Operation Achieve Anything: Day Eighty, Dateline 3-21-2018
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“Never laugh at live dragons.”
How are things going today Crickets? It’s day number eighty of Operation Achieve Anything, and I’m sorry to say that not much has changed since yesterday, in that, the Achieve Anything… book is still focused on humor and I’m not inspired by either assignment that I’m here to report on. Other than that, I’m actually in a better mood because my EBT card was finally renewed so I don’t have to worry about where I’m going to get food for another six months.
I had to scrape by extra hard for most of this month since my paycheck, that barely pays the bills, was delayed and the county needed the paystub to verify my pathetic existence. Luckily, I had enough birthday money to get by since all of my other resources had run dry. The fact that I was in a limbo as to when anything would come through, made the struggle even more stressful than usual.
My check came through a couple of days ago, which allowed me to buy some fresh food. My EBT renewal was approved this morning so now I’m back in my comfort zone of being broke with a bit of a backup. Though I won’t ever feel fully comfortable until I earn a living one-percent on my own, meaning earning a living on my own terms and not just accepting the first full-time job that is offered, this present situation relieves enough stress to allow me to focus on my goals.
That said, I could use a more stable side job so that I can do a little more than barely scrape by. Hopefully, now that I’m in a better mood, with all of my financial delays worked out, I’ll be a bit more enthusiastic when writing my post, instead of feeling bogged down by my back of the head worries. That’s not to say that I’m not proud of my latest work but I feel the stress of uncertainty may have snuck in some subtle themes that I wasn’t really planning to explore.
It didn’t help that the Achieve Anything… book has been hung up on the same two topics for close to two weeks and the repetitiveness has been driving me mad. For example, including today, there have been four lessons in a row, all with very subtle changes to the exact same assignment. Again, I wouldn’t mind these themed segments of the book if the lessons felt like more than reworded filler just meant to take care of an extra day.
On the first day, I was supposed to note a few of my flaws and then find the humor in them. This assignment would have been great, I don’t know how it’s going to lead me to Achieve Anything but I do get the point of the self-help advice to work on an altogether better mindset to get things done. The next two assignments both had me not taking myself too seriously while laughing as much as I can. That’s it, laugh more, the lessons varied a little but the assignment for both was laugh more.
Again, I have a specific goal that I went into this challenge expecting to focus on as the anything to be achieved. I also had a history with self-help books from going through a phase where I read them in order to broaden my understanding of people in general while using my findings to create more individualized characters in the stories I created while also snagging any good advice as it came. This is the biggest reason why I am so annoyed about the self-help concepts being taught over, focusing on the actual goal itself.
So, yesterday I was supposed to laugh even more than I laughed the day before when I was told to laugh more in general. I’ve already covered my history with humor throughout the past two post so feel to read those if you’re interested in why I might sound so annoyed by what should be the best assignment of all. So rather than ramble on about how I feel humor is probably the most important thing in the world and how I personally stopped feeling the benefits, I’ll simply wrap up yesterday’s task by saying that I did the best that I can.
This sad outlook on humor actually and unintentionally plays into today’s task where the book actually acknowledges that there are times when life just isn’t fun, especially in times where there are living dragons to be dealt with and laughter isn’t the best weapon. Today’s assignment might be the best so far because it’s the first lesson where it doesn’t seem like there’s an expectation that life could be perfect with the help of bumper sticker-style advice.
This assignment actually asks me to battle some demons and really dig in and track down some of the living dragons that I blocking me from having fun. The book wants me to give these dragons who have captured my laughter a name and then develop a battle plan to defeat the beast. The acknowledgment alone of the fact that negativity is sometimes unavoidable might be a bigger takeaway than the actual lesson but either way, this is the most intriguing assignment that I’ve had in a while.
Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out what this assignment brings up when I check in with my update for the day. Until then, it’s time to wrap this bad boy 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.
