This is the main reason I’ve been shaky in recording the last few days, and why my word count has jumped from a few 100 words to several thousands (13,000 per day the last few days). I ended up telling myself I wasn’t going to try it this year, and ended up starting on the 25th, finishing in a week.

My book was specifically on meditation and anxiety relief techniques - it has been something I’ve been working on, but I wanted to dedicate it to my mother, and other friends who have been having problems in this area.

I wanted the book to be simple and practical without any of the extreme esoteric nature that most meditation books have. The emphasis is on practicality.

It also gave me a place to really delve into techniques that I had read once and forgotten - I have gigs of videos and books, but many of the techniques were hidden in hours upon hours of recordings or pages. So it was a place to remind myself, and also a place to compile all the most effective ones.

It also gave me time to figure out a good implementation plan. I currently do fixed meditation, but I want to rotate the types of mental exercises in this established super habit in order to have a well equipped arsenal of techniques.

I also want to hone a progression for dynamic meditation - I tried this a long time ago to great success, but dropped it from my program because it was just too exhausting to do for the entire day.

In my book I describe a progression based on time - 20 minutes (in Tiny Habit form!) of just noting. And then either increasing times while doing techniques OR increasing time while countering one negative mental habit (like bodily stress) until it slowly encompasses the whole day.

This is exciting stuff - and I will continue to have to experiment with these to see which one works best. It is exciting because it is a practical progression to really changing the self, and in my mind, achieving something lasting.

Anyway despite the exhaustion and the missing recording, it was a fantastic experience, and I’m glad I did it.