Tag: book

Brief Hiatus

On By Chris AnselmoIn Through My Eyes2 Comments

Hi everyone,

I hope your 2022 is off to a great start! We just got a foot of snow here in Connecticut on Saturday. Needless to say, I am ready for spring.

Just wanted to send out a quick update to let you all know that I am going to be taking a little time off from this blog to focus on my memoir. I’ve written about my progress in the past. It took me several years to write the first draft, but I am trying to pick up the pace on the rewrite! It is motivating to see it starting to come together, which makes it much easier to write for prolonged periods of time.

I will still write on here from time to time if properly inspired, and once the book is done, I will resume posting, especially in shameless self-promotion of the book. Rest assured of that!

My Life In 700 Pages

On By Chris AnselmoIn Through My Eyes3 Comments

Some good news after that downer that was my last post: I am finally done with the first draft of my memoir! The bad news: it currently checks in at 705 pages.

Fortunately for you the reader, the final product will not be 700 pages. I wouldn’t put you through that. I want you to buy the book after all. And enjoy it. And then recommend it to your friends. You probably don’t need to know what I ate one Wednesday night in 2012 (a burrito, for what it’s worth). A lot of the draft is blabber that needs to be cut down. Some of it serves as a placeholder to remind me what I was doing at the time, that I’ll eventually take out.

Continue reading “My Life In 700 Pages” →

A Sense of Urgency

On By Chris AnselmoIn Through My Eyes4 Comments

I reached a personal goal the other day! I finished writing the end of Part One of my memoir. (It will be a two-part book).

Only downside? My goal was to get this far by September….2018. Oops.

I am on schedule, give or take a year. Ok, ok, so it happened a little slower than I had hoped, but I had a perfectly good reason for falling off. I was busy! Busy with my job, attending conferences, going to doctor’s appointments, buying a new wheelchair, fighting insurance, getting my septum un-deviated. Although mostly it was the job. It’s a lot of work, but I enjoy what I am doing so I have no complaints there. It’s just that at the end of the day, I am usually too fried to want to write.

In the last few months, I have maximized my down time on weekends to catch up on writing. This has worked out much better than trying to write at night during the week. I am more productive writing in two days than I would have been if I forced myself to write a few hundred words each day.

Continue reading “A Sense of Urgency” →

Between Then and Now

On By Chris AnselmoIn Through My Eyes5 Comments

It’s been a while since my last book update.

I am happy to say that I am still making progress, albeit slowly. Working full-time only affords me limited energy at the end of the day to type coherent sentences, but it is progress nonetheless. In the beginning, I was keeping track of how many pages I had written. Although by now I’ve lost track, I am well over 300 at this point.

Instead of tracking page count, the way I measure my writing progress is by where I am in my story. Right now, I am in late 2012, right on the cusp of the most emotional two months of my life. January and February 2013 was a defining period that changed the trajectory of my life forever. Even now, it still elicits mixed emotions. The pain of loss. The frustration of dealing with a rapidly-weakening body. The nostalgia of living and working in Boston. The satisfaction of realizing just how much I’ve grown since that time. Continue reading “Between Then and Now” →

10,000 Hours

On By Chris AnselmoIn Through My Eyes2 Comments

This is a continuation of my post from earlier in the week, which you can find here.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s famous book, Outliers, he talks about several factors that set high-achievers apart from the rest of the population. One of the main takeaways of the book is something called the “10,000 Hour Rule” – basically, anyone who has ever become an expert at anything has needed to immerse themselves in a task for at least 10,000 hours. This holds whether you’re the Beatles practicing to become the greatest band of all time, or Bill Gates learning to program a computer.

Screen Shot 2018-02-15 at 8.27.26 PM
An interesting read.

Although the premise has been the subject of intense debate, what is beyond argument is that the more you practice or experience something, the more of an expert you become. It’s rather straightforward.

Assuming the 10,000 hour rule is mostly true, I boldly assert that I am an expert at being a patient with muscular dystrophy. It’s an odd thing to say, but ever since it took over my life ten years ago, it’s always been on my mind. It has changed me physically, emotionally and spiritually. Many of my experiences cannot be adequately explained to the general population, no matter how much someone wants to understand.

Continue reading “10,000 Hours” →