Dream

Intention (2130 the night before)

Once again, smoke and stuff. Just going to sleep.

Wake (logged at 0730 this morning)

Vaguely remember a dream with my old pet Bindy.

Bindy and Cofounder

We are in this giant building. Maybe a hotel, maybe an apartment, maybe a giant indoor city for all I know. I am taking her for a walk. We're going through an indoor area to get to a balcony hall on the other end. Before we get out, she decides to poop, and I rush to clean it up.

Then I overhear one of the cofounder's of the company I currently work for in a conversation. Some sort of business philosophy sort of conversation. I end up joining the conversation.

That's all I remember.

Pre-nap (1235)

Return of pre-nap! Still not feeling great, but the bit of last night's dream I remember helps motivate me. Also, I think I can do this without overextending.

There's part of me that believes it improves my sleep quality, so win-win.

Today I'll try out visualizing the things I want to do that I might not do. Intent recital is basically a habit now. Will take out the meta intent part of it, but otherwise recite it 3 or 4 times as normal.

Let's get napping.

Post-nap

There is no post nap. I went straight to doing various things. Some of them visualized. So success, I guess, though I didn't do the reality check, rehearsal thing that I set an intention for.

Meditation (Day 101)

Ooh, I never really thought about 101 being a prime number before.

Today will be an evening meditation day.

Intentions for the day:

• Stage 4 intention (vigilance on keeping introspective awareness continuous)
• Fall back to stage 3 if necessary
• Label the distractions, do it over and over so that it becomes automatic
• Before adjusting posture, count 8 breaths
• Learn the various different ways I guide myself back to the breath
  • E.g. away from tempting distractions, away from posture distractions, away from pain
• Note where the breath was when you label a distraction (attention, awareness, or forgotten)
• Body-scan in the beginning and latter half of meditation
• Mirror-check in the beginning and latter half of meditation
• During planned attention away from breath, keep breath in awareness

Post-Meditation (1840)

Today may have been new best day. Which is pretty good considering it feels like the closest I came to not doing it (various planned times kept conflicting with things to do with others).

Shoulder is definitely a trouble area, but I'm trying to find out how to relax it. It's hard! Like how the neck was hard but I've mostly figured it out.

In any case, focus on the breath was very vivid except for planned body-scans and mirror-checks. I notice that I rotate right a bit, which may have to do with shoulder stuff, or be related in some way. Body-scan was once again like taking already amazing focus and leveling it up. It's like I could visualize, hear, feel, and contrast to past all at once.

Once I'm done reading ChiRunning, I'll really need to devote reading time to the Mind Illuminated again.

Experimental

Going to try for some SkillShare today. Next week's "project" will be programming with friend again, except friend has changed (it is cousin now).

General Thinking

The smoke has made me ill, it seems. I'm still being "productive", but I'm not forcing it. Going for an effortlessness. Also, if I feel this way tomorrow, I may take my first sick day since COVID19 became a widespread issue.

Money Talks Journal Conversation

In any case, I'm going through my weekly review items. And I've hit something I haven't written about in a while "Money talks journal conversation".

Stuff is actually in a pretty good place here. Though, the market has gone down since last paycheck, so I don't know how close I am anymore, but as of last paycheck I was wihtin a couple hundred dollars of a net-worth of $300K. Which is a safe-withdrawal of $12K, which is the poverty line. Push comes to shove, I can try to live on poverty-line income. Which is actually pretty cool.

I started tracking my net worth seriously in October 2019. That month ended with a net worth of $199K. Which is to say, baring another stock market collapse (which I expect and think would be just, but I know I have no predictive capability with the stock market), I'll have saved $100K in a year's time. Which is pretty awesome.

I don't think I "deserve" it, and so I'm hoping it'll be humbling. I want to attain freedom and then help others attain that freedom.

Life is also pretty good. Even though I'm not "free" by my definition (I can maintain current lifestyle without having to work). Potentially I could be free by reducing lifestyle costs (a theme I will explore in the coming year, I believe), and also I'm pretty close to free as-is, in a sense. Like, I don't really consider moving somewhere cheaper to be a lifestyle change, but that alone would get me pretty close to free.