We were young and full of life and none of us prepared to die.

I've spent the morning working on the beginning outline for my novel, and let me tell you, there's nothing that will make your writing sound less sexy and exciting than to give it a Cliff Notes treatment. It helps that I'm practicing outlining other books, to help me distill my ideas and vision, because it makes these amazing books that I love and worship sound kinda dull and simple. "Mrs. Dalloway wants to throw a party." "Man struggles with revealing his affair to the husband of a now-dead woman." I suppose that's craft for you: in order to learn how to put "the magic" in, you must first pull all the supposed magic out and look at the blueprint.

I had two apocalyptic dreams in my bedroom yesterday, once in the afternoon during a short nap and then last night. I even saged before going to bed, but didn't seem to help. Both of them were fairly stressful, but weren't exactly nightmares. More on par with watching a tense dramatic movie, where I feel really invested and worried, but I never fully cross the line into terror because my brain knows it's not real. I'm not really sure what they're about. I don't feel stressed out.

Well, maybe I do.

This past week is always a challenge, the adjustment period from L.A. to Chicago, from writer's residency to real-life. I've been shying away from my usual good habits. Writing first thing in the morning? Nope. Meditating alone, or even going to temple on Sunday morning? The thought terrifies me. Lifting weights? Let's eat these cookies instead. They're all linked, each seemingly different brick is really built on each other, so if I can just get one of them together, I think the others will follow suit. I do have one good habit still going, which is reading. I've got a couple books going at a time. I also purged lots of old magazines and sorted out my research pile, which is made up primarily of New Yorker and Harper's articles. I'm also doing lots of mad pacing and furious throat-ticking in moments of immersing myself in ideas for my novel structure. This is the stress that's probably producing my strange dramatic apocalyptic dreams. It's hard not to feel both in awe and overwhelmed by creating these entire worlds with people that I control and whose fates rest in my hands. It's not hard not to have a touch of god-complex when writing. Less with short stories or poems or essay or scenes with me -- those seem to just be reflective touches of the world. But novels, man. I'm just discovering how these work and they are a whole other otherworldly creature. Ones that are apparently attacking me in my dreams with plans to destroy the world and I have no interest in playing Tom Cruise to fight their crusade, I'm just going along for the ride.

Uh, yeah, I need more coffee. And food. Definitely some food. Please step away from the computer.