I have a confession. I love notebooks. I am mildly obsessed with notebooks. If I see notebooks in a store, I have to stop and look at them. If I find one with a cover that appeals to me, I have to open it. And if that appealing notebook also has beautiful lines and spacing? Sign me up!

Honestly, I have more notebooks than I ever have or probably ever will use. My last count of current notebooks that I have readily on hand was in the range of 40. And then I bought a couple more and found some others I'd forgotten, so let's just say I have 40+ notebooks at the moment. And these are all kinds of notebooks! Tiny ones that are uncomfortable to use and large ones that are intimidating in their size. Compositions and spirals and bound and spineless. I have notebooks with beautiful covers, funny covers, and plain covers.

I've thought a lot about why I'm so obsessed with notebooks. Because I don't actually use my notebooks so often that I need nearly as many as I have. Over the years, I've tried to get better about actually using the notebooks I buy, but there is an undeniable part of me that almost loves an empty notebook as much as my fullest notebooks. Because an empty notebook is full of potential. It could still be used for anything! And that is, admittedly, also part of my problem. What if I start filling a notebook I love with a story I hate? I'm working on it. But in the meantime, I collect notebooks. And I've taken pictures of a few of my favorites!

Right now I'm in the midst of a whirlwind love affair with shiny, golden polka dots. The notebook on the far right is a purchase I made tonight because alone with being super cute, it also is one of those spineless notebooks that will lay completely flat when opened, which I love! The notebook on the left actually contains a handful of rough story ideas, character names, and a little playing around I'm doing with one of those stories. The other two? Blank!

These are just hella cute! The cupcake composition notebook was part of a set of 3 that I got at a back to school sale a year or two ago. The silver one is actually super duper sparkly, and I bought it in October last year. I remember because I have a gold version somewhere that I took to my interview for my current job. Both blank, but adorable!

The lighting is off on these, but this is one of my newer purchases as well! This is a soft cover Moleskine notebook with grid lines rather than your traditionally lined pages. I actually purchased this notebook and a few colored marker pens with the express intent to try bullet journaling! If I ever actually get around to setting that up, I'm sure a blog post about it will follow!

This is my convention journal! It is a super basic notebook that I picked up from Target. I think it may be a Five Star, but I don't actually remember. I've had it for a long time, though, and a couple of years ago I decided to try and keep my convention panel notes in one place rather than spread across whatever random notebook I pick up before leaving my house. This has been super helpful so far! I have about three conventions and one or two workshops worth of notes in this notebook, so it's been an awesome and easy to find resource.

And these are my most heavily used notebooks. The smaller of the two was one of my original convention notebooks that I misplaced before turning to the purple one above! Now they both hold stories. The larger notebook has more. A few short snippets of scenes with old characters that I'd like to one day expand on. It's probably my favorite just for the sheer about of material I actually have in it.

And there you have it! Here is a pile of some of my other favorites! It's no where near a full roll call of all my notebooks, and most of these are still blank. But they make me happy. Even though most of my notebooks are unused, I know that at any given time, if I want to devote lines upon lines towards a new story or a new project, I have them at my disposal. In a lot of ways, I think they represent everything I could eventually do or work on or want. And right now a lot of them are empty, but one day more of them may be filled up. I'm looking forward to getting there.

How many notebooks do you have? Or are they really not your thing? If not notebooks, what is it that you find yourself collecting?

Emotionally, it's been a rough week. I'm still mentally hungover from last week's goodbyes, and I let myself get maybe too entrenched in some of the bad things going on in the world (see: RNC, the horrific Twitter assault on Leslie Jones, etc). I've been going through the work day in a haze and, creatively, my drive has been completely shot. But throughout the week I've been making slow steps towards improvement. Mostly by stepping backwards.

Most of my time away from work this week has been spent on old favorites, re-imaginings of old favorites, and trying to revive old favorites. The re-imaginings come in the form of Ghostbusters and Star Trek Beyond, both of which I had an amazing time watching and will probably see again in-theaters. And anyone who knows me knows that I tend to be most invigorated creatively by new movies. There's something about leaving a theater after living in that other world for two hours that makes me want to create my own worlds. And when I wasn't at the theater this week, I was re-watching Pacific Rim at home. This definitely tends to be a love it or hate it film, but Pacific Rim is very near and dear to my heart. In a lot of ways, it's the film that jump started my writing after a long hiatus.

Had an amazing time seeing @lesdogggg in #Ghostbusters last night! It was so much fun and so funny! 👻❤️🙌🏻 #girlsnight

A photo posted by Kyle Difiori • Writer (@kyledifiori) on Jul 19, 2016 at 7:40am PDT

Specifically, re-watching Pacific Rim took me back to my fanfiction. Now, let's be clear - I've been writing fanfiction on and off for a very wide array of shows and books and movies since I was 13. Much of that has been graciously lost to time and the void. But about three years ago I started writing fanfiction again for Pacific Rim. And then I took a break and started writing fanfiction again about a year after that for Transformers in several variations. It's been a very long time since I've written any new fanfiction. But watching Pacific Rim again made me curious enough to revisit some of my older work. And I was actually pleasantly surprised by what I found.

I re-read everything. Everything I had posted under my most recent fanfiction pseudonym. Everything that was clearly posted too quickly and without enough of an editing eye. Everything that was written on a whim or a dare or bits of conversation with other fans. I even went through and read the parts that never got posted. This piece of a second chapter and that bit of an unfinished follow-up. And that spurred me to re-read one of my own stories. One that I started over a year ago and abandoned. And you know what I realized?

I'm pretty fucking good at this.

And when that thought first crossed my mind, I felt cocky and egotistical for it. Like I didn't deserve to think highly of my own work. And then I thought about it a little further and realized...if I don't like what I'm writing, what's the point? It's a good thing to enjoy your own work. That's not to say that I don't suffer very regularly from the writer's inevitable self-doubt, but this was the first time in a while that I realized I'm actually good at this writing thing. And maybe it's not so crazy to think that if I finish something, people will want to read it. And that was exactly the kind of pick-me-up I needed this week.

So while I contemplate finishing up a few of these dusty old fanfics, tell me: have you ever gone back to an abandoned project and realized you're pretty fucking good at something, too?

Okay, so I know I talked all about the horse and getting back on it in my last post, and that was supposed to include way more regular posts, which didn't immediately happen. But in my defense, a lot of things have been changing over the last couple of weeks since then! One of those things, as you may have noticed, is the blog!

I decided that a new look was in order. Not because I disliked my last layout! But a new look felt like the first step towards turning over a new blogging leaf, as it were. I think the cleaner colors make for a more pleasant experience, and I honestly kind of love the pseudo-logo header. The stock photo I use for my avatar (because I do not look so perfectly, coyly seductive eating fruit) features a strawberry, and I decided to run with that theme in certain ways. So if you see strawberries all over the place, you'll know why! But, ultimately, it took me about a week to get all of the tweaking done so that I was happy with the blog, and after staring at coding for hours, I wasn't feeling up to typing anymore!

Another change you may or may not have noticed is in the form of the photo sharing empire of Instagram! I went ahead and started my own under this pen name so you guys can see a little more of what my life is like outside of text. Of course, right now it looks like the only thing I do when I'm not writing is eat, but...well, yeah, that's pretty accurate. Expect a lot of pictures of food! If you want to check it out, you can find me @kyledifiori! If you stop by, leave me a comment and let me know you came from here!

Finally, I've been a bit absent because I had to say goodbye to one of my very best friends this week. She and her husband are moving across the country to California, and while I am incredibly thrilled for them and the amazing opportunity this presents, I am also sad. Sarah has been my closest friend since we met in Japan 15 years ago, and saying goodbye has been emotional. Even though, technically, we've avoided actually saying goodbye. But that's okay! Because as far as I see it, this isn't really goodbye - it's see you later. Because there is a CoCo ICHIBANYA in California and my first visit to see Sarah will probably include two or three visits for curry! And we did a pretty solid job of celebrating our last dinner together. With what, you ask? RAMEN!

Saying goodbye to an amazing friend is hard, but doing it over #ramen 🍜 makes it a little easier! Plus, ramen is salty and masks the taste of goodbye tears. Noodle Blvd would be a great setting for a future scene, though...

A photo posted by Kyle Difiori • Writer (@kyledifiori) on Jul 15, 2016 at 12:45pm PDT

What about y'all? Ramen was the clear choice for Sarah and I to "say goodbye" over since we started our friendship in Japan, where we both fell in love with ramen. But if you had to say bid adieu to your best friend tomorrow, what food do you think would be the best representation of your friendship? Leave a comment to let me know!

What is it about giving good advice that makes it so painfully difficult to follow it yourself? It has, admittedly, been a while since I last posted on my blog. It's also been a while since I've taken the time to sit down and write anything. I'd say that over the last year or so, I've been doing a bit of creative soul searching - consciously and otherwise.

In the last year I've changed jobs and expanded my social circle and ultimately become wildly complacent with my creative outlets. And, honestly, it took me a while to realize that. It wasn't until ConCarolinas floated back into the picture that I realized I had gone an entire year and was none the better for it. Not just that I hadn't gotten anything published, but that I hadn't gotten a manuscript finished at all. Hell, I hadn't even started a new one after the other petered out! I was off to spend a weekend listening to incredibly talented people talk about their work and give advice, and there I was, for the 5th year in a row, having made no progress whatsoever. As someone who aspires to eventually be a peer on those panels instead of just a fan listening in, I had done an abysmal job of actually pursuing that goal.

But wallowing over my failures isn't going to change anything! All I can do at this point is to learn from my mistakes and make the changes in my life necessary to achieve my goals. So here we are! Reinvigorated, re-inspired, and ready to take my writing seriously again. I realized after a few incredibly helpful panels (I'm looking at you Imposter Syndrome) that I have, at least in part, been avoiding my writing thanks to the fear of failure. But you know what? Failure is okay. Like I said, we learn from our failures. And I'm never going to figure out what works for me until I fail a few times with other things.

So here we go, everyone! Ready, set, write!

Is there anything better than being on a roll? Alight with creative energy, highly motivated, all the pieces falling into place - it's great! It fuels productivity and a positive attitude and just makes things pretty awesome all around. And if being on a roll is the epitome of greatness, then the opposite must hold true for being in a slump. Because being in a slump sucks.

As you may have guessed, I bring up that particular point because I am, in fact, in a slump. Now, to be fair, I don't believe my slump was originally a creative slump. After a week of vacation, getting back into the swing of work has been incredibly difficult. It's been about two weeks back in the office, and I still feel like I'm playing catch up, which means I feel like I'm never clearing out my "To-Do List" at the end of the day. That creates stress, which leads to moodiness, which makes me finicky and unmotivated. And there you have it: the slump. I want to do everything that has nothing to do with the things I should be doing. Work? No thank you. Writing? I'll pass. Blogging? If I must. But movies, binging on TV, going out to eat, and shopping? Sign me up!

Now, there are definitely different types of slumps and everybody experiences and deals with them differently. I happen to be in the type of slump where I just want to avoid all the stuff that's agitating or stressing me out. Which is super counterproductive to things like getting a manuscript finished or, you know, earning your paycheck. I've been in this particular slump for a few days now, but after a few really good conversations today, I think I'm ready to start shaking it off. But that got me thinking about the things that have helped me overcome those emotional slumps in the past, so I've compiled a short list of things to try when you're stuck in a perpetual feeling of meh.

1. REVIVE YOUR MOTIVATION

This is obviously an "easier said than done" tip, but for me, the dip in motivation has always been my most crippling side effect of the slump. Professionally and creatively, a lack of motivation breeds apathy and lackluster effort. So when you find yourself starting to lose a grip on your motivation, try reminding yourself of what you're trying to motivate yourself for in the first place. Personally, I'm fighting towards a raise at work and towards publication in my writing. And neither of those things is going to happen if I don't keep pushing myself to get them done. I want a raise to buy a house and I want to be published so, some day, I can make my passion my profession. If you find yourself getting worn down or burnt out, sit down and take a serious look at why you're fighting in the first place.

2. TREAT YOURSELF

I don't necessarily mean this in the traditional "treat yo self!" fashion, although that could definitely be applicable. But if you find yourself slipping into a slump, try doing something nice for yourself. Our lives are hard. Work vs family vs friends. Social time vs alone time. It's all a balancing act that gets to be incredibly exhausting. And once in a while, you deserve to reward yourself for putting up with all of that all the time. I'm not saying you need to go out and spend $500 on a pair of shoes you saw window shopping, but maybe go to your favorite restaurant. Or sit down and watch your favorite movie. Do something that you know makes you happy. Something you enjoy. When you fall into a slump, it's easy to get stuck there. But sometimes you can pull yourself back out by firing a little extra positivity into your day. Allow yourself a few indulgences and use that upswing to propel you out of the slump.

3. TAKE A BREAK

You can't always force the issue. And sometimes you do more harm than good by trying to. If you're trying to coax yourself out of a slump and everything is failing, that just creates a circle of more negativity. So you gotta know when you should just take a step back from everything. Most of us can't just decide to walk away from our desk for a few days, obviously, but maybe you can request a work from home day. Or request a vacation day in the middle of the week. And if those aren't options, get whatever you have to get done at work and walk away from it at the end of your shift. Go find a distraction and get the hell away from it all when you're off the clock. And creatively? Same concept. I know not everyone would agree with the idea of choosing not to write for a few days because you're "not feeling it," but I believe in breaks when they're needed. Personally, when I find myself in an emotional slump, I find other outlets to temporarily channel my creativity. When writing won't do it, I'll knit or play around with graphic design, or I'll bake. A lot of times, using a new medium for a few days will eventually inspire me to jump back into my writing. Dipping into other outlets I favor makes me feel good about my results, and when I feel like I'm doing well, that makes me feel like I can do well in the things I was shying away from, too.

4. TALK IT OUT

Never underestimate the power of conversation. Whether this is your first step or your last resort, talking things out can be incredibly cathartic. I didn't even fully realize I'd fallen into a slump until my manager pointed it out during my one-on-one today that he noticed I seemed withdrawn. He gave me an opportunity to admit that I was in a slump and to talk about it. And better than that, he understood. There's a huge relief that comes from realizing that the people around you don't expect you to be on point 100% of the time. And for me, knowing that there are people around me who want to help however they can? That helps. And having someone to talk to gives you the chance to articulate your feelings. One of the most frustrating things about a slump is that it's not usually super obvious why you're in one. But talking about it, having to put that feeling into words for someone else, gives you the opportunity to sort through your own feelings. And when you understand why you're in a slump, you've got a much better chance of getting back out of it.

Are any of you trying to get yourself out of a slump too? And if so, what's working for you?