###Note: This post is admittedly shitty. I wasn't going to post it. Reason why I did at the bottom. Enjoy! Or don't. Whatever. :)

It's a quarter to three in the afternoon, January 1st. Last night, the simultaneous sounds of fireworks and ambulance sirens made me laugh for some reason.

I just came home from walking the dog. Holy shit there were a lot of people on the running trail. Go figure. Most of them won't be there in a month.

Every year, billions of people see the new year as a chance to start over. Do it better. Achieve their goals, lose weight, make money, start meditating, whatever.

The only reason Jan 1st has any significance is because billions of people have universally agreed that it does. In other words, it's completely irrational. I know this, and at least in a rational sense, most other people do to. There's nothing inherently magical about January 1st. And yet... I feel it all the same. Like, wow, it's 2014. Let's do some epic shit this year!

Uh. Weird.

I want to write more. Maybe publish another book. And, I want to become fluent in Spanish. A few other things.

My inbox is already flooded with emails and blog posts - this year's annual flooding of the internet with "How to finally achieve your goals this year" type of stuff.

Most of it is bullshit. Goal setting can work, but achieving goals doesn't really make us happy anyway, so what's the point? (A better strategy is to pick a few areas of focus. And dedicate yourself to those things. In other words, process-oriented goals. Instead of "become a New York Times Bestseller," it's "write for two hours per day.")

It is now two minutes past three in the afternoon. I'm doing a 50 minute writing session for this post. 33 minutes to go. Guess I should keep writing.

Man. It's ironic, my last post was about shaking off the rust. I guess you could say I have been slacking. I haven't written much at all in December. But I've never seen it as a hard commitment, as something I must do no matter what. I don't write if I don't feel like writing. Simple. So I wouldn't say I've been slacking in that sense. But the layers of rust settle in the cracks of your brain just the same.

And now, I feel like writing. And it feels a little awkward, but it feels good too. My brain is happier when I write regularly. And I'm not exactly sure why I haven't. Because stuff, I guess.

It's been four minutes. 15.06.

Gah. Rust. This doesn't happen when I consistently write. I can easily just keep writing until the time is up. Now I have to battle my way through each sentence.

There's an interesting "flow" type state that sets in when you do something all the time. You can just jump in. But now, this is hard.

The trick is, I think, to just do it anyway. I've had a lot of practice with this sort of thing. Writing when you don't know what to write about. I've already written something like a dozen paragraphs. I had no idea what to write about when I started. Still don't. Hah.

Okay. 4 minutes later, again. 10 minutes past 3. Shit. Time passes really slowly when you're not in a flow state.

Still, it feels like this is getting easier each passing minute. That's just how it works. Probably not publishing this. This shit is all over the place.

Sometimes, what happens is that you start writing and it's just pure shit for two or five or ten pages. Just the debris and fluff that's hanging out in your consciousness.

But then you write that one sentence and you go "Oh. Hey." And you've found something that might be pretty good. I don't really pretend to understand how the mechanics of the brain works, but I know how to use it. You need to really dig for the good stuff. Get all the other crap out of the way. Feels like you should just be able to write the good stuff right away. I mean, it was there in your brain all along.

God. This is so rough. Fucking terrible. Being able to tell good writing from bad writing also comes from writing a lot.

Three paragraphs ago I was just staring at the screen for about 10 minutes, so it's now 15:21. Going to go back to the top and try to make this piece a little less vomit-inducing.

Ok. 15:28. I deleted two sentences. I don't know what I'm doing. Going to try again.

15.33. Still don't know what I'm doing, but I decided to publish this anyway. I know I'm not alone in how this works for me. So I figured, for some people, the running commentary of me battling my way through the writing process can be useful. I've been through this before, but it has always ended up in the trash. I've been through it with stuff other than writing too. It's a universal process.

15.35. I'm out of here. This post is disgusting. Talk soon. Hugs and kisses.