I had my first full four hours of sleep last night. I've had the worst insomnia since my return from vacation. It feels so good to sleep. When I woke up I felt rested for the first time in months.

Maybe my insomnia means I'm not as depressed anymore, because last month I was sleeping more than 8 hours a night and still not feeling rested. Hopefully my life is turning around.

Last night on a whim I went to the Starfbombs across from the Hyatt at Embarcadero to write and while I was there I heard a big crash like there was some car accident outside. People ran outside to look at the commotion, but I didn't. When I finally left the place and walked outside, I saw police and car up on the sidewalk with its end into the wall near the Walgreens. How the car got onto the sidewalk like that is beyond me? Just another couple of feet and it would have crashed into the Starbombs where I was sitting.

I went to Carls Jr to get a bite to eat, and there was bunch of people playing scrabble there. Tuesday must be scrabble night at the Carls Jr located at Embarcadero 4. Like who knew?

Okay, so I don't like getting that excited about money but check this out. I bought into a gold mutual fund in December, and already I've made about $200 in capital gains. Isn't that like so fun? Money isn't everything, but when I learned I made $200 in a month from capital gains I got why people are into money and investments. And the stock market is not doing that well so to make money like is doubly more exciting.

So after this bit of good financial news, I decided to buy into a specialty natural resources energy fund. I know they say gas in going down in price, but so what. It will go up again because winter is coming up and any break in the supply chain of oil should send my mutual fund through the roof. Goodbye cheap gas and hello tons of capital gains for me.

If I have to play the capitalist pig dog investor, I might as well make a ton of money doing it.

I'm going to try and get back on the schedule today that I think seemed to work pretty well for me last year. From 5 to 7 pm, I sit in a Starfbombs somewhere in downtown San Francisco and write, and then from 7 to 9 pm I head to the gym. Boring as hell I know, but I get the two things done that I need to get regular about; writing and working out.

I've found three Starfbombs downtown that are open till 7 pm and where it's comfortable to sit and write. My gym is close by and after 7 pm, it clears out and I can get on a machine or lift weights without having to wait in line.

The only bad thing about this schedule is dinner. If I wait to eat till I get home, I'm starving and about to pass out. Usually I just have a latte, but it's really not enough food for dinner. So I'm adding dinner this year.

With all the writing I've been doing, I can either write tonight or spend my designated writing time typing up the 8 pages of handwritten text I've accumulated. Typing is a nice change for me and even if I do end up buying a laptop, I'll still have the option of handwriting or typing and I'll skip the step of transferring my text from my PDA into a word document on my home computer.

I've been tracking my writing since December 16 through today, and I've written for 11 of those days, spent two days reading a new book on writing and skipped six days. These results are good for me. I've not gone longer than two days without writing, and on those days I didn't write I could have written if I wanted to. I just didn't feel like I could make the time.

I've playing a little game with myself as well that I learned from this book called "Immediate Fiction". I set the timer on my watch for 10 minutes, and I tell myself that I only need to write for 10 minutes. If I'm not into writing at the end of the 10 minutes I'm allowed to stop. It's a good trick, because invariably at the end of 10 minutes I'm still interested in writing and can usually get four pages of handwritten scribble down before I feel the urge to stop.

The 10 minute rule is supposed to be done every day, but I'm not at that point yet. I'd like to get there. I'd like to be able to sit down every day and do a 10-minute write, but I'm still at the point where if I don't feel like writing I won't do it. But taking no more than a two-day break is real progress for me, real progress.