Timeblock

Entertainment

The planned entertainment today is:

• Book: Hold Me Tight
• Lunch TV with wife: John Oliver
• TV by myself: not planned but if possible will watch K-On!
• Article: Premortems (Twitter thread)
• Evening TV with wife: probably Twilight Zone

I've already read some Hold Me Tight this morning. Not really entertainment, per se, but is something I do for myself. Same goes for article reading.

Meditation (Day 25)

This morning's meditation was pretty solid. I was at peace not looking at the timer on my watch. My leg flexibility is also notably increasing. Which I think is why my legs did not lose circulation today. The zafu also helped, but losing circulation still happened with zafu.

I have recently been reintroduced to the concept of flow, and because I'm addicted to meditation, my mind wanted to connect the two. The practice of meditation feels like learning to induce flow, I think. The properties of flow sound a lot like what you're doing in meditation:

1. intense focus on the present
2. the past and the future are not concerns
3. free from distractions
4. don't care about what other people think
5. rewarding to the point of inducing intrinsic motivation

(I have added the conditions of flow to my anki)

The first three are what you're training your mind to do. Number 4 is unimportant to meditation, but is an aspect of it. And number 5 is how you maintain the habit of meditation.

I am finding that meditation is unlocking the ability to enter flow on the object of my attention. I think. It is limited in scope, but I can get I think an hour of flow on a given thing in a day (work is obviously my main focus right now).

I think I can do 1 hour per given thing in a day, maybe, as long as the different things are significantly different. For instance, I believe I enter flow when doing music stuff with my wife. I may also be entering flow with spaced-repetion now (I have noticed it has gone from taking up 30 minutes to taking up a little over 15 minutes).

This is partly related to my hypothesis for why meditation has improved my energy levels throughout the day. A focused mind spends energy only on what it is focusing on. A scattered mind seeps energy from all of its resources, zapping energy. It is similar in result to what The Mind Illuminated defined as dullness ("scattered attention seeping into the void, zapping energy").

Timeblock

Entertainment

Most entertainment today will be with wife. Probably we will be watching something whilst preparing tamales, and also we want to watch some of the new season of the Twilight Zone.

I think I want to make some time for SSBM today. Ideally, if I want to get good at the game, I should make time everyday and make sure to drill certain skills I want to gain.

Meditation (Day 24)

I'm working on finding a healthy and sustainable posture. I have rotated my position 90 degrees so that I can see my posture from the side. The goal is to make sure my back is straight and perpendicular to the floor, and that my neck is aligned with my spine. Once I did this rotation and correction, my lower back stopped complaining. Need to make it automatic, like how I no longer clench my teeth but instead relax my jaw during meditation (and also clench my jaw much less overall).

Timeblock

Dream

Dreamt that I was visiting my aunt with the wife. My cousin, the wife, and I wanted to go to this water park, but the wife and I kept delaying it until it was too late to go (we'd get there after it closed).

There were other parts of the dream but I don't remember them very well.

Meditation (Day 23)

23 days into meditation and I need it in the morning more than I ever needed coffee.

Been thinking a lot about making a "Introduction to Meditation by a Beginner". Maybe I'll do some thinking on that soon.

Entertainment

New entertainment habits are sticking so far. Watched a bit of K-On! during alone-time (didn't finish the episode, but that's fine). Skipped reading an article yesterday, but that's fine. Had to return the Doors of Perception yesterday, and this morning started reading Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race.

I only have it for a day before I have to return it, so I'm just verifying I want to put it on hold again (I do).

Weekly Review!

Might not really write much here, but wanted to note outside of timeblock that I was doing the weekly review.

Ah, yes, my theme: "practice intentionality". Meditation is a key part of this theme, actually. I think I shall maintain this theme for a while. Not sure what my next theme will be.

Empty My Head

I think I'm doing a pretty good job about writing things I want to keep around down in my notion. Meditation has been pretty good here. My mind isn't getting as cluttered, and things that keep coming back get written down. And also my use of my system is such that I do eventually process things (hopefully that trend continues).

Meditation: Progress towards Awakening

The tenth and final stage in The Mind Illuminated is "Awakening" (often translated as "Enlightenment"). I wanted to track my progress on the stage level each week. I believe I have "mastered" stage 3. Even if the breath isn't the object of attention, it stays in awareness, and is often the thing that tells me I have been grossly distracted.

Often, I am in stage 4, wherein introspective awareness keeps distractions from directing my attention, but often the vigilance fails. Stage 5 is something I attempt once per session, though I am unsure if I'm doing it too soon. I have not really felt strong dullness during a morning meditation.

Timeblock

Dream

I have a vague feeling of the dream I had last night. But nothing substantive comes from it. During meditation, it did not return as it sometimes does. I believe it has seeped into the void.

Entertainment

The only YouTube I watched yesterday was with the wife. I even discussed why we were watching it, and the value is worth the time.

My alone entertainment thus was what I wanted it to be: I watched two episodes of K-On!, and read a technical article: Fightin' Words: Netcode Explained, which discusses fighting game netcode and why rollback is the current latest and greatest.

This also marks the first successful day of reading an article from my reading list during the evening. It was a morning routine thing, but I want to make the morning more flexible and efficient so I can jump into work without feeling the need to skip my morning routine nor necessarily regularly skipping things I want to do daily. Some of my morning things work just fine in the evening.

Today, I will also try stretching at the end of the day again (trying stretching in the evenings on days I don't run).

This is also, I think, a good exercise in my current theme: "Practice intentionality"

Meditation (Day 22)

Today, I caved in and looked at the timer on my watch before meditation session ended. Part of it is a worry that the watch crashed and rebooted, meaning there was no timer to tell me to stop. But also it was just that around 10 minutes in my brain really wants to check the timer (I do two timers of 15 minutes).

I think a backup timer to alleviate the Doubt of my watch should help. It has in the past, I shall reincorporate the strategy.

There's plenty for me to say that I've saved in my notion, but I think I'd like to make more time for work today.

Timeblock

Meditation (Day 21)

The resistance to my morning meditation remains. It has not gotten any stronger. It is simply a part of the morning ritual now.

The wife has started waking up earlier, and thus I have started making breakfast and lattes before meditation. I still eat after meditation, though, during that reading period. I read a bit before eating to let my oatmeal get more solid, and then I read a bit after I finish eating.

The bit where I prepare lattes and oatmeal is actually fairly painful before meditation. Meditation is a real solid start to the day, it also really lets me know how much power I have for the day. Yesterday, meditation was hard and I had limited energy, I think. Today, meditation went very well, and I think I should have solid energy throughout the day.

The goal, then, is to focus this energy and direct it towards the higher priority things.

Entertainment Thinking

I do not want to watch YouTube today, except for the content I watch with my wife at lunch-time. There is higher quality entertainment for me to consume. If I can watch something by myself, I can watch K-On! or Serial Experiments Lain.

There's also always reading, both of my books and of my list of articles.

Timeblock

Thinking

Yesterday, I watched some YouTube. I think this is okay. It was ZFG (Ocarina of Time speedrun highlights). And it was Tom Scott (research looking into "Jingle Bells, Batman Smells"). I did not watch K-On, though. Did I want to? I think I decided I couldn't as Rosse had TV, but if she wasn't watching Netflix, I definitely could've watch the show instead of what I did watch.

Do I want to watch ZFG? I enjoy it, to be sure, but is that enough?

I'll unsubscribe and avoid watching him for a bit and see what happens.

Meditation (Day 20)

Hard today. Ended after 25 minutes instead of 30 (which I increased to on Sunday). Second try during Mixpanel meditation meeting worked pretty well though. Still glad I did it. Wife wanted me to make coffee first and not having done meditation is kinda like not having had my coffee in all honesty. This sort've insight may well help maintain the habit.

Timeblock

Thinking

Flexibility really coming into form. I don't have to do this setup first thing in the day. And really, a lot of my day is planned, but I like to make it clear that I explicitly wrote it down before it happened in the timeblock above.

Now that I'm tracking every second of the day, more or less, it's much clearer that if I want add to the pile of things I do each day, I need to decrease or remove something that is already tracked. It is towards this purpose that I have added a question to my morning routine: "What entertainment do you want to consume today? What do you want to avoid?"

The positive question is asked first, and the negative is only asked to see what I can take out to make room for what I want in. I stopped playind MTG Arena seriously a while ago. It is a very rare play now, and only with someone else. But I was still watching MTG Arena players on YouTube. Now, I was quite enjoying this, but that by itself should not warrant continuing a habit. I need to also verify that I am not missing out on something I'd enjoy more in the process.

So, I have cut MTG Arena from my entertainment consumption, and have added in the anime K-On!, which has been on my list for a while.

Really, I have cultivated quite the list of entertainment to consume. There's no need to spend my dedicated entertainment on YouTube, unless I value it more, which I do not. It used to be that I found it "tiring", but this is not true now, and even at the time when I justified it it wasn't more tiring than YouTube. I think I was just too used to the "junk food" YouTube diet.

Meditation (Day 19)

Meditation habit continues, consistently past my expectations of it. I'm not used to habits sticking after the first real attempt. I mean, I "tried" to have a meditation habit back in 2017 (using Headspace), but I didn't "get it" and so it couldn't be maintained.

I'm used to things I even value doing not sticking. Could this be my ADHD medication? Does the creation of habits using medication help maintain those habits when the drug isn't in effect? My meditation session is before I take medication, after all. Hmmmm....

Anyways, let's talk about one of my saved topics a bit....

Ah, here's one I've chewed on a bit. During my reading of The Mind Illuminated, the pharse "suffering is opitional" came up frequently. It is a common sentiment I've come across in relation to meditation.

I do not like the wording of this phrase. I find my issues with it to be similar to that of "when you put your mind to it, you can do anything", but I'll talk about that later. Having experienced meditation, and having built up a resistence to suffering (from minor pain), I understand suffering is not optional. Rather, suffering can be overcome. Or even more accurate: resistance to suffering can be cultivated.

It is similar to becoming physically strong. Being unable to squat 300 pounds is not optional, but gathering the strength to do so is possible with training (assuming disabilities do not interfere).

I find this to be a far better way to avoid ableism. Though saying it right now is a bit clunky. That's something that can be worked on, though.

Perhaps just an additional word could work? "Suffering can become optional." It is a process, though. You can't "just not suffer". And for a beginner, the phrase is not helpful unless explicitly given as some far off goal to strive for. The wiring to even begin to "not suffer" is simply not in place.

Timeblock

Meditation (Day 18)

Another bit of resistance this morning! "Ugh, if I'm just going to sit still for 30 minutes, why not lay in bed some more?" I resisted this urge, and am again very glad that I did. Normally by now I'd be super exhausted, what with hours of errands, and driving about the town. But instead there's this slight weight.

Specifically, it's that headache that I think was always there before and I only noticed when it was gone. Just a slight feeling of tightness or pressure around the head. It's also something I can recover from now, I've found. Though the later in the day, the less I can recover. Well, I can still kind of recover, but I can't return back to doing any real kind of work, I don't think.

I have resituated myself during meditation. I used to sit and stare towards my desk. This was fine, as there was this lovely patch of blue wall that my vision centered on. But I found that my posture was poor for this (head tilted too far up). Fixing this led to looking at some black drawers. Even though they're not my attention, they're in my awareness, which I'm supposed to maintain.

To fix this, I simply turned around to face a mirror. This lets me check my pose early on, and then I basically have a cool view of the whole room. The main problem is seeing myself can be a distraction, but I think I can get used to it. Yesterday morning, it was a bit difficult, but this morning I didn't have much of an issue.

I believe one of the symptoms of progressive subtle dullness that I can easily notice is my vision getting wonky. This morning, for instance, the color drained from my vision, and my hands (the point that I stare at) melted into my bright-white shirt. This happened several times. A simple blink would return my vision to normal.

At some point I'll follow this strange sensation and see how far it goes, but it'll have to be a special meditation session, not the morning one,

Timeblock

Meditation (Day 17)

Not going to go at length about a meditation topic today. It's going to be an errand-filled day, so I think I should get to stretching ASAP.

But, today was one of about 4 days (out of the 17 days of meditation) where there was a resistance to meditating before I sat down to the session. On every one of such days, I did not regret meditation. It has been a strong tonic for my mind, giving me the energy I desire for the day.

This success is something I wish to internalize, as it is the best shield against doubt and aversion.

Timeblock

Dream

I only remember things about my dream that are inappropriate to share here. I will save it in my private Notion, I think.

Meditation (Day 16)

There's more to talk about each day of meditation than I allow myself to write. Eventually this may slow down. In fact, I don't have much to say about anything that arose from today's insights. However, I do save various topics that I intend to eventually write about. So let's pick one that jumps out at me.

Ooh, "Anger without target". I can also talk about "sadness without target", which I experienced a bit the other day in my accidental analytic meditation.

Shortly into starting meditation, whilst walking for grocery shopping purposes, I was doing an initial stab at walking meditation. But my mind really wanted to dwell on political thoughts, and really wanted to be angry about it.

Both of which, by the way, are perfectly fine things. I mean, "dwelling", not so much, but ruminating on politics, and feeling one's emotions are both good things. They are not things I'm avoiding. They are things I want to interact with intently. I had not intended to think about politics, so I was guiding my mind back to the present.

But the emotion lingered, and the politics came back into view. So eventually, I decided to focus on the emotion, separate from the politics. The political thinking subsided. The anger became vivid and clear.

And by itself it was not in any way a negative thing. It was raw, it was pulsing. I could feel it vibrate over my body at a particularly slow rhythm. I could feel the waves across my skin. It probably took more than a second for one cycle of it.

By itself, it felt kind of amazing. By itself, I could also play with its intensity. I could summon it, and I could let it fade.

And even now I can kind of summon it, but it isn't as strong and it is difficult to maintain.

Sadness, too, is not itself negative. Though I already knew. Sadness to the point of tears is something I've found refreshing for a very long time. It is also something I have great difficulty holding onto. But as I observed it the other day, I got to understand it a little bit, I think. Not intimately. It is still a clumsy understanding. And when I try to summon the feeling now it is maybe slightly there, but much, much weaker than the anger I can summon.

I have trouble describing it, as well. It is sort of like a weight on my heart that pulls every part of me. Even with a very slight tug at the emotion, I can feel my eyes maybe getting ready to produce tears?

There's this kinda flow there. As though water were pouring down and overflowing at the heart. And as it flows it drains from me, and I feel... purified. Even with the tiny amount I can muster now.

This one will be harder to replicate, I think. Like, to really get a feel for it in the wild. Perhaps I should make a list of sad media and consume it at a regular interval. Really feel the sadness.

What is really interesting is how neight sadness not anger are really mutually exclusive with joy. This is, again, something I knew, but exploring them both together in the moment is something that is new to me, as well. I did very little of it with both the anger and the sadness that happened in the wild. I should try to really observe that myriad when the chance next arises.

30th Birthday, Woo!

I'm no longer in my 20s! It actually feels pretty good. I feel no dread or loss or anything like that. It feels like right before I turned 30 a whole bunch of things fell into place, and it just seems "right" that I'm turning 30 now.

We'll see if that feeling lasts.