My flu or maybe it was bad allergic reactions from all the pollen are gone now. Thank god! This was Day 11. I slept through the night last night for the first time without having to wake up and cough for 10 minutes straight.

The new eating plan is going well. I had the worse caffeine withdrawal headache on Tuesday and I had to down tons of aspirin to get through the rest of the day. I still like drinking a hot beverage in the morning so I make decaf coffee instead. I'm a little more tired in the afternoon at work, bu I can't tell if my exhaustion is from lack of sleep or lack of caffeine.

I have my appointment in Berkeley tomorrow with my holistic healer. He's supposed to let me know if the parasite killer pills are working. I think they are. My jeans are looser this week but I don't know if the cause is from going off sugar, caffeine and carbos or from my parasites dying off. Maybe it's a combination of both.

I filed my taxes last night. What a drag! It makes me think about becoming a republican. I pay so much in taxes. I never wanted to own property, but it seems like the mortgage interest deduction is the only tax break left. I think I might have made a mistake in calculating my taxes because I didn't include my charitable deductions for the year. I'll check tonight. I don't think it will make a difference but I'll review anyway. If I can't get the deduction this year, I know I'll be able to take the deduction next year and add last year's charity giving to get a bigger deduction.

My church is starting to discuss the war on terrorism. Finally. I thought most of the church people would be left over peacenik hippies but I should have known better. They support the war on terrorism like me. Even this one woman who is the resident earth mommy in the church said she was called a "hawk" by her liberal friends. I was thinkig about finding another church, but where am I going to find a more educated and faithful group of people like the church members?

The majority of the members are very well educated, either through private school education and/or through Ivy League or Ivy League type colleges and universities. Many of them have two or three degrees under their belt. Most of them are fairly well to do. And they're pragmatic and centrists like me. This 9/11 discussion has quelled my desire to leave the church for now. I like these people and I'm afraid if I leave to go to another church, I won't find the level of intellect I have at my church.

The church members are just so smart. There's a discussion going on about the origins of liberalism and the free market and is the christian church compatible. Members are bringing in history, quoting Adam Smith and John Locke, recommending books to read and are seriously looking at the effect of 9/11 on faith. It's all so interesting. There are those few members who argue current events without any thought to history like we live in some kind of vacuum or who spout the liberal party line without any philosophical understanding of the origins of capitalism, liberalism and the free market. Their comments blaringly announcing their naivete, their ignorance and their immature way of trying to categorize everything down to black and white issues.

It's like HELLO! What kind of world do you live in? It hasn't been black and white world for a long time, if ever. They don't want to talk details because they say it's esoteric. Liars! They don't want to talk details because then we get to see that these same 60's type don't know shit about history or economic theory or the history of their own beloved liberalism. Whatever. Thank god, the rest of the church members aren't like this. They use their intellect and their faith to discuss serious issues. They don't buy the soundbites they hear on TV or the media hype. They know the world is complicated and in a zillion shades of gray. And finally, they know that you need faith to understand it all.

So the California primaries are over and it looks like it's going to be an interesting election cycle. I voted and you can thank my parents for that. My parents took politics and voting seriously. When they emigrated to this country, they never took for granted the right to vote, a right they didn't have in their home country. I spent much of my childhood listening to political debates on TV and in my own house. My father was a hard core democrat, working his way up the union ranks to a leadership position. He was often involved in local, state and national election events.

Although I think I remain true to my democrat roots, my own pragmatism has moved me more towards the center and sometimes even to the right on some social issues. I'm not sure my father would approve of my politics, but I know he would be proud that I am politically aware and that I eagerly vote.

When I vote, I feel like I participate in my small way in the running of this country. Voting gives me right to complain and to argue the political issues of the day. I think people who don't participate in this most simple act of democacy, voting, have absolutely no right to complain about the government. They don't participate, so they can't complain.

After the Florida voting debacle and the events of 9/11, how can you not vote?

Wow! After my descent into I'm not a writer at all hell, I was able to pull myself out of it somehow. Thank god for I spent thousands of dollarsand countless hours on growth and development seminars because I have tools to pull myself out of any funk. They never give you tools, at least I don't remember if they did or not, to never get yourself into a blue mood, but they gave you countless tools to get yourself out of one. Perhaps descents into writing hell is part of being an artist. I don't know.

All I know is I'm glad I'm out of the hell for awhile and, of course due to those G&D seminars, I have a plan to turn my life around. Or let's just say, I decided I have more tools at my disposal than I know what to do with and can at least draw a roadmap back to normal happiness. And lo and behold, I've got two pyramids. You gotta have a pyramid, three things you need to for success. Besides you use the pyramid images because it's the most stable because of the base, and the most uplifting because of the third peak point.

One pyramid is for my writing self esteem, which as you have read is practically non existent. The second pyramid is for writing stories, just three tools I know I can use to finish a story.

Now, if I can just invent a pyramid to tackle my procastination, I'll be set for life. Or least, till my next writing crisis comes.

Okay, so now I'm on version 4 of idea # 3 story. I don't want baseball player man to be that aware. I had his goal was to make peace with his dying father. But it doesn't make sense somehow that he's this aware and conscious. I want him to still be in a slump and be forced to go home by his manager and deal with his personal life. Baseball playing man doesn't think his father's illness is affecting him, everybody else including the team's owners, the manager, the media, his team buddy and his team think differently. How can the death of your father not affect you? Baseball playing man has an attitude though and he's in denial and besides he hasn't been close to his father since he was 18.

Baseball player's new goal is just get out of his slump. And I want him to be an anti-hero in a hero's profession. I don't want baseball player man to be that likable. I want him to be kind of nasty but a damned good masher. I want to him to have a dicey relationship with the media, with his team, with the league in general. He's on his 5th baseball team. He's a pain in the ass, but the boy hits 30 to 40 homeruns a year so teams are willing to deal with him. But he's on the twilight of his career and he knows it.

The new spin on the story doesn't change the plot points of my screenplay but it does change some of my scenes. I think it's a bettery story. But does it make sense, an anti-hero in a hero's profession? I don't know. By making baseball player guy unlikable, I force him to go on a hero's journey. He goes from being anti-hero to hero, from unlikable jerk to likable hero.

I read a story from M in my writing group. God, it's very good. Much tighter than her previous version. As I finished reading it, I wonder again whether I should pursue from writing. M's story is so good. Part of me thinks, well she's an english major so she knows how to write and how to edit and I'm completely and totally handicapped because I'm a sociology major, who couldn't make up her mind on what to major in so I also have a concentration on Russian language and Theatre Lit. I'm handicapped because the state where I went to school didn't have core curriculum rules and I went to a college where you were encouraged to pursue whatever the hell you wanted and you couldn't fail because there was no 'D' or 'F' grade, meaning if you got lower than a 'C' grade it didn't show up your transcript.

College was like my very indulgent parents. I did whatever I wanted and took whatever courses I wanted. And I know it sounds like heaven, but I think it's handicapped me. I was never forced to read classic literature and sometimes if I think I did, I'd be a better writer.

I'm in such a 'poor me' mode this morning, it's bad. I am in my "why do I need to torture myself and write" mood. Do all writers feel this way? Do all writers wake up practically every day and think "is this what I really want to be doing for the rest of my life?" I'm perfectly happy to be a corporate slave. I'm perfectly happy to be a mom, homemaker with kids with no other interests other than the kids and the hubbie boy. I could even be happy being a working mom worry about the quality of day care and feeling guilty because I'm not spending enough time with my kid.

But no, I want to be a writer. I want to be in a profession that everybody and their mother thinks they can do. God, it's worse than acting, where I had classes that were so crowded with pretty boys and women with rack jobs and all other assorted types who just wanted to see their mugs on film or on the stage.

It's ill, totally ill. I am at the point where I think I should just write for myself and no one else and that should be it. Then writing can be my secret hobby and I can mentally masturbate myself for the rest of my life. And then I could be happy being in a job and writing on the side. And then I wouldn't wake up and think of myself as a total failure every other morning.