Step Away From the Cake

My life is pretty damn good right now. I have a job I am particularly fond of - and that job gives me 3 day weekends every weekend - I have a house I really love. I have 3 dogs that I adore, 1 of which I am finally getting to do all the stuff I wanted to do with. Things are good for me. And yet, I spend most of my time at home sitting in front of the computer. I got into that habit when I was working on my Ph.D. and it has just seemed to stick. I'm tired of it. I think I need to limit my time at the computer when I am home. Also,  I have a kickass laptop/tablet that I can use to do what I need to do. It rather sucks for playing games and that's a good thing. I play this stupid game far, far too much. So I think it's time for a change. I have things I need to do and they don't get done because I sit at the computer and get lost in stupidity. Time to move on. I bought weights the other day so I could work out at home. Have I done that?  No.    So maybe that would b...

The meditation I do is primarily to create mindfulness. I don't do guided meditation. I don't meditate for relaxation or stress reduction of sleep or any of those things. I meditate to become more mindful.  As such, do just like above. I focus on the breath, count the breaths when my mind wanders, and it always does, I come back to the breath. Simple and yet so very hard. Hard because it is hard to quiet the mind. It is constantly working. But I've been working at it. In 2 days I will have meditated every day for 90 days. That is a long time. 3 months. As I was getting ready for work today, something occurred to me. Meditation has changed me in very good ways. Looking back over my life, especially the tough times, I could probably have been diagnosed as manic - depressive. Now the episodes weren't especially high or low, but there were definitely bouts of being up and bouts of being down. I realized long ago that I do suffer from depression. But I never looked at t...

I used to make these snap decisions and immediately rush into implementing whatever weird idea crossed my mind. I would decide I needed to do something and boom, I would order or start something. These things usually never quite worked out because I didn't give them any thought or planning. But lately, I find myself doing nothing but planning and thinking things through. And this is a relatively new development, like within the last year or so.  Let's look at an example.  I know that I need to work out. Walking is great, but I need to kick my ass a couple of days a week to really feel like myself. I also need to lift weights to build some muscle since I'm going to be hitting 60 this year. And I know that if I work out regularly, I have a much easier time staying on the food track. So I know that I need to do it. For months and months, I had a membership at LA Fitness and I didn't go. When the local CrossFit decided to add that boot camp class, I was all in. I canc...