Yesterday and today's writing is collected, but not all digitized. I'll get it properly collected into place tomorrow.

Dream

Intention (2215 the night before)

Same time to bed as last night. Busy day, and then the Internet died.

So, want to reinforce reality checks. I think I might also incubate food dream. Though Daysha, being an old pet, is also a reality check. Had more food dreams lately, though.

The Other Reality Wants our Bodies

I am at a house. It is full of people. There are rows of tables. A little boy is being annoying. I finally take issue and start chasing him. He's a slippery one, small enough to slip under the tables in an agile way, but with the help of another kid, I catch him.

Now, it is time for us to leave. I am myself for sure this moment, with various members of my family (my brother, his wife, my mother, and more). One of us pulls out a wand. "The portal won't be open for long so get in quick."

"Let me put on my shoes first," I say, scrambling to put on my shoes, but the portal is already open, and I run through holding my shoes in my hands.

My mother and someone else missed the portal. Something happens....

I am my brother now. On the other side of the portal is a slightly off alternate reality. And alternate versions of ourselves are after us. I am running from my doppelganger. I go to my blue truck, but opening the front door reveals a metal box interior. No discernible means of driving.

The doppelganger wants to trade body parts. Forcibly. We're in a body of water now. Discrete chunks are coming off him and me painlessly.

"The most important piece," as he takes my groin area. A fight ensues. I seem to have some sort of electrified voltmeter. I electrify the doppelganger, confident I'll get my body parts back.

That's all I remember.

Game Grumps Play New Game Plus

Playing emperor Palpatine. Have to die to a boss and start over as current character to be eaten later to same boss, but pass harmlessly thru.

Lots of Danny laughter. Crazy hard lava platforming section with various instant death and time powers? Keep dying here to Arin rage.

That's all I remember.

Wake-Back-to-Sleep (logged at 0430 this morning)

Awake from 0400 to 0430. Recorded 2 dreams. Back to sleep now. Internet still down. Got to call in the morning.

Roller Coaster Seating in Plane

I am on a plane. The seats of the plane move around. Almost like those kid-sized roller coasters. The seats take us to a chef's kitchen, where we see a chef cook. The seats take us back to the plane. It's kinda more like a movie set of plane seats than an actual plane.

That's all I remember.

Pre-nap (1212)

Pressed for time. Same setup as yesterday. Nap-time!o

Post-nap (1228)

Thought about a coding problem I've been doing with cousin for the last few days. Thought about my process and how I could do the same thing but faster.

Meditation (Day 113)

Prime number, woo!

Intentions for the day:

• Stay in posture part of prep until you're prepared to set the intention to stay still
• 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
• 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)
• Before adjusting posture, mirror-check
• Mirror-check only when agitated due to worry and after counting to 8 in breaths
• During planned attention away from breath, keep breath in awareness

Post-Meditation

This is the latest I've done meditation (finished around 2115). Really shouldn't let it happen again, but it was interesting. Dullness didn't seem to be any more likely.

My right leg really fell asleep and really was in pain, though. Should maybe check online again for half-lotus setup that won't stop circulation to legs.

Today was the longest 45 minutes of meditation yet. Possibly the longest 45 minutes of my life. Again, I consider this a victory. The timer distraction was way stronger and persistent than ever, probably because all the other times it came close I gave in way sooner. Every time I let it come, let it be, and let it go felt great. Until it didn't on the last one. The last one coming with my leg really, really complaining.

Each time that it came, though, I asked if I wanted to count to 8 first. And most of the time that was the end of it. Then one time I started the count to 8, but knew by the end I didn't want to look at the timer. Then, finally, on the second count to 8, I looked at my timer.

5 minutes remaining.

Now, I almost quit here, but instead I laid down and finished the session. This is where the majority of my gross distractions came. I had a couple whilst sitting, but the timer that broke my posture led to a large flow of gross distractions. I think without that, it'd have been second-best (to yesterday).

I'm pretty freaking happy with the result. Feel like it shows yesterday wasn't a fluke even though gross distractions did happen this time.

Also, I'd like to learn the lesson of not meditating so late in day. Please and thank you, future me.

Technically this is a backlog. But I wrote most of this down yesterday, but when I went to fill in the post my Internet was down. Really need to set it up so I can do the setup locally and just push the published posts. Especially since the writing isn't in chronological order lately.

Dream

Intention (2215 the night before)

Another 15 minutes! Nice. I will recite my intentions and I will execute them when the time comes.

Something About Squashing a Bug

That's all I remember.

Wake-Back-to-Sleep (logged at 0315 this morning)

Had a dream, but lingered in bed too long and mind wandered away from it. Still got a sentence, though.

Let's incubate Daysha dream and try WILD.

Getting Some Food

I am at some sort of full-themed location. There's a counter to order food at. There's a rotund and slightly sassy bearded man behind the counter.

He's making me a sandwich, he puts some turkey on it. "Oh, I'm vegan." He looks confused. "No meat." He takes the meat off. I look at the men and see seitan as an option.

"Oh, I'd like seitan on the sandwich." He looks at me real weird. Maybe he thinks I mean "satan"?

He gets me mac and cheese, as a side, and I wonder if he'll be annoyed when I tell him I don't eat dairy either.

That's all I remember.

Hotel with Workmates

I am staying at a hotel. Some sort of work event. There's a presentation area. I sit down and am surrounded by people. "This doesn't seem safe," I think to myself.

I go back to my hotel room. Avoiding elevators, I go up a flight of stairs.

I'm back outside. People are swimming. I wonder if it's a good idea. Go back to hotel room. Forget to go up stairs, realize trying to get in wrong room, go upstairs to get to room.

That's all I remember.

Wake (logged at 0720 this morning)

Dreams remembered. Did a bad and didn't write down, but did keep repeating what I wanted to write while laying down.

There's another hotel dream, but all I remember is a giant screen, and scrambling to the airport. So I won't give it its own section.

Lots of food one dream, if I had the food trigger reality-check habit, could've been a lucid dream.

Just gotta keep trying.

Pre-nap (1410)

Skipped napping a couple of times now, and it's a very needed reset for my mind. Allows for proper energy and control the rest of the day. Not going to focus on any specific thing here. Will recite intents for practice and otherwise pick a thing to think about as I settle into my nap.

Post-nap (1435)

Recite my intentions. I do a reality check whilst going through my reality-check triggers. My mind wanders for a bit. I think about visualizing writing a dream down in the journal whilst laying still. I consider trying this in the future.

My mind drifts to work. A lot of high-level thinking on the mind. I sift through them. Nothing worth capturing right now. Going to let subconscious keep processing.

I think of upcoming meetings, I may write some thoughts of that down.

....

Ended up writing a lot.

Then I visualize Daysha, and find that I'm playing with her in the house where we lived when she became part of our family. I end up exploring the house, and various memories from the past greet me in the various nooks and crannies.

Meditation (Day 112)

Intentions for the day:

• Stay in posture part of prep until you're prepared to set the intention to stay still
• 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
• 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)
• Before adjusting posture, mirror-check
• Mirror-check only when agitated due to worry and after counting to 8 in breaths
• During planned attention away from breath, keep breath in awareness

Post-Meditation

A new best day?

A new best day!

I might even go so far as to say no gross distractions? More specifically, though the breath did lose vividness because of distractions, it never left attention. I'd say if this were the regular experience, I think I'd check off "stage 4" as mastered.

There may also have been a new skill gained today. Basically, any powerful distraction, when noticed in awareness, instead of just the alarm of "focus on the breath" starting, an introspective check-in was triggered. From there, I set an intention to keep introspective awareness on the presence of the dangerous distraction. This is why maybe I'm not sure about no gross distractions. Hard to tell the difference sometimes between looking at something and highlighting something important in the periphery.

However, this meant that instead of a back-and-forth of a distraction becoming gross, me noticing and bringing myself back to breath, and then it coming right back, which sometimes led to a cascade of tangential distractions all doing the same thing, the distraction was contained, acknowledged, and could safely fade. Also, any distractions it wanted to bring along with it got contained very early in awareness.

This also had the side-effect of remembering way more distractions once I got off the cushion. Especially the ones that wanted to jump in off other ones. It also meant I knew when it was safe to really focus on the breath. Which itself is helping me notice when I'm slacking on awareness to boost attention (which invites both distraction and dullness).

What a neat day. I'm pretty pumped and excited. Let's see if this is a "beginner's luck" thing that I reached in a lucky way and there's a lot of work to get back to, or if I can consistently get here.

Dream

Intention (2230 the night before)

Another 15 minutes earlier to sleep! I'll also try to wake up at 0700 proper tomorrow morning.

Let's get some dreaming in (same goals).

Wake (logged at 0745 this morning)

Really felt the need to focus on sleep, so I did. Woke up at 0200, 0400, and 0600. Had things worth writing down at each time. But getting out of bed felt too big an ask. This is an important give and take with myself. If I force it, it stops being something I want to do. It being something I want to do is main goal. Progress is chaotic. Will keep trying.

Meditation (Day 111)

Intentions for the day:

• Stay in posture part of prep until you're prepared to set the intention to stay still
• 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
• 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)
• Before adjusting posture, mirror-check
• Mirror-check only when agitated due to worry and after counting to 8 in breaths
• During planned attention away from breath, keep breath in awareness

Post-Meditation (1030)

Today was cut short due to a meeting heavy morning (stopped at 40 minutes), but today did not have the troubles of yesterday. Breath very vivid, was very capable of bringing myself back from gross distractions (and also stopping subtle distractions from becoming gross).

There feels like less things learned when I have such a day. Though any inclination of giving up was met with the intention to start counting, and before I even started the desire evaporated, which felt really good.

Experimental

Walking meditation is going to be replaced with short ChiRunning jogs. That's what yesterday's walk ended up being. I'll be doing that in like an hour, I think. I believe this will have its own journal entry as per ChiRunning recommends doing it.

It'll be a bit before I do that, though. First I just want the habit of going out for a super short, definitely injury-free run.

General Thinking

I may want to add a second screen to Netflix, as often I find I want to do LLN when Rosse is watching TV, and often she's on Netflix.

Dream

Do have some dream notes. The longer I wait the less I can expand on them, but I need to focus on other priorties, so it may just be the scattered half-asleep notes.

Gradual progress!

Intention (2245 the night before)

Once again, slightly better sleep hygiene. (15 minutes, yeah, gradual progress) Writing to reinforce importance of this activity. Will keep yesterday's intent.

Scattered Pieces

Pool shenanigans. Tethered to workmates. Life-long friend shows up. Leaving the hotel on foot talking with friends. Missing wallet spot check. Magic time. Sequel hook.

(I wrote this in the journal at 0320. Could write much more at the time, but only had the energy for this compromise, and I am very thankful to have it. Thank you, past me, this is super valuable.)

Wake (logged at 0745 this morning)

I awoke at 0430 but even a sentence was too much for WBTS. The 0320 dream could've been much more, but am thankful for the compromise. That worked. Dream skills are a matter of gradual progress.

Meditation (Day 110)

Intentions for the day:

• Stay in posture part of prep until you're prepared to set the intention to stay still
• 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
• 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)
• Before adjusting posture, mirror-check
• Mirror-check only when agitated due to worry and after counting to 8 in breaths
• During planned attention away from breath, keep breath in awareness

Meditation starting a little after 1600 today.

Post-Meditation (1650)

Lots of trouble today. Gave up at 35 minutes. Lots and lots of internal and external distractions. Though, even all that said, still a good meditation. There's a lot to learn, and sometimes it'll be more than I can handle on a given day. If it continues to be an issue, I'll need to prepare some strategies to overcome. But for now I'm focusing on how I feel right out of the meditation and... perhaps I just needed a shorter session.

45-minutes is really starting to feel like a long time. I think technically a mixture of pain and boredom won out. It's good that boredom is back. Next time I feel the two together, I'll try to at least count to eight and see how I feel.

I'd still call this a stage 4 day.

I think I'll still go for a walking meditation (which will kind of finish the 45 minutes).

Experimental

General Thinking

Going to try running again today. Only "fun" or "easy" runs for now. Going to focus on form (going for the ChiRunning form).

I'm learning that a lot of my exercising can benefit from less pushing myself and more focusing on form. I can then start pushing myself again once I'm more sure of my form (and also I notice that doing this is strengthening my core).

Dream

Intention (2300 the night before)

Slightly better sleep hygiene today.

So, I haven't written my intentions I recite in a while, so I'll do that now, to help reinforce, and to look at them written down to help with any edits that I may realize I want.

• I will reality check when
  • cat/pets
  • food/water
  • journal
  • conflict
  • lucidity
• I will WBTS 2 hours before wake-up time (no alarm, just let intention do this)
• I will incubate a dream with Daysha
• I will DILD or WILD or both
• I will lay still on wake-up and store the most important dream thread
• I will write in journal (compromise: 1 sentence at least before going back to sleep)
• I will thank myself for what I remember or even just trying to remember

Think it makes sense to make the thanking intent the last thing to say (used to be first). I'm getting pretty good at thanking myself, and I really believe it helps. It seems like a lot, but I don't seem to have trouble remembering it, though I find I can get distracted quite a bit before the end. But that's a good sign, too! Means it's not keeping me awake. Seems to help me fall asleep, even.

Sleep time!

Wake-Back-to-Sleep (logged at 0340 this morning)

No dreams remembered thus far. Let's change that. Also, even though I don't remember any dreams, I still like to thank myself for remembering. Feel like it reinforces intent. So, thank you, me!

Anyways, incubation/WILD time.

School with Coworkers

I find a parking spot in a parking garage. Should not cost too much. Pash a button and get a rather large slip of paper with the terms of service. I put it unfolded in my pocket.

I go... somewhere.... It takes up most of the day. I start walking home.

"Didn't I drive here?" I ask myself. I backtrack to go find where I parked. Thinking hard, I remember the parking garage and feel the parking slip in my gym-shorts pocket, now the size of a small ticket.

When I get to the garage, there's a long line of cars trying to get out. I need my slip validated, so I find a parking enforcement person. I take the slip out of my pocket and it's a big piece of paper again.

I notice it's ripped, and the bar code probably isn't readable. I tell the officer this, but they scan it anyways. I look more carefully at the tear and see the bar code is barely intact.

I go through a door to get to my car and I am in a class room. There's a line of people trying to leave, as though class has ended, but the lecturer is still talking. Various work mates are here taking notes.

I find a seat to listen. The person sitting to the left of me has his foot on my seat in a strange way. I say nothing.

My coworkers ask some questions. I do not remember what.

That's all I remember.

Wake (logged at 0800 this morning)

A successful dreaming night, I think.

Pre-nap (1415)

Did work pre-nap prep, not for public consumption (or personal Notion for that matter). Went well, I think.

Post-nap (1430)

Saved main takeaway in work system.

Meditation (Day 109)

Intentions for the day:

• Stay in posture part of prep until you're prepared to set the intention to stay still
• 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
• 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)
• Before adjusting posture, mirror-check
• Mirror-check only when agitated due to worry and after counting to 8 in breaths

New intention from yesterday's reflection: prep posture until prepared to set intention to stay still. The idea is that after that I only try to relax for the rest of the session, so repositioning whatsoever. Hopefully, I also keep relaxing in awareness, not attention. We'll try this for a week or so and then maybe if it's not doing anything return to quick check-in. Ideally, this lets me get good at finding the right posture, and I'll learn to settle into it faster and faster.

Meditation will start around 1630 today.

Post-Meditation (1830)

Really vivid breath. Lingering on posture worked very well. No mirror checks. Worked more on noting the distraction sooner and sooner, making introspective awareness vigilant. Not quite a best day, but really good.

I'd call it another good stage 4 training session. Hard to say if also stage 5 when stage 5 is all about stronger mindfulness. Strong dullness also isn't an issue, but subtle dullness and gross distractions are. So it's stage 4 or 5, it feels like. When boredom doesn't show up, I think it means it's more stage 4.

Experimental

I'm going to try to add LLN to my daily habits. Did some thinking over the weekend, will do some actual manual stuff today, and reflect on the process and how to set it up how I want it.

General Thinking

Coding-practice with cousin is no longer experimental. It is just a part of the day.

ANDD

It occurs to me that the average ANDD can be less than 1, because if you know a word than the dictionary depth is 0. It should also maybe be some sort of ANDD, like ANDD10K for the average depth of the 10K most frequently used words. Though, I would assume that a dictionary is written with reading-level in mind, so I suppose there is some specific number of words that would allow full dictionary use (making the max NDD 1).

This, too, would be a useful number.

Dream

Intention (2400)

Didn't write anything down, just thought to myself "do what I've been doing". Think I should always write something down, though, as I didn't get any real results this time.

But that may have also been poor sleep hygiene last night (went to bed very late).

Wake-Back-to-Sleep (logged at 0550 this morning)

No dreams to report. Let's try for a lucid dream again.

Reflection (1500)

Don't remember anything, really. Will try to avoid repeating the poor sleep hygiene and assume that was the cause.

Pre-nap (1500)

So, I can do some more Japanese learning understanding thinking or.... Perhaps some code practicing thinking? I'll play with the latter and fall back to the former if I don't have enough data in head.

Post-nap (1530)

Immediately on laying down my mind is wandering, though they are not yet hypnagogic. I try to go through my intent, but find myself drifting away after each intent. I am unable to hold onto where my mind went, when I notice that it is drifting and look at where it is, everything slips away. Very quickly they become more clearly hypnagogic, and my vision is regularly activating.

I do manage to get through my intents. I maybe forgot the last two: "rehearse your experience on waking up (don't move)" and "compromise: write down at least one sentence", though these like various others are not important to the nap (I just want to make sure I remember them before proper sleep, and naps are good practice).

At one point, I am thinking about the nature of timers. There's a basic timer, and there are four other timers, so the thought is going. There's a bar graph showing the basic timer as a much shorter bar than the others. When I notice this thinking is happening, and try to make sense of it, it slips away.

Thinking about LLN and coding practice is in "general thinking" below.

Meditation (Day 108)

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)
• Mirror-check only when agitated due to worry and after counting to 8 in breaths
• During planned attention away from breath, keep breath in awareness

Post-Meditation (1815)

At several points during my meditation today, I got my posture to sing (is I feel the best way to put it). Like, this really harmonious effortlessness across the body as though it all vibrated as one.

This was also something I would characterize as a gross distraction. It has a similarity to body scanning, in its way, and I have started classifying body-scanning as a "planned" gross distraction.

But it does bring me back to the last bit of meditation prep: posture. Perhaps I can make posture much longer? As this part is already sitting, the timer will have already started, the main goal is to focus on relaxing and do any movements that feel required that don't "count" as relaxing during this prep stage. Once I hit this harmony, only relaxation is allowed from then on and in this sense it is fixing posture that went out of alignment without me noticing (aka it escaped awareness, where perhaps posture should stay).

Otherwise, today's meditation was really strong. Once again, I think I made labeling of distraction types stricter, but this is okay. It didn't feel quite as long as last time, though, so I may have been caught in distraction and dullness a bit more (I think the posture singing may have passed time a bit). No boredom distractions of note, and only one real timer one (subtle).

The breath was also very vivid today.

I'd say today was solid stage 4 training.

Experimental

General Thinking

LLN

There's another feature I want to think about: average native dictionary depth (should I call it ANDD? why not).

ANDD

So, at first while learning Japanese, I will be scaffolding English where necessary. But an end goal is to be able to be entirely within the Japanese language whist studying Japanese. Where this becomes possible exactly is fuzzy, but obviously it does become possible, because I have studied English in English. I think an interesting number to know is how many times I would have to look up a word when reading the native-language dictionary definition of a word. It would start at 1, with the word itself, and would be nested.

Across all words in the dictionary, what would be the average number? And, I suppose, what is the average number for a native-speaker (though I assume it's close to 1). The system that does this would need to know what words I know, and as such it's important that I keep this in mind for the sake of not making it a hard problem down the line. Also, this probably needs to be limited to some number of the most-common words (maybe 10K, maybe a little more than that).

Basically, I'm going to want to have a software-accessible place to store all the Japanese words I know. It would also be interesting to see what the number is for me in English, but then I need some quick system that would know how many words I know. Though I could just get a list ordered by frequency of use and go through 100 a day until I do some 10K words in English. Wouldn't take long to answer 100 yes/no questions a day and in 100 days I'd know.

Coding Practice

I may want to revisit spaced-repetition for coding problems. Especially since redoing a problem that I know the solution to is much faster than doing the problem the first time. It might be a good start to keeping certain problem-solving and coding-craft stuff in my head until I have a better means of spaced-repetition for them.

Dream

Intention (2330 the night before)

Though I haven't been remembering my dreams, I think that may have been the weather. I like the habits I'm building. So, trying the same stuff again. Adding the reflection intention (stay still upon wake up and reflect before going to journal).

Note (midnight)

Success in new intents. Woke up in slight pain again. Focusing on relaxing the areas. Felt good. Thank you, me, for this note in the journal.

Melee in the Snow

Friend won't play Jigglypuff anymore, people know matchup too well.

There's a vast field of white snow that I am walking through with my friend.

That's all I remember. Thank you for the remembered dream, me, and for noting it at first real opportunity.

Wake-Back-to-Sleep (logged at 0600 this morning)

Maybe a bit late for WBTS, but I went to bed later than usual. Wrote down dream, and reality check done. Going back to sleep now.

The DILD via WILD

I am falling asleep. There's a song playing in my head. I hear it more and more in my ears. The song is about what I am hearing.

"I hear an old man singing

There's an echo in my ears

The passage must be winding

The voice is getting stronger

The vibrations are quite clear"

Not exactly how the song goes, but that is the gist. It has a tune as well, but I didn't record myself singing when writing down the lyrics and the tune is gone.

I am writing this song down in my journal as I struggle to keep my eyes open. And then I focus on letting myself fall asleep.

I wait.

I wait for my eyes to open into a dream.

"You're here." My new dream-native boss is speaking to me. "Your name is %#@@%, yeah?" I am not listening. I know I don't want to wake prematurely like last time.

He looks intently at me. I nod. He hands me papers. He's explaining what's written on them, but I know it's gibberish. I'm working up the courage to stand.

I get up, but I feel myself getting up elsewhere. I take this to mean sleep atonia hasn't set in and panic. I wake up, standing on my bed, blankets falling off of me.. "... but I wasn't sleeping with a blanket on me, it's too hot...." I think to myself.

I wake up for real.

Pre-nap (1400)

Things seem to be moving in the right direction, what with new lucid dream last night (and also I did slightly better at being in the dream). Will reinforce the habits I have been cultivating. Though, I've been wanting to do some serious pre-nap prep. So, I'm writing this digitally this time.

I think, for one, I should add pre-nap as a half-hour bit to my timeblock template in Notion.

....

Done.

Next, I want to... look up things I want to pseudo dream about? Something like that.

I guess, I can think about that before each nap, but maybe this time it's more an analytic meditation on how I want to go about Anki cultivation and/or certain habits I want to start (Language Learning with Netflix, maybe).

Post-nap (1500)

There is a bit of mind-wandering in the beginning. Madoka Magica and Smash thoughts play in parallel. I start reciting my intentions.

I think about Anki.

I switch to thinking about LLN (Language Learning with Netflix). I think about why I want to use it, and what my ideal version of it would be. An abstract answer comes back to me, and now I will do "verification and review" in general thinking area below.

Meditation (Day 107)

Prime number day, woo! Going to meditate around 1700 today.

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)
• Mirror-check only when agitated due to worry and after counting to 8 in breaths

A reminder that I will not be doing body-scans today (and mirror-checks only when posture overwhelms and becomes temeporary meditation object).

Post-Meditation (1845)

Properly avoided body-scan. Did one mirror-check. Various gross-distractions, but still feel like it was a solid meditation. 45 minutes is feeling longer and longer, which I take as a good sign of growing my consciousness strength. Only makes sense that I have more opportunities for gross distractions. I'm also, I think, being stricter, which is good, too.

General Thinking

Twitter-relapse successfully avoided. There was a slight urge today, but I did not go to Twitter. I did end up playing a lot of extra SSBM, though.

LLN Habit Thinking

What I want is not to watch the show and learn, but to split up the show into its discrete chunks and have flashcards of those chunks. These flashcards would be:

• Audio → furigana and English translation
• Sentence in Kanji → furigana and English translation
• Word/idiom in Kanji with Sentence it is used in → furigana and English translation
• (Optional but would be cool) Video of scene with audio → furigana and English translation

I would want an Anki deck for a given episode, and once I had all of them "learned" watch the episode. Rinse and repeat.

My hypothesis is that after learning the words to a single episode in a series, that the number of new words to learn per new episode exponentially decreases. Lots of common words, with some-but-not-many new words per episode.

If I were to take it a step further, I would warrant a guess that one would not have to learn too much additional vocabulary from other sources to be able to have a spoiler-free way to study the vocabulary for a specific episode (though there'd be spoilers for the other stuff, however it'd be less effective because it'd be a single bit out of context).

This step further is not necessary for the proof-of-concept I want to get to. I am fine, currently, with spoilers if I can verify I am indeed learning to understand Japanese via this flashcard idea.

I think the MVP here would be:

• Pick a reasonably-long-somewhat-standalone scene in an anime with proper subtitles on Netflix
• Grab the subtitle information for this scene in the least-tedious way currently at my disposal
• Make an Anki deck for this with the sentence → translation cards
• After learning all the sentences to the scene, go back and watch scene, see if it seems understandable

At this point, I'd have to trust the "seems understandable" bit. The real proof of it all working is once I can reuse learnings from one source to understand another, which will be a bit deep into the process.

So, from here I want to brute-force to this MVP. I should have everything at my disposal to make an Anki deck out of a scene, though it may be tedious. Once I do that and like the result, I can maybe decide on ways to make software make various bits less tedious.

Dream

Intention (2230 the night before)

I like how yesterday went. Let's do same thing.

Motivation/compromise: 1 sentence!

Note (2315)

Not sure if fell asleep. Legs hurt. No dreams.

Note (0320)

No dreams.

Wake (logged at 0700 this morning)

There's a vague sitting at a table memory, but that's it. No dreams remembered. I did write a sentence on each wake up. I think tonight I'll also store an intent to really try to reflect and find dream before stirring to grab journal and write.

Meditation (Day 106)

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

I believe the time has come to stop doing body-scans for a bit whilst I recement stage 4 habits. I believe this is necessary due to stronger attention and awareness, and not a regression in any way.

Meditation still feels great, as well. Shoulder has been addressed, but back complaining again, Though back feels great when I get up, so I'm not too concerned. Will treat it like I treat an itch.

Experimental

Cousin calls going well.

General Thinking

Looking at my metrics, coding work increased. I believe this is thanks to time-block aherence. Neat.

Welp. RBG died and I went straight to Twitter. That's a long streak ended, though I'm already done. I don't want to stay on here. Nothing of value was gained going.

(To further escape the reignition of the Twitter habit, I played SSBM for 1.5 hours. This worked very well.)

Dream

Intention (2200 the night before)

The main thing I want to write down, to add to my intent, is the motivation and compromise to write a sentence whenever I'm awake. This sentence can say, "No memories." or it can be a thread that maybe leads back to a dream. Like the one that helped me remember the breath graph.

Wake-Back-to-Sleep (logged at 0300 this morning)

WBTS! Doing it! Not remembering any dreams at the moment. Hopefully I fall into some juicy ones here soon.

So, I've been "trying" WILDs, but they haven't been happening, so I might try incubating a dream about a previous pet (my old dog Daysha) and see how that goes.

I'll probably still try a WILD, but I'll think of Daysha while I do it. Maybe do a nap-esque pseudo-dream about her.

Still no dreams. BTS.

Core Dreams

Core needs rest. Other person using it.

This is all I wrote. Couldn't remember anything else.

Wake (logged at 0700 this morning)

Only remember abstract weirdness. But I did all the things and am pretty happy with that. It's very promising to remember abstract things. I have been focusing on my core a lot lately, so it makes sense to dream about it.

Pre-nap (1310)

Don't have enough in brain for work pseudo-dream. Should really make 30-min before nap a nap-prep block.

I'll try just observing today after reciting intent.

Oh! Tangentially related, I am slowly but surely remembering reality-check triggers more and more. Hopefully a DILD (dream-initiated lucid dream) will happen soon.

Post-nap (1325)

Main takeaway: REITs but for collective ownership of property. Tenants-rights.

Meditation (Day 105)

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

Lots of distractions, hard not to have gross ones. Still felt like a solid meditation. Time went by real slow. I didn't believe that it had been less than 45 minutes by the time I finally caved and checked my timer and there was still 2 minutes to go.

Possibly a good sign? Means very few moments lost to dullness. And typically being lost in distraction makes the time fly, so I must have been pretty diligent. A stronger mind means more power to control. I anticipate this back and forth between stronger vividness of breath and learning to navigate a stronger awareness and the distractions it brings.

Experimental

Cousin calls going well.

General Thinking

Timeblock adherenece feels not so cognitively demanding anymore, but does seem to make me able to fit more in the day. Exciting.

Dream

Intention (2230 the night before)

I'm going to practice incubating dreams again.

Make it part of my intent recital. Pets/food seem to be pretty doable based on them often appearing in dreams. Might be a good place to start.

Daysha (old dog) would be nice to visit with again.

Also, will try WBTS and general journaling habits again tomorrow morning.

Wake (logged at 0715 this morning)

Did wake up at 0200, and again at 0430. Considered WBTS, but was not feeling great. Had a dream I remembered at time, but it's gone. No dreams remembered today.

I did remember that it's a place, only in dreams, that I visited recently. That's it, though.

Pre-nap (1210)

Not much time. No nap prep today like I mentioned yesterday. Should make nap prep a Notion task to better create habit. Not sure if have enough work things to think about. Anything else? Nah, workdays are work-naps.

Post-nap (1225)

Short nap. Thought about Anki and work and Anki plugins to have shared living decks that are private but updatable across company.

Thought a bit about work task at hand.

Intention recital went well. Visualized a bit before thinking about work.

Meditation (Day 104)

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

So, during prep an interesting thing happened. Going through distractions used to have a tendency to, well, get lost in a distraction that I was listing out. Today, I noticed the automatic introspective awareness redirect me back to finishing prep. Which is really neat! I think it was in play for a long while, but because I almost got lost down a distraction, I was better able to notice the corrective nature.

Stage 4 is pretty neat.

Experimental

Still doing programming stuff with cousin.

Messing around with the general structure of my timeblock, as well. Trying to get more work done in morning and spread maintenance throughout the day.

General Thinking

Dreams and stuff will be updated later today. Though all I have are intent notes. Didn't end up remembering my dreams today.