meditation

Day 253: April Monthly Challenge

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Happy April! I have three updates for today! My March monthly challenge of meditating every day went pretty well! It was a bit spotty at the beginning due to travel and work, but I think I’ve gotten to the point where I’ll try to meditate every day. It really does kick start my day in that I can be more productive after I meditate, and I feel much calmer, and ready to face the day when I meditate. Definitely something I want to continue doing and incorporate into my life for the long term.

Update two! For the month of April, I’m going to take a photo every day and post it on Twitter. I think I decided to do this for three reasons:

  1. It’ll tie into my gratitude since I’ll be taking pictures of things I’m interested in and/or grateful for.
  2. It’ll tie into my meditation, because I’ll be forced to notice things instead of walking through life on autopilot.
  3. It’ll force me to get out of the house.

Feel free to follow me at @CupofJoyce. I’ll tweet pictures and random thoughts. That’s it mostly. And I’ll be providing updates over here, of course.

Update three! I was online dating for awhile, but I’ve decided to stop for the moment. No one was responding to me and I grew very disheartened and discouraged. I would still like to meet someone, but I’ll have to think of new ways of doing that. I’m not going to cross it off in my About Me section, but I think I’m going to grey it out for awhile. Meeting someone just seems impossible right now, and so I’m going to take a break.

I lied. Update four! I am making headway on my writing goals and joined a bunch of websites (which I paid for!) to look for agents. I would say I’m a quarter way done this edit and so once I finish (and write a query and synopsis) I will begin my quest for an agent. I’ll certainly be writing a few updates.

Until tomorrow.

112 days to go.

Day 244: Monthly Check-in Pt. 8

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Time for check-in number eight. I’ve felt in a funk for the last month-ish, so I’m don’t really feel I’ve made any progress. Let’s have a look-see though.

  1. Work on my Novel – I’m editing my book again and it feels like things are getting there, although I’m often still unhappy by a sentence or paragraph. Well, I’ll continue editing away and see how things go. I also didn’t make a list of agents or start a query letter or anything. I did break down those tasks into smaller, more manageable tasks today, so hopefully I can make some progress next month.
  2. Ballet – I didn’t go at all this month. Or to yoga. It was a bad month for exercising. I’ll try to get back on the wagon this week.
  3. Promotion –  DONE! 
  4. Get out of credit card debt – This is going really well still! I paid off a large chunk of my debt and am continuing to pay off my credit card at a steady rate. I wish it would go faster, but unless I win the lottery or sell my book I’ll have to continue paying it off one week at a time.
  5. In a relationship – Bumbling away. I haven’t met anyone in person though and most people don’t respond to my messages. Maybe I’ll delete the app finally. I’m tired.
  6. Meditation – I know this isn’t part of my big five, but it’s my monthly goal. I meditated pretty much every day last week and I’m pretty proud of myself. I get fidgety and anxious sometimes, but I think I’m getting better. That’s all I can ask for really.

So what is that? Two and a half out of five. That’s not bad. Not great, but I’ll try to better next month. I’m always thinking about ways to improve my schedule (definitely needs some improvement).

Like I said, I’m feeling in a funk. I haven’t been exercising so I really need to make that part of my life and maybe it’ll make me feel better. We’ll see.

Until tomorrow.

121 days to go.

Day 237: Slip ups and Starting again

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Last year I used Calm to try to get into meditation. It worked for the most part, but somewhere I slipped and then I went from meditating occasionally to not meditating at all. At the beginning of 2018, I switched to Headspace. I don’t think there’s a big difference between the two, but I am finding myself meditate more consistently. I think that’s just my resolutions though.

This week was a tough one since I had to work a few 12 hour days. Plus feeling sluggish after spring forward, I slipped up a little. But that’s okay. After recovering from all my work and that whole one hour of change (haha), I began meditating for a few minutes, and then five minutes, and now I’m back to ten minutes. I do think the monthly challenge helped me to get back on track more quickly than if I wasn’t doing this.

Hopefully this week will be seven for seven and I’ll just build from there.

Until tomorrow.

128 days to go.

Day 173: Gratitude 13

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Gratitude of the day: Meditation

As part of my New Year’s Resolutions, I started meditating every day…or mostly every day. I started using the app Headspace and have been going through the basics or the minis (if I’m crunched for time). I really like the guided meditations as my mind wanders off and I often forget to bring it back to meditating. It’s only been a short time, but I’ve also found the body scan to be very helpful. I guess I never noticed before, but I hold a ball of anxiety and stress right above my stomach and I’m just naturally stressed and clenching my muscles all the time (work).

I don’t like having this feeling all the time, but I do know that now is the time to do something about it before it grows or gets worse. I exercised on Thursday and I’m trying to do a few deep breaths every time I notice it’s there. It’s a work in progress.

Until tomorrow.

192 days to go.