Day Three

Blogger wasn’t working last night, but here is my day three post I wrote last night and am posting now:

Finally got in some exercise this evening. Took my pup on a run around the neighborhood. Felt good to get out plus my dog has been going out of his mind with boredom due to all the long walk inhibiting weather and me not moving from the couch for two days. Tuesday night he actually sat on the couch beside me and just started barking right at my face...

Anywho, we ran for 20 or so minutes stopping for poo breaks of course (him not me). I had plans to do some push ups and a nice stretch, but the run didn’t tire our Henry as much as I had hoped and he was still all up in my junk, so I got right in the shower instead.

Meditation went well on Tuesday with the exception of Henry peeing on the floor at the end (yes my puppy runs my life, I’m told this will ease up in another year or so, not sure if that’s supposed to be comforting or not...). Tonight (Wednesday) I will be meditating while he’s in the crate, which I should have been doing all along, but I am a person who runs while suffering the long lasting effects of food poisoning (think irritable bowels people). I would go into more detail about the meditating, but I’m still working that out as I want to stray away from reflecting on meditating while meditating, just so I can write about it because that wouldn’t really be an effective mediation now would it? Not sure that sentence made sense, but I’m tired and if you’ve ever mediated maybe it did? I’ll explain this in more detail in a future post.

My day as a whole was quite stressfull. We are nearly always understaffed at work and that leads to a lot of anxiety and miscommunication, so now I’m feeling like I dropped the ball on something, which can once again can be blamed on me not being attached enough to my email/ not having email on my phone. I really need to remedy this, but I just don’t like the idea of my cell phone bill doubling AND being that reachable all the time. But if it’s going to make me better at my job I guess I should reconsider. I am the ONLY person in my office who does not have a smart phone.

I’m really tired so I’m going to give you my highs and then get out of here:
- exercised, YAY!
- my roommate cleaned the living room and did all my sick person dishes
- Whole Foods had Brown Cow yogurt on sale (you need to try this yogurt)
- my boss high-fived me today

Laters!

On the Highs

Random image that came up when I googled "high". I do love those mermaids though :)

The daily highs are one of the most exciting parts of this project for me because they are a simple thing that can make a big difference. If you are unfamiliar "highs" come from the game "High/Low" which is where you simply go around the room stating your high and your low of the day. Not sure where I learned this game, but we started playing it at lunch in high school and our personal rule was you could name as many highs as you wanted, but could only name one low. I liked the idea so much that on a senior trip to Florida I bought a notebook at a Rain Forest Cafe Gift Shop and decided to make it my High Notebook. Whenever I would have a particularly bad day I would make a new entry in the notebook and list off as many good things as I could about that day. I would not list the lows. The thought behind this was that I would be able to look back at any given date and not even remember what made that day so bad. I continued with the notebook up through freshman year of college when I handed it off to my roommate who was going through a serious breakup. She used it for a while and handed it off to her friend. I have no idea what happened to the high book, but I really like the idea of it still floating around full of positive energy but motivated by negative energy. A literal example of how things we experience as negative don't have to have negative consequences.

For this project I will be posting daily highs and maybe a low or two, just to discuss how I've handled them. I'd love it if you'd like to participate in the comments section. And I'm also entertaining the idea of creating some new High Books to send out into the ether.

Still Taking it Slowly

I am still siiiiick. I made it to work today, but it was not fun. I almost got up and meditated before work, but I opted to try and eat something instead as sort of an insurance policy that I wouldn't be getting sick on the train (which has happened before). The day was fortunately busy enough to keep me mostly distracted from how I felt and not SO busy that I regretted showing up. It was actually nice to get back into my routine.

Meditating last night was incredibly difficult. I thought I had the perfect opportunity because my stomach wasn't feeling too badly and my pup was calmly lying on the floor. Of course the second I sat up he was all "what's going on? are you you going somewhere? should I be interested?" I stubbornly thought to myself, "well any real meditating-type-person can overcome an anxious dog for 10 measly minutes", so I decided to just get right to it and let him wonder around the house. WELL. At first I was distracted by the clacking of his toenails on the floor and then I was just concerned when I didn't hear anything at all. And when I finally opened my eyes he was up on my coffee table licking a half eaten PB&J... At that point there was one minute left, so I just closed my eyes and waited for my cell phone alarm to go off.

So yeah, not very successful. However, there were a few brief moments where I was able to slip into a relaxed trance and abandon other thoughts, so successful in the eyes of the Buddhist faith (this is important to remember if you are just starting off folks; if you can let your mind go for just one moment, you have successfully mediated, YAY). I am actually quite proud of this considering I haven't meditated outside of Yoga class in at least 4 months. Just like with most things in life, lack of practice makes meditating more difficult and less fulfilling. Personally, I find studying Buddhism in conjunction with meditating the most successful, which is why I'm excited to get back to my readings and temple attending-ness. For me, it provides some guidance and focus. Once I start up my readings, I may start assigning a weekly theme to my meditation sessions. We shall see.

Here are my highs as promised, and once again, I will be meditating later this evening *Sigh*:
- The new guy at work seems pretty cool
- I didn't get annoyed enough to raise my stress level today (this is HARD in NY)
- left work on time
- worked harder than I had to

Laters!

Rough Start

Today did not go remotely as planned. Yesterday after returning from brunch and a movie I became incredibly sick. I'm pretty sure it's food poisoning which is my least favorite kind of poisoning(I prefer psychedelic mushroom poisoning). I wasn't able to make it to work today and am still feeling not so great. Obviously, I did not make it to the gym as planned. I plan to meditate tonight which should be interesting since I can barely sit up and have never meditated while physically ill. I will do it though because this project is meant to be challenging and in a weird way I like that the universe has thrown me this curve ball.

So here are my highs for the day(and I will let you know how the "meditating" goes):
- unexpected extension of Christmas vaycay
- many offers from excellent people to come care for me/bring me foods
- Bachelor premiere (it's no Rock of Love, but hey I'm siiiick)
- I didn't throw up today
- lots of naps

Laters!

New Year

Happy New Year everyone! My project officially starts on Monday, and I'm going to get right in there by waking up around 6am and going to a gym class called "Trippin'". Apparently it's a mixture of jump rope, sprints, weight lifting, etc. God I'm a sucker for trendy gym classes. But seriously, I find it much easier to get up early for a scheduled class than some loosely planned workout of my own. Working out in a group with an instructor is a lot more effective when you're half awake/grouchy.

As far as my daily mediation goes, I'm not sure if I'm going to do that before or after the gym... probably after. Before means getting up earlier than 6 which will  definitely not happen.

On another note, I'm spending the first day of the year on my couch with my dog watching the British Skins on Netflix. I'm still not sure if I am a fan, but there's enough weird shit going on to keep me watching for now. I have a feeling that the MTV version won't be nearly as funny. Anyways, enjoy your day, I hope you all have the luxury of being as lazy as you aspire to be (if that's what you aspire to).

Let's Do This

My mission/project/New Year's resolution is to use this blog to explore/fully commit myself to a more peaceful state of mind through the practice and study of Buddhism along with some other ingredients that may or may not correlate, but I find personally effective. Yes.

I will begin on Monday January 3rd (my weeks start on Monday bitches) by attempting to put into practice the goals below. I will be delving into my own history, as well as, the origins of Buddhism, other religions, Yoga, and whatever I deem interesting an somewhat relevant to this blog. All of my motivations will be explained to the best of my ability in the coming posts. Feel free to ask questions and I will answer them as honestly as possible.

Goals

- Meditate everyday (for at least 10 minutes and work up)

- Gym/Exercise at least 3 days a week 

- Give something nice to someone in my life (small gift or letter) once a month

- Go to Temple once a month

- Complete a Buddhist reading weekly

- Daily high postings

These are the minimum requirements I've set for myself. I may be adding or altering them along the way, but I have chosen these as my pillars. They feel achievable yet daunting. The truth is I don't have a lot of personal time, so accomplishing these goals is going to require the sacrifice of sleep (among other things). Ideally I will be getting up earlier, in reality, I will probably be staying up later. Either way, I really hope I can pull this off.

Wish me luck :)

My New Project

Hello Everyone.

I have some plans for 2011. I'm going to lay them out for you soon, but for now let's just keep it simple and say that this blog is taking a new direction (or just A direction because it never really had one, which is probably part of the reason for its initial failure).

I'm leaving the old posts up because I don't really want to delete them forever and I can't figure out how to "unpublish" a post without deleting it. Read them if you want. Some are mildly entertaining and some are just...embarrassing. I was in a weird place. I was depressed, at a job I hated, and had just discovered how wonderfully distracting blog browsing can be. I was also trying desperately to define myself and shit, which now seems silly because it looks as though I tried to do it by creating a blog based on everyone else's blogs...

BUT, now it's a year (or two) later and I've got something I'd like to explore. And habits I want to implement into my daily routine (as well as habits I'd like to free myself from). They are practices I've already experimented with sporadically over the past year (and have seen immediate results) yet, I haven't been able to continue them long enough to truly change my quality of life. Does that make sense? It will...I hope. Are you excited? I am.

See you soon.