Getting Started

As of yesterday I have meditated daily for two weeks!  The decision to start was not thought out at all... one morning I was lying in bed and thought "I should meditate!"  And there we go.  I have been using an app called Calm for the meditations.  They have nature sounds you can listen to, and timers, but I have been using their guided meditations which are available in 2, 5, 10, 15, 25, or 30 minute increments.  It starts out by getting you relaxed and focused, and then there is silent time.  So far I have been doing either 10 or 15 minutes.  I wish there was a 20 minute time slot, because that ten minute jump from 15 to 25 seems really daunting.  I like the feeling I get from it, though... relaxed but energized, centered, and clear-headed.  From previous experience, I know that I cannot meditate right before bed, because it seems to get me mentally hopped up and I never sleep well.  I have been aiming to do it first thing in the morning, because it really does seem to put me in a good mood for the day.  This is one of those habits that I would like to develop for life, even though I am only doing it for a month for the list.

So, my big ordeal right now is my right foot.  Last Monday, I hit it on my bed (it's a storage bed, so it's solid with drawers) and although the bruises are fading, it still hurts quite a lot.  I chipped a bone on this same pinky toe years ago, and I don't remember it hurting this much.  Plus, the pain seems concentrated behind the toe, so that was concerning me.  So this morning, I went to a MedCheck clinic where they took x-rays and told me that there are no fractures (thank goodness!), but that I probably bruised the bone which can hurt just as much as a break.  Needless to say, I'm not getting around very well, and I haven't been able to do a few things that I had planned.  Bummer.

I sat down the other day and started putting some information together for some of the list items.  One thing I discovered is that I have been to a lot more of the museums around town than I realized!  I may have to either broaden my definition of a museum or expand slightly outside of Indianapolis.  That is a good thing, I think, but it did throw me off a little.  I have also written to my grandparents for this month and found some notebooks to use for my various lists.  I'm excited to get moving (figuratively if not quite literally) on my List.  I am not going to let myself leave so many things until the last minute like I did last time.

New Beginnings

Like it says in the intro, this is my second time going through the Day Zero project.  Why am I doing this again?  I really did have fun with it before, even though there were times I forgot about and times I wished it would go away.  It got me to do some things that I had been procrastinating for years and some things I had never thought about before hearing about the project.  It gave me a way to bond with some of my friends --  the one who got me to join the project in the first place and the friend that decided to make her own list after I talked about it.  And it helped me look at my own life a little differently and learn some things about myself.

So lets talk about this new list.  I started writing down ideas for a new list not long after I started the first one!  By the time I sat down and seriously started writing out my 101 projects, I already had almost sixty items.  In the end, I had 113, which gave me the opportunity to pare it down to the things I most wanted to accomplish (although there are definitely still a few silly things in there!).  My life has changed a lot since I started the first list in 2011... I lost my oldest friend, my godchildren, my pet, and my job.  I gained new friends, a kitten, part of my old job back, and a better relationship with my father.  If there were a scale to measure my life now against my life then, I'm not sure things are quite in balance yet, so I tried to put things in my list that will add to my life in positive ways and things that will make me happy.  I also swore that after last time I would not have things on my list that require me to do things multiple times!  I cannot tell you how many times I wanted to smack myself for having things like "do item A six times"!  The repetition, while sometimes meaningful, made it tedious and neverending.  So I did it again.  Yes, yes, I know.  But I decreased the frequencies on the times I did it, and I only have four items that will last the length of the whole project (including posting updates on this very blog!).  And I solemnly swear not to complain about having to do things more than once in order to cross it off my list.  If I try it, call me out.

Once again, I included reasons for why I chose each item for the list.  I think it makes it interesting for you, and it helps me remember why I felt those things were important.  It also helped me when I was trying to narrow down the list to the 101... if it was something I had seen on someone else's list but I couldn't come up with a good reason, then obviously it didn't resonate for me and it got cut.  I also decided to group things into categories.  I liked this idea when I saw it on other people's lists, and I decided it would help me better see what kinds of things I was doing.  I am also hoping it will help me keep track of the list for myself.  It sounds crazy, but there were many times I would review my list and think "that's on my list?  I don't remember putting that on there!".

I'm excited about this!  Tomorrow is day 1 out of 1001.  We are set to end December 31, 2017 (wow, that sounds so far away!), and I am excited about celebrating the end of this project and New Year's with my friend who talked me into doing this the first time around.  I didn't finish my list last time, and I'm okay with that, but I want to finish this one.  So here we go... 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...