It was a nice set up we had. Camera, electric and grips all next to each other. Production base camp just a few feet away. Craft services ready with food. The only downside was that the actual set was about 500 meters down the tiny side road with a rocky shoulder. Hundreds of pounds of equipment per department would need to be transferred by cart. That would take hours. The property owner of our set, or someone else with a slice of power, didn’t want the big transport trailers all over the grass. Understandable, but we were making a movie. Its a dirty job. Its a destructive job.

My department, camera department, was kind of fucked. Extremely expensive equipment, time sensitive setups and absolutely no transport to set. That would mean pushing our carts down the road. Luckily, the key (boss) grip lent us a pickup. In 5 minutes, we had all our equipment on. The pickup only had 2 seats though and there was 5 people being transported. The key grip, the 2nd AC (same as the last story) and myself jumped in the back. I sat on one of our carts, supporting my balance on the edge of the pickup’s bed. With the largest Red Bull money can buy in my hand, we set off down the dirt road and on to the asphalt.

All that was missing was the Dixie horn and a shotgun

The resident crazy ass transpo driver was behind the wheel. I nearly fell off when he turned down the driveway to set, but all that came out of my mouth was a “WHOOOOO!” You don’t get to sit on the line between fun and a cracked skull very often. Not an hour later, all the tech trucks were brought to set, parked down in one of the suburbia farm’s fields in a crescent moon. All we needed was a bonfire (we already had the beer) and the long weekend would of started.

Movie making is having huge amounts of stress in a very small amount of time. When something goes wrong, it can tank your reputation and respect in the industry if its not fixed. Getting used to different directors and their needs is frustrating, but a must. The previous one was always on our ass to move faster and faster. This one has a need to take his time, which removes the constant aggravation of “MUST SHOOT! MUST SHOOT!”, but the day will never end early. You can make a movie cheap and fast, fast and good or cheap and good. You can only get to pick one, and they all come with heart-pumping, head-sweating moments of “Oh shit.”

At lunch, most of the crew hung out at their trucks. The key grip, a farm-bred heart of gold, was shooting the shit with his guys when one of the props guys pulled out a toy he got a Wal-Mart: a foam-dart sniper rifle. The country boy, not to say no to having a little fun. He asked how it worked, grabbed a few darts, and by the red glowing light of the electric’s truck, walked up the ramp with the biggest grin. A few moments later, the pop of the gun followed by a “what the fuck!?!?” and the howl of laughter by everyone in our fireless camp. He came back out, loaded another dart and spotted one of his guys having a smoke by the front of the truck. The gun raised, he disappeared into the black. POP! “What?!?!” and more laughter. It was then I realized that I had found a brotherhood. Factions by departments, but in the end, we technicians and creative souls are part of a tiny brotherhood. Our experiences are singular. Our personalities unique. For every ten thousand farm-boys like the key grip, there may be five who can solve on set mechanical problems like him. For every 100 000 want to be photographer, the head of my department may be the only one who can set up lighting in lightning speed, making what could be a shitty movie look amazing.

As I drove home, sun rising over the lake, I smiled. Happy things are getting better, cleaner, in my life. Directions found and ambition focused. It may not have been the dream I had at 22, with a new life and a new wife and the world before me, but its a better dream. A dream for myself; my skills, my will and my wants.

I pulled in to A&W at 6am, hoping to having a well-deserved burger. The root beer came first and it tasted like victory. Soon, freshly made, I could smell the salt and the oils of meat and potato. I was hungry for something other than craft service, catered lunch and what I could find at home. As the chubby, dour looking employee handed me the bag with my food, she said “Be very, very careful.” in reference to the fries.

I drove off, laughing, eating a dangerous fry. Is that what we must be scared of now? Hot meals?

If she only knew what I did in the last 15 hours, she may give up telling shill people to watch out for reheated, freeze-dried food.

___

There’s a mess of men waiting down Queen Street. Saturday fight night celebrations. Bartenders scrambling between pitchers and dispensers and the screams of young ladies in the mode. The young waitresses snaking through fat bellies and high heels, drinks and food held high between the drunks and the tokers. The old men slapping each other’s backs and the young ones giving fist bumps or handshakes too complicated for their clothing.

I find the last stool left and hop up to the bar. The man behind the bar offer’s me a pint of Blue, drink of choice during cheap pint nights. I nod and look up to the screen. The Prelims are over. Two beat ugly chicks stand in the middle of the Octogon. Glad I missed that. To my left, a group of four of Niagara Falls finest common women chat up a storm with a giant plate of cheese drowned nachos before them, already half eaten. None of them particularly attractive, but cute enough, except for the obligatory fat friend with a string of melted marble hanging from the corner of her lips. Reminds me of bad porno.

The night could swing that way. Talking to what’s available, getting in to trouble with some psycho cunt like the last one I picked up from here. I could drink too much, lose sense, and go for what I can instead of what I want. Nodding to long, bitchy stories, hoping for a little pussy after taking their verbal beating. I could be the man at the end of the bar with the dog faced woman swinging her hands in anger at some slight long forgotten by the man hoping to sleep with her. I could be the stumbling man and the manjaw with spiked hair “female” slipping hands between legs in a booth, shot glasses scattered on the table. I could be the hipster puking in the bathroom, drink still in hand, alone holding his leaking pride.

I watch the fights instead. I drink a pint, I eat and I yell at the TV. Watching tough men with no killer instinct “fight”. The old man next to me agrees. We talk and laugh. We pick winners and end up right.

A tiny, strong-faced chick with a tad too much makeup, but an excellent body walks up directly between my senior friend and myself. High on the crowd or already drunk, she tries a smile at me. The old man, born years beyond the taint of modern femininity, offers up his food to the lucky lady. Her friend, a nerdy type, shy as a nun, grabs some as well. He offers his seat up. Another time, another way of manners.

Roy Nelson knocks out Chieck Kongo. Sonnen gets his ass beat. I order my last beer, the tiny chick basically laying in to me, drunk as fuck. No talking, just looks. She leeches off the old man while getting her attention from me. I slide out of my stool, making sure she feels my departure and go outside. I sit at the newly bought plastic patio chairs. The entertainment is about to begin.

It begins with a shouting match. A small group of guys close, but visibly on two sides. On the edges are the females of the pack, chatting fast, growing to screaming. In response, the rivals start to scream, barking like little dogs on the wrong side of a fence. The crowd grows. The bouncer shows up. I sip at my Blue, laughing. Someone swings, the women screech and yell in fear. Shocked faces from the others on the patio as the street fills up. The most exciting moment of their week is happening. The safety of their world is smashed for a few seconds as a war seems to descend on the corner. I smile at the nearest woman, “I love UFC nights.”

I go back inside to finish my last pint. “You’re back?” the bartender asks, since I paid my bill a while ago.

“I never left. I stay for the entertainment.” He laughs.

I sit again and beside me is the two girls from before. The whole of the old man’s food order before them. The tiny one is shitfaced, head on her arms, arms on the bar. The nerdy one is keeping her eye contact isolated. No one should look at her, her darting eyes say. I play with the change I have left in my hand. Enough for another drink for the ladies beside me, enough for a drink for me as well. I finish my beer and slide the glass to the edge and place the money beside it. Life is good. Life is getting much better. My gut tells me to pay it forward to the deserving and that would be the hard workers in front of me, not the parasites beside me.

I hop off the stool once again and tip my hat to the nerdy chick who quickly looks away. I smile, amused by everyone around me. This is how it works, I realize. This is how you should feel. Not neurotic. Not insecure. Not scared. Not fearful. Not worried about what you said or what you did to scare off a girl. Not caring that a fight is a foot away from you. Not caring about anything but your own relaxation and joy.

The common way to decribe this is feeling like a king. I’m no king. Kings are authority. I feel like an outlaw. As I’m breaking the rules of the world. Maybe I am, maybe I’m not, it doesn’t matter. What matters is the smile on my face, the spring in my step and the steel blue looks I give to the ones I deem worthy of my time.

2:15 a.m.

The triage nurse finally got to me after what felt like forever. The only other person in the ER was a old man looking sullen. Two coats tied to a bulging backpack, A napkin in with blood spots and spatter and two hand streaked. I could of been mistaken for one of Hamilton’s homeless.

The decently cute 20 something brunette in blue scrubs and a sweatshirt took down my story. A few minutes later, a older, larger nurse came in and worked on the rest of my paperwork. As she rolls the chair up to the desk, the sullen old man walks in to the room.

“My wife is trying to kill me!” he says, concerned.

“Sit down, Lloyd,” the nurse says. “The doctor will come get you soon.”

“Oh, okay,” he says and shuffles back to his seat.

Wife trying to kill you? I know that feeling, buddy, I thought.

Lloyd became my hero for the night, mostly because he was the only person I saw that wasn’t in the machine of hospital procedure. After the large nurse came waiting in the waiting room, not to be mistaken with the “you’re sick/hurt/dying, take a number” waiting room I was just in. Ten minutes in there and another scrubbed woman took me to a back room.

“The doctor will be with you soon.”

Its an eye exam room.

3:15am-ish

The head of transport finds me. He says he has a guy on standby to take me back to my car if I’m good to drive home.

4:15am-ish

I’m passing out in the chair, annoyed and tired. I haven’t eaten in 10 hours or so. I’m sore, my brain is going apeshit, my body is wanting to just slip into sleep. Finally, a doctor looking male walks in to the room. McMaster Medical on his sweater. Med student.

He introduces himself as such. I tell him the story, mention my meds, my work, etc. He looks at nose, sees blood. No shit, doc. Checks ears, breathing. All the fine steps he’s been taught. He tells me that it wasn’t my lungs or any kind of trauma. That the nose sometimes bleeds in cold weather. Mucus dries, cracks and it bleeds. But he’ll check with the actual ER doctor before letting me go.

I don’t know how long it took, but a actual white coated, fully educated doctor finds me. She asks questions again, then goes right to looking into my nose. Within seconds, I hear a “ah” and then she motions her student to look into the device. He nods and backs away. I’m trying not to sneeze with a few inches of plastic on some kind of nose telescope in my nostril with two people who get paid 10x more than I do per day staring down. This is not how I imagined my payday to go.

The doc in the coat tells me that the mix of cold weather, stress and heavy lifting exploded a blood vessel in my nose and sent the torrent of blood down my face. When I sniffed and tried to get it to stop, it went down my throat and irritated my throat which brought up the coughing and the red stuff within. She recommended I not work later that day in Gage Park. 12 hours of outside work in the cold. I agree. I call the 2nd AC and tell him I’m fine and what the doc said. I call transport and they take me to my car. Its over.

6 a.m.

Finally home. My mom is awake. I tell her the story. We talk for an hour or more before I slip into sleep.

After this, a series of phone calls wake me up. Its production office, asking how I am and if I’m coming in. I say my bosses are looking for a replacement for me. I get a call from my bosses, they can’t find anyone yet. I tell this to my mom who says, “Guess you’re going in.”

When you’re mom basically says, “Buck up, motherfucker,” you buck up. Just a nosebleed. I’m running on a collective 4 hours of sleep, but I called in anyway and said I could still make it if they really needed me.

They didn’t. They got a union trained trainee to run around the cold in the middle of the night for 12 hours.

I got a lot of sleep.

The end.

___

___

2:30am, Thursday Morning

Done day 3. I get home and sleep.

11:30am

I wake up from the first full sleep in a week, feeling alright. I shower, shave, get a caffeinated drink and relax until I have to leave.

1:30pm

I arrive at base camp ready to work. The night before the 2nd AC was on an organize rampage. End of night, frayed, I wasn’t happy. So next day I just wanted to get to it and get the day done. Fuck everything else. I do some cleaning of the camera truck and other custodial things before having a coffee and catching the 5-minute van right from camp to set.

2:30pm

Work begins. Back inside the $4 million house perched above Hamilton, the so-called “armpit of Ontario”. From the Escarpment, the city looks strangely beautiful, the exhaust towers and steel mills just specks along the shore of the lake. I like Hamilton, as I like Philadelphia. Cities with character and proud citizens, despite the extreme love or hate. With rainbow of tape on my belt and tools in my pouch, the chaos begins.

8:30pm

Lunch. Chicken stuffed with peppers and feta cheese. Damn good. The 1st AC, the 2nd AC and I talk camera talk. What chips are in different cameras and how to calculate distances for actors, objects and the like. The hardcore tech talk that usually passes right over the head of everyone else. For a short lunch, I re-learned all the specs I had forgotten from my sleepy college courses.

1:00am, Friday Morning

An early leave? Sure. The 1st AC was able to get the equipment truck to ferry our shit first before anyone else. We were closing in on the end of inside shooting and about to move outside. I was taking bags and cases to our pushcarts between takes while making sure my main responsibility, the video monitor for the director, was hooked up and running. Lift, place, return, stop, wait, lift, place, hurry, hurry.

1:40am

“You guys are so fucking slow”, says the 1st AC.

He’s tired, frustrated. We all are. Its below freezing outside and the small amount of wind makes it colder. Been through it before, Canadian-style, but after all the work and rushing, we’re all ready to call it a day and go home. He barks that his main equipment bag is the wrong way. I didn’t put it there, but I turn it around so it opens inward on the pushcart instead of the outward the 2nd had it. Its a heavy motherfucker, full of everything he needs to keep the lenses in pristine status so he can pull the proper focus. The 1st reorganizes the carts faster than I can load them. The 2nd takes pictures of them to remind himself of the proper system. As I lift, I’m pissed. In my state of mind, the 2nd’s lack of experience is showing. I’ve worked TV and film longer than he has, but I have little experience in his job. We work well together, but when he panics or loses steam, I’m straining to keep his mind afloat and do my job. I swear a “fucking motherfucker” as the black bag is finally turned in the proper direction. I sniff back a runny nose and wipe the excess my bare hand.

“What the fuck?” There’s blood on my hand. A lot. Maybe I hit it and its just a little bleeding. I sniff and continue and wipe again a few moments later. More blood, same amount. Every time I feel it come out and I wipe, there’s blood. I use our lens-safe tissue and create a ball, putting it up my nose and removing it. Its soaked through.

“Are you okay?” asks the 2nd AC. I say yeah, my nose is bleeding. Its nothing. In my head, I’m wondering why. I’ve never had a honest to God nosebleed. There’s been sporting hits, a little blood here and there, but never the amount that was spewing from my right nostril. I sniff it back as much as I can, but it won’t stop. The 2nd gives me some napkins. The box truck shows up and I walk over there, a wad of napkin in my nose. I can keep working, I tell myself. The box truck’s driver has walked off. Fuck. I head back to the pushcarts and cough into my fist.

“Fuck,” There’s blood on my hand. No way. Must of come out of my nose. It’s cool, I tell myself. Inside, the sleeping anxiety that’s been dormant for months and months rears. I feel the tingle and the shaking, but my head is straight. Its fine. It was a little bit. Its from my nose, must of got into the sputum when my head shook. Just keep working. The director calls action on a MOS (without sound) shot and I cough again, harder, into a clean white napkin. Its full of blood, diluted by spit. “Fuck,” I say, loud enough the head lighting tech turns to look at me. My body panics. So does the 2nd AC when I tell him I got to go to the hospital. As I’m being walked down the large front yard by a member of the crew, my friend and the head of camera department says, “Jordan, what’s wrong?” I calmly shout back as I get farther away from him, “I’m coughing blood.” Everyone heard that one, including the famous-in-Canada boyfriend of our lead actress, visiting her this fine night. He’ll know me now, I laugh to myself.

Within a few minutes I’m at the corner of the driveway waiting for a van ride to St. James. I have a co-producer standing next to me. A cute, young looking woman whose eyes are wide and voice full of concern. I tell her it could be just blood that’s gone down my throat from sniffing, but you can’t take chances. She agrees, eyes still wide. The 2nd AC gives me my backpack, which has my Health Card in it, the proof that this run to the ER will be covered by Ontario’s “free” healthcare. The van arrives, the people around me look scared. I’m scared too, but I say everything I can to not worry them or myself. Despite all that could be running through our heads, logic says its something simple, something safe. The probability of the worst case is small, yet its all they’re thinking about.

As I get in the van, they hand me forms. There are always forms to be filled out.

To be continued…

I’m back working on movies of the week (MOWs). My boss, the 1st Assistant Camera, is a decade plus veteran, telling stories of how it was in thd old days of union monopoly. The hard asses, the egos and power, telling the 2nd and myself how good we have it in the modern industry. The 1000 yard stare of film.

While the stories are all the same and his insistance of my green-ness in this culture, a teacher need not be 100% every second to give solid advice. The most important thing he has passed on is that you only have so much time.

These shoots are non union, but if they were there would be only a certain set of hours you could work. Being in camera department means looking after a shitload of things. So if I was on a union set, I would only have 12 hours on the dot to do everything from shoot, to organize for tomorrow, for paperwork and everything else. 12 hours goes by fast when the entire day is controlled chaos.

In life, the same goes. There is only so much time to get what you want done. So settle in, train yourself and use every minute you’ve got. Because every minute you waste is another minute closer to regretting what you never did.

Which brings me to the hard truths that so many people forget. It goes without mentioning in the Sphere that there’s a Western-wide idea that there are victims everywhere. The poor, racial minorities, sexual minorities, religious minorities, entire cultures, women, children, entire nations… everyone is a victim of everything. Not everything is criminal enough to warrant a harsh sentence, but the few acts they have cordoned off as so heinous that the law cannot apply as written. It must be re-written time and again until the very act is removed from thought through pain of a leering, liberal public.

It is these acts they froth at the mouth for that are usually the most preventable.

I see time and again from schoolmates and old friends, on Facebook feeds and Twitter timelines and from their mouths, the complete and total loss of their common sense when stories come along of a cop punching a unruly woman, shooting a threatening man or quelling a riot. I see fire and brimstone in their eyes over a media-fueled story on rape by teenagers at a party. When a politician lies, when a banker gets another bonus, when a nation is bombed by the U.S. (or isn’t, depending on the civil war). When a black kid doubled back to attack an armed wannabe cop who insulted him. When people are offended, hurt or killed by their own choices, they lose all peaceful facade and show you the reality underneath. The indignant growl that someone would scrape the thin, flaking paint off of civilized life and show the hard iron that is true humanity. They forget what it is to be human through the clouded thoughts of a “humane” viewpoint. It makes them forget a cold truth:

A victim, a real victim, is a person who has been wronged through no fault of their own.

I’ve known a few people truly harmed in their lives. Those who have pulled themselves together and and stood up, they are the most extraordinary, strong people I know. I’ve known people brutally beaten for no reason. I’ve known people molested as children. I’ve known people touched by the very worst of humanity simply because they existed. I’ve known people that took pain time and again waiting for the right time to vanish, and they did. Despite it all, despite the fists and violations they suffered, they put up and saved themselves. With knives to the throats of their kin. With vanishing acts from all they ever knew and loved. With the heaviest of hearts and no other choice. And those who I still talk to, I can’t help on occasion, or when they’re down, to remind them how strong they are and how I admire them. How much stronger than me that they’ve been.

So, when I hear this word pushed around, it doesn’t fall on sympathetic ears.

If you confront a cop, you’re going to get hit, beat or shot. Most so-called brutality is just some fucktard thinking they can convince or defeat what is essentially a solider for the city, not using their fucking head and telling the powers that be what is problem with his arrest is. Instead, he or she swing fists or spit and end up bloodied. Not a victim.

If you walk into a party as a teenager and get drunk with a bunch of strangers, or even a group of friends, guess what? You’ve put yourself at risk. Unless you trust a person with your life, you don’t drink yourself until you are motionless and vulnerable to everything an intoxicated person can do. Drunk people commit crimes. Drunk people rape. Drunk people kill. If you know the people you’re with, fine, but what fucking idiot walks into a party full of people they don’t know and basically draws a giant target on their chest, most of all a woman. Honey, you know the stories. You’ve heard the news. Had the talks with parents and teachers. Maybe even a lady officer came in and told the entire school that rape culture is not cool, and yet you STILL walk into the jaws of intoxicated chaos? What happens to you may be a crime, but you are not a victim.

I once ran into a friend of the First when I was in college. It was outside of an dying coffee house chain. This friend knew some sketchy people, but I sat down with her anyway. Within 15 minutes, I had a knife pulled on me. I knew the reputation of the people around me, but I stayed. Not a victim, just an idiot.

A victim is my friend who was beat time and again by a man 3 times her weight, a man who would pin her if she tried to run, until one night he passed out drunk and she vanished with just the clothes on her back, crossing an entire nation to find safety. A victim is another friend who had a blade to her own father’s jugular after he raised his fist to her; that knife and the piss running down his leg ended 15 years of abuse. A victim was my distant relative who while closing up his hard-earned, barely floating shop, was shot in the head by two ghetto scumbags and robbed of a few hundred dollars, if even that.

A victim is a person who has been wronged through no fault of their own. Everyone else that claims to be is just human cattle, willingly lined up and sacrificed for preachers, politicians and the 6 o’clock news. Their bodies piling up, with markers of red or blue for whatever sides profits most from their deaths. For every man who fights a cop, for every girl who walks blindly into a party of strangers to get hammered, for every single person that lets their mind cloud their instinct, there is an activist or Senator who silently smiles within when your corpse is put to ground.

Don’t be part of their blood coffers, brothers and sisters. Learn to survive like my friends have. Be smart and you won’t have to go through what they did and also have it on your own head. Learn to survive and you’ll feel more alive, and more human, than any idea or drug can give you. It won’t guarantee you won’t be someone’s target, but that’s the price of living. The price of being men and women instead of fodder.

___

My sleep had been off almost for a week. One day that lasted too long, and I just couldn’t get back into the groove. Napping days turning into sleepless nights. Frustration set in. Its still off, but I’ve had enough.

Don’t be surprised when your rest kills the rest of your spirit. It bites into your day and what you can accomplish, even if you’re unemployed. There are 960 minutes in a 16 hour day, if you sleep for 8 hours. That’s 960 minutes to get your ass in gear. To work out, to look for work, to clean, to read, to do anything, but sit there and say “There’s nothing to do.” There is always something to do that improves your body and mind.

The biggest killer of motivation is inaction. When you slow, you falter. When you falter, you fall. I’ve worked a full 24 hours, slept for 4 and then gotten back up for another 12. I’ve come home sore and collapsed to get up and do it again. I’ve burned my body to the core before and I did it because there was something coming after. Always after.

When you’re stuck in a rut where you can’t go out, work, or whatever. Remember its just a bump. Its not a roadblock that ends the road your on. Any roadblock is a barrier YOU have put up for yourself. When you say “I can’t,” its no one else’s fault but your own. Climb, dig, tear that motherfucker down brick by brick if you have to. You can trip, get scraped up and cringe through pain, you can rest for minute, but don’t ever, ever stop going towards what you want.

___

___

What’s the point?

Wake up. Get up. Bathe. Brush. Eat. Ignition. Drive. Work. Lunch. Work. Ingition. Drive. Open door. Sit. Watch. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.

What’s the point?

What’s the point of taking up weights? What’s the point of going out for a drink and a night of pretty women rejecting you? What’s the point of socializing? What’s the point of suffering? Why do any of it?

There are plenty of people who get along just fine doing the minimum. They glide across life like a dog on ice, going and going and going until they hit the end, and that’s it. Its over. They’ve made it to the end with little effort and smile their stupid canine smile, content.

Why bother pushing yourself? Why bother trying? What’s the point? No tales will be written of you. No songs. History will forget you as it does every name that doesn’t change the world or try to conquer it through evil. You’ll never be Achilles or Leonidas or Perseus or Spartacus or Vercingetorix. Even the great heroes of the war that ushered in the atomic age, Richard Winters or John Basilone, fall in comparison to the names of the famous, the socially smart or the politically correct. Without an army, a party, a massacre or a sex tape, you are nothing but wind to history’s mountians.

What’s the point?

The point is you. The point is the effort. The point is your cause. Being the best without laurels or fame or throngs of screaming harpies and parasitic men leeching your aura, trying to taste your life through presence.

The great names of history became history to due to circumstance more than anything. Right place, right time, right choice. Not too long ago, a poor man with the right words and a strong will could usurp an empire. Men with vision could have entire islands or countries named after them. Wars fought in their name. Monuments of valor. Now, men trod along, living like kings, but feeling like slaves. Greatness comes at the behest of a dollar or the backing of a shadow government. Now, if you are not their man, you are no man, if you hold to what the world believes a man is.

What’s the point?

The point is reclaiming. The point is adventure. The point is glory and honor and pounding your chest on top of the world even if no one hears you. The point is to touch God through your blood, sweat and tears. Loosing the fat of life and leaving only the harden muscle of living.

The point is being without fear. Now, and forever.

In the last few days I’ve started a regimen of supplements to aid in my quest for a better body and better life.

I take it all in the morning after breakfast. 1 Jamieson Vita-Vim, 1 Jamieson Wild Salmon & Fish Oils and I just added a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar to green tea.

Even without the ACV, I was off the walls yesterday. It felt like a whole new person was in my body, burning everything I had inside.

Fuckin’ A.

ACV is kicking in… this is going to be good.

The Ex has finally gotten around to getting a lawyer. My poor ass hasn’t been able to afford one. For the first time in probably near a year, we’re talking, by email, in the most careful and professional way. Today alone has been a back and forth of looking over the papers she sent, pointing out typos and asking for more paperwork. Things were never this organized when we were together… which probably explains how I (“we” until she bolted) got in a lot of debt. I’ll update as the process goes on.

___

On a separate note, I’ve started to up my workouts. Now that I’ve etched exercise into my habit, the goal is to push and push and push. Yesterday, I used a boxing clock. 3 minutes hard working (shadowboxing with and without weights, lifting, crunches, etc), one minute rest and repeat. Today, I’ve done about 200 body squats with a 10 lbs medicine ball. Alternate through the week, rest on Sunday. As I do this, I work on cutting bad foods from my diet.

I’m looking forward to the six month check-in.