Good Habits: Meditation

I had mentioned back in October that I was assigning myself the resolution to acquire and maintain one new good habit each month.  I am pleased to note that my October and November habits, while kinda small boring things (November was consistently getting out of bed before 7:30am) have gone very well.

I'd been casting about a bit for a good habit for December, and the internet cookie demons that follow my Google searches and subconscious thoughts put an app called Headspace in front of my face.  I had been considering taking up some light form of meditation, and Headspace is an app that provides resources to help towards that very goal.

So far, it's been going very well, and I think I owe the success in some part to a co-worker I had once upon a time.

Years ago, upon remarking that I'd been having some serious trouble sleeping because I couldn't get my brain to simmer down and rest, said co-worker recommended meditation.  I felt like that was extreme and silly, but he described to me the most basic form of meditation--just focusing very specifically on breathing and what it felt like to breathe.

I took this up on the many nights when I encountered trouble sleeping.  When ever I felt my mind wander, I would direct it again to consider very specifically what it felt like to breathe.  I had remarkable success with this for the considerable majority of my troubled nights.

And so, these short daily sessions (over the course of a week I've progressed myself from three to ten minutes daily) have seemed very familiar and comfortable to me.  And I find this quite an easy thing to do as part of my new, stable evening routine.

In short, it's been a pretty positive experience so far, and I find the app and the gentleman guiding me through the app to be quite pleasant.

www.Headspace.com

Update (12/19/18)

Meditation with the app has been pretty successful.  This week, I tried to transition to self-directed meditation and... it's MUCH harder.  I'm finding that either my brain goes off on 5-10 minute tangents that I can't track back to their starting point or I fall asleep and just wake up the next morning slightly befuddled.  It's definitely a journey.

Big Adventures: Honeymoon in Japan

A note: I started writing this blog post shortly after Jason and I returned from our Honeymoon in 2017.  Apparently I got distracted halfway through and didn't finish.  I have now attempted to finish it.  Here's what I've got.

When Jason and I started talking about marriage, I started brainstorming honeymoon destinations.  By the time we became officially engaged, my heart was absolutely set on Japan.  Not just anytime Japan, but specifically the end of March and beginning of April, in cherry blossom season.  This actually dictated our wedding date in the end.

(Very) early morning view of Tokyo Tower.

So, just about a week after we tied the knot, we hopped on a plane (woohoo, 11 hours flight) for Narita International Airport.

The first half of our trip was spent in Tokyo, specifically Roppongi (based off of a recommendation from my boss).  It wasn't until later that I discovered how absolutely serendipitous that neighborhood, and the spectacular placement of our hotel) was for us.

For one, we were within spitting distance of the Tokyo Tower (though the Tokyo Sky Tree has eclipsed this tourist destination for architecture, height, and view, the Tokyo Tower remains iconic for me and a visual fixture in the imported media that made me fall in love with the country and culture in the first place).  Pictures didn't accurately capture how warmly it glowed in the darkness.

Second, we happened to be within (sorta) walking distance of a very specific shrine that I had wanted to visit.  The Hikawa shrine in question was the inspiration for the one of the same name in an extremely iconic and classic piece of animated television from Japan (lest I reveal the heights of my nerdiness).

Due to some pretty prodigious jet lag, Jason and I took the WAAAY early morning walk to this shrine (our feet and legs regretted that decision days into the trip).  We were there well before anyone else, and definitely before the main shrine itself was open. Once we were there, though, the magic inherent in sites like these was apparent.

On my list of things to do in Tokyo was to visit a science museum.  For my part, seeing a familiar concept through another culture's eyes is a lot of fun.  This museum was FILLED with all sorts of specimen of various creatures, and frequently there didn't seem to be a ton of rhyme or reason to it.  But it was pretty enjoyable.

Disney fan that I am, Tokyo DisneySea and DisneyLand took up two days of our trip.  DisneySea was gorgeous.  The world that they'd built inside the park was so lovely.

Part of the park was made to look like classic Cape Cod, pictured below.  Somehow, despite being so many thousands of miles away from my semi-native US East Coast, here was a pretty convincing view (you know, for a small area in a theme park).

Wacky churros were also a thing.  The first one below was a potato churro--sort of an extruded mashed potato that was then fried and covered in seasoning.  My newly minted husband wasn't a fan, but I was totally into it.  The second churro was slightly more conventional, except that instead of cinnamon sugar, it was covered in melon flavored sugar.  I wasn't quite as down with that one...

One of the things that most fascinated me about our trip into the world of Japanese Disney was something that became apparent day one as we were waiting to get into the park.  Apparently it's a thing that groups of people (usually girls, but sometime guys and couples) would plan a unifying outfit for their Disney day.  They'd all come wearing the same outfit and same hat (sometimes it was the same outfit and each had a unique hat).  At some point, I was just trying to collect pictures of each group and I've included some below.

The Disney hat game is strong in Japan.

So, besides horrendously long lines (we waited something like 3 hours for Indiana Jones), aching feet, weird churros, and huge masses of school age people that made me wonder how so very many students could be skipping school on a random Tuesday, our Disney chapter of Japan was it's own kind of magical.

Dun dun da-da-dundun daaaaaah (doo-doo-doo-doo-dooooo)!

Adventures in the city were fun.  Stumbling upon random gardens (not to mention the Imperial Palace) makes for beautiful scenes and really nice pictures.

And the food!

Maybe not so much this food...

We spent some time in Kyoto as well.  Had kind of a rough start in the city but things evened out and we started to enjoy ourselves.

I think taiyaki (a pastry filled with sweet red bean paste, pictured below) may have been the husband's single favorite thing the entire trip.

We also hiked up Fushimi Inari, semi-world famous for it's long tunnels of orange-red tori gates.  It was a rough climb on our already kinda beat up feat and tired legs, but I'm glad we stuck it out and made it to the top.  So much along the way was absolutely beautiful, and we hit plenty of hidden little gorgeous areas on the way down--so worth it.

Before leaving Kyoto, we picked up one of our favorite omiyage (sorta like souvenirs) of the trip, though this one was a gift for my father.  There's a knife shop in Kyoto that's something like 200-300 years old.  The elderly gentleman running the shop cloud just barely speak any English, but he showed us several kinds of knives.  He said there were some that were manufactured, but many he'd made himself.  We were super on board with taking one of his and he seemed so pleased and "signed" the blade (that's what he's up to below, tapping out the characters) before wrapping it up for us.

The last significant leg of our trip was in Nara, the truly "honeymoon" portion.  We stayed at a very nice ryokan in the mountainside of Nara (lovely view down on the city from their parlor below).

Below are our tatami mat floored room and little closed patio...

...aaaaaand our private open air bath with our little private garden.  This.  Was.  Wonderful.  This was easily my favorite part of the trip.  I think I used the bath something like 5-7 times in the two-ish days we were there, it was so wonderful...

Of course, I got super sick our first morning there.  We arrived and rested and my body clearly decided that the overwhelming exertion and activity of the week and a half preceding was finally too much.  But that wasn't going to keep me from taking a million baths and eating our fancy kaiseki meals in our little private dining room (RIGHT?! IS THIS NOT AWESOME!?)

Or going out into Nara, apparently.  One of the neato things that Nara is known for are the parks full of deer that will bow to you in exchange for treats.

So, all in all, Japan was freaking awesome.  And we want to go back.  Like.  All of the time.

Why Wait for the New Year?

I'd read somewhere once that it takes two weeks to form a new habit.  I don't know how true that is and I've since read multiple other takes on that rule (one article said 90 days is the real sticking point)--but that thought stuck somewhere in my brain.

Sometime last year, I got it into my head to develop a good habit and get my husband to follow suit.  It was a small thing--when we came home on a daily basis, we tended to leave our shoes in what passes for our "entry way" next to the shoe/coat rack.  For some number of weeks, I made a fully conscious effort to put my shoes away in the shoe rack there, and reminded the husband about it, too.  I don't know how long it's been, but we're both fully trained to do this now--and we largely do this now without even thinking about it.

It may seem trivial, but the success I have seen at my year of reading resolution has left me feeling fairly empowered.  My original reading goal boiled down to reading 12 new books this year.  I'm half way through October and I'm on my 25th book.  This and another new habit in my life has got me contemplating good habits in general.

Why wait for the new year to start a new resolution?  My new goal is to attempt to incorporate a new good habit each month.  I won't share most of them here either due to them being of a personal nature, or simply boring.  But so far, my October habit is coming along nicely, and as of today I've pulled off two consecutive weeks.  I'm going to try and keep them simple.  These aren't meant to be wild, life changing habits--just little things that I think will bring some small improvement to my life.

It has occurred to me that it might become difficult to come up with new habits after a while, but I hope that some can be slow builds to bigger goals.  Like... starting with requiring myself to be out of bed by a certain time every morning (regardless of how much time I need to get ready that day).  And being in bed by a certain time.  And then later incorporating a walk every morning.  And so on.

Here's hoping.

New Year's Resolutions, Update

My original goal was to read at least one book a month.  Depending on how you interpret the semantics of that, I either needed to read 12 books before the end of the year, or complete at least one book per month (though, looking back, by not completing Name of the wind 'til Feb, I think I technically failed...?).  Going by the latter criteria, though, I met my goal at the end of May.

That being said, I'm still going strong and completed my 18th book yesterday.  For those who are interested and following along, here's the full list so far.

(UPDATED Jan 4, 2019)

1. The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss (Jan - Feb 2)
2. American Gods - Neil Gaiman (Feb 2 - 17)
3. Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (Feb 17 - 21)
4. I, Robot - Isaac Asimov (Feb 21 - 27)
5. The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (Feb 27 - Mar 4)
6. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell (Mar 4 - 20)
7. Wise Man's Fear - Patrick Rothfuss, sequel (Mar 20 - Apr 4)
8. Dune - Frank Herbert (Apr 4 - 19)
9. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë (Apr 19 - 25)
10. Animal Farm - George Orwell (Apr 25 - 28)
11. The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand (April 28 - May 22)
12. Ready Player One - Ernest Cline (May 22 - 31)
13. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance - Angela Duckworth (June 1 - 8)

I took a break here, so I'm not actually super sure when I started the next book, but it became available in my app on Jun 21.

14. Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury (Jun 21? - July 10)
15. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - Mark Haddon (July 10 - 12)
16. The Color of Magic - Terry Prachet (July 12 - 24)

The next book I took on was Catch 22, but a couple hours in I decided I couldn't stand it.  Ultimately I decided to can it and move on.

17. Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë (July 25 - Aug 12)
18. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson  (Aug 12 - 28)
19. Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton (Aug 29 - Sept 3)
20. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott (Sept 4 - 20)
21. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry - Neil deGrasse Tyson (Sept 20 - 25)
22. A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle (Sept 25 - 30)
23. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick (Oct 1 - 8)

It took a while for the next book to come up available in my library app, so I went looking for the first reasonable thing that I could download immediately and read quickly.  That's how I ended up with Alice.

24. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (Oct 13 - 16)
25. A Wild Sheep Chase - Haruki Murakami (Oct 17 - 22)
26. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (Oct 22 - 27)
27. Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut (Oct 27 - Nov 3)
28. The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway (Nov 3, wow that was a quickie)
29. A Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin (Nov 4 - 7)
30. The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver (Nov 7 - 14)
31. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood (Nov 15 - 20)
32. 1984 - George Orwell (Nov 15 - 27)

I overlapped 31 and 32 a bit, because I couldn't find Handmaid's Tale as an audiobook and had so much walking, train riding, and driving time to fill.

33. The Road - Cormac McCarthy (Nov 27 - Dec 4)

I started A Brief History of Time, but only got about a quarter of the way through it before I decided to try it again another time--approximately 90% of it was going over my head and I think I ultimately need more space to re-read it (not unlike Astrophysics for People in a Hurry).

34. Beloved - Toni Morrison (Dec 9-ish - 18)
35. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (Dec 19 - 19) *quickie
36. And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie (Dec 20 - 25)

At this point, I told myself I was done for the year... but then I started Flowers for Algernon.

37. Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes (Dec 27 - Jan 1)

I'm allowing that to stand because I know I didn't start Name of the Wind on Jan 1, so I think it still counts towards the year.

I'll compose my overall thoughts on this year of reading in another post.

Small Adventures: Kenneth Hahn

Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area is... well, the name pretty much sums it up.  It contains the regular aspects of your normal California city park (playgrounds, covered picnic tables, basic charcoal grills, man-made pond and water falls, etc.), combined with a little, barely curated wilderness dedicated to hiking trails and natural flora/fauna, plus a big green space up away from everything else.

The trail itself has some pretty steep portions that kicked our butt a little, as well as many mini trails leading you off in strange directions that you hope will eventually lead back to the main trail.  There's a little map that you can get from the Visitor's Center that does a pretty poor job of representing the available trails--most of the smaller ones don't show up on the map, and the larger ones don't reflect the actual twist and turns of their reality.  But overall it's a nice little bit of wilderness within 5 minutes of home.

There are wildflowers everywhere.  My husband is a gamer, and his Skyrim senses have him pointing out every other occurrence of thistles we encounter.  They are a rather lovely purple color, though.

Once you've conquered the afore mentioned inclines, you're afforded nice view of the surrounding area.  In one direction, pretty much all you get is a wide expanse of oil derricks.  Other directions get you a little more wilderness, suburban sprawls, and (way off in the distance) downtown LA.

Possibly my favorite flora find of the day were the herds of cactus, clearly deep into a blooming phase.  We took a LOT more pictures of cactus blossoms, but I won't inflict all of them on the blog.

We found this strange contraption in the big green space in the loop at the top of the park.  The oddities of my father's college days meant I actually knew what the thing was: a frisbee golf basket.  We found three more on our way out of the loop.

This duck was kinda brutal.  When we first encountered him, he was swimming in the water and darted his beak for something in the water.  Clearly he'd caught something.  We wanted him to swim closer so we could see what he caught.  A fish?  A really big bug?  We were somewhat horrified and fascinated to find that he'd actually caught a small mouse.  You can just barely make it out in the picture, that the back legs and tail are hanging out of his mouth...  Nature is weird and fascinating.

TURTLES!  That's all.

The afore-mentioned man made pond/lake is pictured below.  There were geese and ducks and people fishing, which was apparently totally kosher according to signs.  I can't imagine wanting to eat anything that came out of that pond, though.

A random wild turkey-thing in the parking lot wrapped up the fauna tour for us.

This was an easy one compared to last week--just 2.51 miles and we stopped a lot for the views.