable people if you want to do anything big. I mean, looks what’s going on in Hollywood right now, there are plenty of great people who get into the industry for their love of the arts only to end up forced to collaborate with executives that have nothing but money and power on their brains and will do anything to get both.

I use Hollywood as an example because I’ve witnessed first hand how executives can crush a creative soul, but this brand of dreamers being killed by the money hungry happens in every field and has since the beginning of time. This is why I never hoped to make it big but instead dream of making enough to hire an editor in order to get by on my self-published work. This would allow me to do what I want without having to lose my integrity.

The assignment’s final task was to determine whether I consider myself an idealist or skeptical based on the thoughts up above. Sorry but you’re going to have to wait for the full answer because it actually plays into today’s assignment where I’m now supposed to explore my idealistic side in order to give a counterpoint. You’d think that the book would wait until I’ve explored both sides before asking me to share my conclusion but here we are.

Oh well, you’ll have to wait for tomorrow update to hear the results of today’s assignment while I wrap up yesterday’s assignment as well. Until then, it’s now that time where I wrap this up by saying, good day and good luck to you and all of your projects.  

Talk to you soon.

Sincerely,

The Wicker Breaker

P.S. Below are links to my novel, which I plan to promote as part of Operation Achieve Anything, as well as a link to where you can buy the book that is providing the structure to this project in case you would like to purchase it in order to play along.