Day 1697 Record Keeping
Day 1669 Fixed Meditation (3 hours Vipassana while watching horror show)
Day 1543 Writing (6, 20 min Pomodoros)
Day 1082 Exercise (DID NOT DO)
Day 823 Mobility/Stretching (15 min, back, back erector, and shoulder smash, hip stretch)
Day 133 Flossing (All teeth)
Day 121 Monday Groceries
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Good sleep. Really depleted and tired today for some reason. Maybe it’s the cold weather…and my lack of warm clothes.

Horror and Vipassana
Over the course of my meditations I’ve tried to practice it in real world situations. But what i’ve found is a good half step is to practice during movies - especially ones designed to draw out tension and awkwardness.

Over the weekend I got sucked into watching The Haunting of Hill House, a Netflix horror series praised for being really good.

I hate horror. I get scared really easily, I get spooked, and usually can’t really sleep well afterwards.

But while using Vipassana to keep a firm hold over my emotions, I was able to not be scared, but more importantly, actually enjoy the series.

In addition to navigating the intensity (I’m not claiming this series was intense, just that movies are designed to cause emotional ups and downs), it was a great challenge with regards to duration. I practice for three episodes today - an hour, then a break, then 2 hours at length. That’s pretty good, and definitely something I think I would have struggled with before.

The fact that I was able to enjoy it is also a great example of finding things that I tend to shirk away from, and using it as an object of meditation. The only way is through, as some meditators say!

Day 1678 Record Keeping
Day 1650 Fixed Meditation (10 jhana, 10 gratitude, 10 metta, 10 intro Houston Zen Center sit)
Day 1524 Writing (3, 20 min Pomodoros)
Day 1063 Exercise (20 min walking/running, 15 min biking, 15 min elliptical)
Day 804 Mobility/Stretching (15 min, anterior and interior shin smash)
Day 114 Flossing (ALL TEETH!)
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Bad sleep. Checked out the Houston Zen Center, which is quite close to where I live. They had an intro talk with a 10 min sit.

I’m beginning to think that there is this weird connection with bifurcating habits into small cross trained bits and increases in overall outputs. I understand how that would work - I think I was thinking about increasing habit loads as a matter of willpower when it was more about boredom and attention. When I do one type of cardio for 45 minutes it’s boring and I can’t do it. But when I break it up, it’s new, it’s interesting, much like the Novelty Affect or gamification, it just keeps my attention.

But further than that, it seems to have a system wide impact. I naturally increased mobility and flossing without really intending to. I shall monitor this to see if it continues, but it’s definitely an interesting result, and one that could offer an answer to what I long considered the missing link to my system.

I am curious in the future of really zoning in to the ecology of going from super habit to habit terminus. There really isn’t often that much to go after a tiny habit. Flossing with all teeth vs flossing 4 teeth isn’t that much of a difference. And for meditation or exercise, you really wouldn’t want to do more than 45 minutes or an hour of each. So zooming in to what it feels like increasing output is important, even though I’d be really fumbling as to metrics and even definitions of things like willpower versus attention or energy.