On the Second Day of 2024: Notebooks

Morning meditation two days in a row after nearly a year and a half without. This morning my feet didn’t fall asleep as I sat cross-legged on the cushion, but I did find myself somehow less focused than I was yesterday. If opening my eyes to look at the timer is any indication of aContinue reading “On the Second Day of 2024: Notebooks”

On the First Day of 2024: Meditation, Bicycling, Music, Reading and Writing

I tried as best as I could to have a great day, a day that included at least a sampling of all the things I love to do and all the things I’m committing to do more of in the new year. I’ll make a quick list here for your generous perusal. Holding good toContinue reading “On the First Day of 2024: Meditation, Bicycling, Music, Reading and Writing”

Mindfulness in 2023: A Reflection

It has been five years since I have written one of these end-of-the-year reflections. I’m coming into this one after rereading what I wrote in 2018. In the intervening half a decade, I must have been just too overwhelmed by COVID and the ending of a career in education to be bothered to do aContinue reading “Mindfulness in 2023: A Reflection”

A Reflection on 37 Years of Marriage

Note: I wrote this little essay one year ago today on the occasion of our 36th year of marriage. At the time I thought it could probably use some revision, and thought that I would later think of other things to say. But I reread it today, on our 37th wedding anniversary, and I thinkContinue reading “A Reflection on 37 Years of Marriage”

How I Know I Need To Start Meditating Again

It has been almost a year since the last time I meditated on a regular basis, or frankly, at all. In my last year of teaching, in the same school I taught at for 32 years, in the first year back to in-person learning after the COVID-19 shut down, a group of teachers and administratorsContinue reading “How I Know I Need To Start Meditating Again”

A Reflection on 36 Years of Marriage

Note: I wrote this little essay today over about three or four hours. It could probably use some revision, and later on I bet dollars to donuts I will think of other things to say. But I wanted to publish it today, as today is my 36th wedding anniversary. Here it is, in its currentContinue reading “A Reflection on 36 Years of Marriage”

A Journal of the Plague Year: #26

What a terrible time to stop drinking. In the first week of this glorious new year, I was so disheartened by the attempted coup, the insurrection in our nation’s capital, it would have been SO easy to drown out that despair with alcohol. Similarly, it would have been so simple (and yet impossible) to self-medicateContinue reading “A Journal of the Plague Year: #26”

A Journal of the Plague Year: #25

This morning I got up to find a comment posted to one of my blog entries! How exciting is that? I will tell you. It’s pretty exciting. It’s rare, these days–it’s rare in general, but it seems more rare these days–in part, I know, because I have not been writing. Guess what the blog entryContinue reading “A Journal of the Plague Year: #25”

A Journal of the Plague Year: #6

This morning (upon waking? in the shower? during meditation, while Sam Harris spoke to me about conscious awareness? over breakfast?), I found myself thinking Thoreau. Passages from Walden were emerging from the memory banks where favorite books are stored. It occurred to me that if one were to grab a classic from American Literature off the shelfContinue reading “A Journal of the Plague Year: #6”

Life Envy: The FOMO

  I want to be living that life. By myself, late at night, sitting in the dark of the back yard with my phone, the dog, and a drink, I actually heard myself say this out loud: I want to be living that life. It’s crazy, I know, but looking sometimes at pictures of peopleContinue reading “Life Envy: The FOMO”