Have kept a continuous streak. On a handful of days, something happened in the morning and I mediated in the evening, which was a good bit harder.
I started to use Seinfeld calendar streak idea (replacing “X”s with green arrows) and it’s been surprisingly pleasant. I get way more joy than anticipated from being able to put a green arrow on the wall every day, and to see a long chain of green arrows on said wall. One day over thanksgiving, morning meditation didn’t work out, and I was going to drop it that day (it felt okay on a principled level, since thanksgiving was when I was originally intending to re-calibrate my intentions) but as soon as I imagined my calendar not having those green arrows I felt a huge emotional shift. Also interesting, it didn’t feel like a guilt trip, it felt more like, “I can’t allow this to happen because then I don’t get my amazingly beautiful green arrows and there will be an ugly whole on the calendar, and that’s just not how the world is going to be if I have anything to say about it”.
Only update on meditation “progress” is that I feel little to no resistance to spending time meditating. There’s no ugg field around “having” to do it when I wake up, when I sit down I’m mostly excited, and when it’s getting to the end of the 30 minutes I’m rarely restless/”just waiting for it to be over”. Mind wandering vs breath focus time doesn’t seem to have changed much.
I still haven’t read all the way through the mind illuminated. That might happen over winter break, but it’s not a super high priority.
I think my new intention is continue meditating daily into the foreseeable future. The shape of my time is regular enough that I don’t expect this to be a huge challenge, and since I’ve gotten more comfortable with spending time meditating I’d be very surprised at some internal jumping-ship.
If things ever get more chaotic, on Malcolm Ocean’s recommendation I think I’m going to try the don’t skip twice approach (raemon also mentions it in sunset at noon which is still a great post a year later)
12-13-18 Update:
Have kept a continuous streak. On a handful of days, something happened in the morning and I mediated in the evening, which was a good bit harder.
I started to use Seinfeld calendar streak idea (replacing “X”s with green arrows) and it’s been surprisingly pleasant. I get way more joy than anticipated from being able to put a green arrow on the wall every day, and to see a long chain of green arrows on said wall. One day over thanksgiving, morning meditation didn’t work out, and I was going to drop it that day (it felt okay on a principled level, since thanksgiving was when I was originally intending to re-calibrate my intentions) but as soon as I imagined my calendar not having those green arrows I felt a huge emotional shift. Also interesting, it didn’t feel like a guilt trip, it felt more like, “I can’t allow this to happen because then I don’t get my amazingly beautiful green arrows and there will be an ugly whole on the calendar, and that’s just not how the world is going to be if I have anything to say about it”.
Only update on meditation “progress” is that I feel little to no resistance to spending time meditating. There’s no ugg field around “having” to do it when I wake up, when I sit down I’m mostly excited, and when it’s getting to the end of the 30 minutes I’m rarely restless/”just waiting for it to be over”. Mind wandering vs breath focus time doesn’t seem to have changed much.
I still haven’t read all the way through the mind illuminated. That might happen over winter break, but it’s not a super high priority.
I think my new intention is continue meditating daily into the foreseeable future. The shape of my time is regular enough that I don’t expect this to be a huge challenge, and since I’ve gotten more comfortable with spending time meditating I’d be very surprised at some internal jumping-ship.
If things ever get more chaotic, on Malcolm Ocean’s recommendation I think I’m going to try the don’t skip twice approach (raemon also mentions it in sunset at noon which is still a great post a year later)