How I Started to Meditate

I've been thinking about meditating for years.

Although I don't remember specifically, I suspect that I first heard about mindfulness meditation sometime during my medical training.  It was probably during a session on "resiliency" or "work-life balance", and I was probably cursing the fact that I had to sit through an hour of stupid talks before I could get back to the ward to finish my work and go home.  I probably laughed at the idea of using my precious free time to sit on a cushion and focus on my breath.

But it kept coming up.  In talks, in articles, from friends and co-workers.  And always with an emphasis on all the things it has been shown to help with:  depression, anxiety, stress, insomnia, and pretty much every other bad thing that people struggle with.  So I read a book, which I loved.  And went to one class, which I hated so much I practically ran to the instructor to get a refund at the end of it.  And I thought often about doing it.  But never did.

(This is the point at which I would love to insert something profound about a life-altering experience that motivated me to start meditating.  In reality?  (Rosemary is going to laugh at this.)  It was a girl.)

I met a woman online who is super into yoga - does yoga at least once a day, reads books about yoga, goes on yoga retreats, and has a yoga tattoo, into yoga.  And...she was really cute.  And while I couldn't become an expert in yoga in the week between when we met online and when we met in person, I had enough knowledge about meditation that I felt I could claim some proficiency in it after a week.  And meditation is basically yoga without all the stretching, right?  So I started getting up 15 minutes early every morning to plunk myself down on that cushion and focus on my breath.

Sadly, the date was not the beginning of a great romance that I have failed to talk about here (Despite my abysmal blogging record recently, I would have blogged about something that exciting.).  But the meditation stuck.  From day one, I felt a little less anxious, and a little less stressed.  I slept a little better.  In exchange for getting up 15 minutes earlier, I really do feel 10% happier.

Apparently online dating can pay off.  

This May Be a Month of Placeholder Posts

It is 11:33, and I suddenly remembered this blog and NaBloPoMo.  So...I'm sorry.  This is not going to be a particularly inspired post.  It is, in fact, going to just be a list (someone said that lists were completely okay).  I will try to do better.

Things I May Write About in the Next 28 Days:
-  Meditation
-  What to do when all your friends have babies, but you're single and childless
-  Dating (For this post, I will need a good gif of someone moaning while they rip all the skin off their face)
-  Something money-related, given that I kind of claim to be a Personal Finance blogger?
-  Uhhhh...photos of my cats?

This could be a long month.

If Creampuff Can Do It

It's NaBloPoMo, one of the worst-named events ever, which means that Rosemary at Creampuff Revolution is blogging again!

I haven't blogged in almost two months.  Not sure why...maybe because meditation is making me less angsty, and I am less in need of a public space to vent?  Maybe I'm just lazy?  (Bets on the latter.)

I don't know if I will NaBloPoMo this year, but the day is almost over, so I'm putting this here in case I decide to commit to it.  If you're still reading my blog and I decide to do it, what do you want me to write about?