Day Four: Maybe just a touch of progress

I’m going to do this “bass ackwards”, as I heard one of the guys on the Mac Geek Gab podcast put it once. This morning’s experience first: Not too bad. I remembered to drag myself out of bed and straight into the shower — waking from a very bizarre dream indeed about a long-term stay in a hotel room with a weird maid who tried to teach me curling. Yeah, I know, I should see someone. But I think crazy dreams are often a good sign that you’re changing something in your life; I’ve spent a lot of apparently dreamless nights this year, and I think that’s a sign of stagnation. For me, anyway.

I digress. Right, so, out of the shower, quick spin & tumble, and into the lounge, where I’ve already set up a couple of cushions in front of the candle. And this morning’s session was probably the best so far. There were still a lot of distracting thoughts (including my thoughts on what to write in this blog entry!) but there was a chunk of time somewhere in the first half of the meditation where I did seem to be more focused on the tip of the candle flame than I’ve been before, and where intruding thoughts were more easily shrugged off. I’m having the odd problem with comfort, mostly because my back is giving me problems in general at the moment anyway, but I can mostly put up with it for fifteen minutes.

So, pretty good. I did feel a little bit tired, though, which brings me on to yesterday. Yesterday, I was very awake, I think, and I had a lot of energy. I put this down to the extra sleep I forced myself to take as a result of noticing my tiredness during Saturday’s meditation. So, that was good. I wrote the bulk of a new article for Null Hypothesis, and then went out to lunch. Sadly, during lunch I had two lattes, and either they were very strong, or I was already a lot more awake than I normally am, so I was a bit hyperactive and unfocused for a few hours of the afternoon.

I did my Sunday chores, then I thought I’d finish one little project that had been hanging about, which was an electronic kit of a video game that I’d seen and wanted to build — so, as usual, this was something I’d bought but never got around to doing.So I did it. And not only did I do it, but a couple of minutes in I turned off the film I was planning on watching while I was doing it, and just focused on the kit. That was okay. I didn’t feel properly focused, because I was in a bit of a hurry, mostly because I still wanted to watch the film. This was a mistake, I think, because there was no desperate need for me to see the film, and I would have been better off focusing more on building the kit.

Anyway. I obviously paid enough practical attention to the kit, because it worked fine. Then I did something foolish, which was editing, soundtracking and posting the video of me building the kit (a habit I’m in) on YouTube, whilst trying to watch the movie.

While Idiocracy isn’t exactly a film that requires your whole attention, I really had wanted to help myself concentrate more by watching films with my whole attention, so that was one mistake. The other mistake was starting doing both of these things too late. As a result, I didn’t get to sleep until gone midnight, which bearing in mind I’ve discovered that I’m going through life feeling too tired, was foolish.So. We’ll see if I can catch up on some sleep tonight, and I’ll not watch any more films with only half my attention from now on.

Anyway. The ferry’s nearly at my stop (it’s raining this morning, so I’m being lazy) so I’ll close.