Operation Achieve Anything: Day Two-Hundred-Twenty-Five, Dateline 8-13-2018
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“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.”
Good morning crickets. Welcome to day number two-hundred-twenty-five of Operation Achieve Anything. This turned out to be a rollercoaster of a weekend without even having to move from my seat. It started Friday when I realized that I had officially worked through the issue that I was having with my day job to where I no longer felt a slight urge to quit if that wouldn't mean I'd have to look for different paid work.
If my work week had continued the crappy path that I've grown used to, the plan was to take the time off to get ahead with this blog since I have grown tired of being a weekend warrior using booze to escape the stress. Between the good week at my day job and the fact that my blog's traffic has tripled over the past several weeks, I made an impromptu decision to drink to celebrate.
My time spent drinking was pretty fun because all of the encouraging evidence that I might be on the on the right track put me in a bit of a manic mood. I know that the mania is actually bad but when I'm in the middle of it, I feel like I can take on the entire world. Part of me also feels like it's not mania at all, it's just how I'd be if I had any sense of self-esteem considering how my megalomaniac goal is to create my own world where I can live without ever having to deal with another boss.
The problem comes when the confidence that comes with the mania inspires me to reach out only to confirm the reason that I've opted to be a shut-in. Saturday was a day of nothing but fun but it did lead to a horrible Sunday morning hangover. I even wrote in Sunday's post how my decision to drink is always a bad idea because it only leads to these morning struggles that I then attempt to chase away with the hair of the dog.
As I was day drinking my final weekend day away, I realized that I wasn't just wasting my time as I found myself drunkenly plugging away at tedious tasks that are so monotonous, I avoid them like a plague while I'm sober. For example, I'm currently uploading all of the images from my SNL challenge onto my, newly created, Pinterest page. This involves a lot of clicking and copying and pasting to get this done but it doesn't involve any thinking at all. Yesterday alone, I put up at least ten pages when, while sober, I've maxed out at uploading two pages a day.
It was seeing how focused I am on my goals, to where I even work on my projects during my downtime without even realizing it, that put me in the mood to reach out. I sent a couple texts to a couple of friends who, without being fueled by an epiphany, responded the same old way. That didn't really bother me though because in these cases I was just reaching out to say hello.
I didn't get bummed out until I decided to take all of this positive energy and reach out to a somewhat celebrity who I've been going back and forth with on Twitter because of my SNL challenge. I wanted him to check out my Chuck Norris novel to get a little feedback. He responded quickly which was cool but had nothing but negative things to say, not really about the work but about trying to make it as a writer general, signing off by saying how his negative outlook is why he gave up on the industry.
I get it but I would have preferred that he would have just ignored me instead of being so quick at getting back to me just to be a letdown. Oh well, I'm sure he would have preferred that I wouldn't have reached out in the first place. This is a common response to my efforts to reach out making it hard to not stay jaded myself.
That said, at least I practice giving the type of response that I would want when others would reach out to me for feedback. This used to happen often back when I worked in film because, even though I was getting paid to do lighting, they also knew that I was a graduate of Vancouver Film School's writing program, so at least they knew I was trained. Sometimes I felt that I went so much into details that it actually scared some people away because they really just wanted the generic feedback from friends where I'd sum it all up with, "it was okay," "it was pretty good," "it was really good."
Though both brands of interaction are discouraging, they both remind me of why I've opted to go at this alone hoping to be discovered without having to even attempt to sell myself to someone who never would be a fan in the first place. The problem comes when my naive mind mistakenly believes that other's sentiments are even close to being similar to mine. I also can't wait until I get my room all nice and cozy and start to save up to hire some help allowing me a lot more control.
That's not to say that I look forward to hiring someone to boss around, but I can't wait to have the control of the direction I want to go. As is, when asking for feedback for free, there is only a point "A" and point "B," where your story is, and where you should be if you were to follow traditional format and structure. Point C, where I want the story to be is nonexistent, especially as an introvert with overly ambitious goals.
Since the Achieve Anything... book has been a bit "do unto others" theme over the past couple of days, I thought this intro would seamlessly transition into talking about yesterday's assignment for the day, only the weekend drinking must have led me to forget the fact that the theme changed. I was supposed to list everything that I've been given simply by showing up on this world and rather than treat these things as a gift treat them like they came with a fee, which I think is supposed to be taken as inspiration but that's too depressing for me.
Whether I like or hate my existence on this planet, which I'm leaning toward the latter considering the current state of the world, I don't feel like I owe anything to anyone just for being born and even promoting this line of thinking seems to set up a world full of slaves. If there is any real purpose to living on Earth, I'm here because I need to be, and as soon as I'm no longer of any use my life will be taken away whether or not I make any of the theoretic repayments at all.
Though negative, I think I fulfilled yesterday's task so let's move on for the assignment for today where I'm supposed to attempt to teach someone something and then share how that makes me feel. Considering that I try to teach my little nephew something new each day, this should be an easy one but, of course, you'll have to wait for tomorrow's post to see what I manage to come up with. Until then, it's that time where I sign off 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.
