March 4, 2017 · 1:00 am

Suggestion Saturday: March 4, 2017

Here is this week’s list of poems, predictions about the future, open letters, and other links from my favourite corners of the web.

Late February. This poem perfectly captures what this time of year feels like. I wish I’d found it earlier so I could have included it in last week’s Suggestion Saturday post!

Extremely Fair via SHLubin. There’s a lot of information to process in this post. I read it a few times, and I’ve also been following the #ExtremelyFair hashtag on Twitter to see what other people had to say about it.

My Father Saw via SabeehaRehman. Every family should record and pass down oral histories like this one. Wow!

A Letter to Hermione Granger via SanchWrites. What an interesting idea. I’d never thought about writing a letter to your favourite literary character before.

Mars Needs Lawyers. I love these kind of speculative but still realistic predictions about what could happen in the near future.

Will Democracy Survive Big Data and Artificial Intelligence? This is another long article, but it’s a good one.

From The Epidemic of Gay Loneliness:

The term researchers use to explain this phenomenon is “minority stress.” In its most direct form, it’s pretty simple: Being a member of a marginalized group requires extra effort. When you’re the only woman at a business meeting, or the only black guy in your college dorm, you have to think on a level that members of the majority don’t.

 

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March 2, 2017 · 1:00 am

5 Unexpected Things that Can Make You More Mindful

I’ve been thinking about mindfulness a lot lately. It’s a habit that needs to be built up and reinforced over a long period of time. Mindfulness is not the sort of thing that you can achieve in an hour, a day, or a week.

With that being said, there are certain experiences in life that can give you valuable opportunities to become more mindful.

Waiting in Line

One of the easiest but also most surprising changes that came into my life when I started trying to be more mindful happened the next time I stood in a line.

Rather than impatiently wondering how much longer I’d be waiting or why some shoppers wait to begin to search for their wallet until every single item has been bagged and scanned, I started framing this as an opportunity to observe how people behave when they have nothing to do.

Some folks become so engrossed in their smart phones that they don’t notice anything going on around them. Others try to strike up a conversation with the first person to catch their eye. (The jokester in me wonders if the first group is always desperately trying to avoid the second one!)

You will overhear interesting snatches of conversation as well. People will talk about all sorts of things if they get bored and restless enough. The conversation I found most thought-provoking, believe it or not, had to do with whether or not a child truly needed more socks. One of the adults who was buying clothing for her thought she did. I can’t remember what the other one said, but it was fascinating to listen to them quietly discuss how many socks a child truly requires.

These days I enjoy watching the crowd move so much that I’m actually a little sorry when I reach the front of the queue and can no longer quietly pay attention to people who are standing so close to me.

Not Getting What You Want

Many years ago I interviewed for a job that I desperately wanted. It was with an organization that shared some of my biggest ideals, and so I began dreaming about what it would be like to be paid to pursue them. The hours, location, responsibilities, and salary were also exactly what I was looking for.

I thought I had a good shot at being offered it, so I was crushed when that didn’t happen.

It took me a long time to get over that dream I’d imagined. One of the things that helped the most was focusing on what I could do in that exact moment to feel better.

I couldn’t have the experiences I’d fantasized about, but there were a lot of other things I could do to cheer myself up as well as to prepare for future opportunities that were sure to come my way.

Government Bureaucracy 

Is there anything more annoying than waiting for a government agency to process your paperwork or make a decision?

I’ve had a lot of experience with this one. Becoming a Canadian citizen is an opportunity to live in the moment that literally lasts for years. There are so many steps along the way that you have no control over whatsoever.

Once you file all of the appropriate paperwork, it’s up to government employees that you’ll never meet to decide whether to approve, delay, or reject your application. They are impervious to how long it might take to process your application or how anxious you are to know the results.

If I could go through the process again, I’d be much more relaxed this time around. Waiting for the government to make a decision would give anyone the patience of a saint.

There are so many other examples I could give of how dealing with bureaucracy can actually be a good mindfulness tool, but I think I’ll save them for a future blog post.

Injuries, Pain, and Illnesses

Whether you’re waiting for possibly scary test results from your family doctor or figuring out how to go grocery shopping when you’re having trouble walking, injuries and illnesses provide a wonderful opportunity to live in the moment.

There is nothing anyone can do to speed up the amount of time it takes to find out if you have a life-threatening disease or for a broken limb to fully heal. In the meantime, you are left with a body that isn’t behaving the way you’d like it to.

My experiences with this have been mild and transitory so far, but there still have been a few times when I lived in limbo for a while. I’d be lying to you if I said that I was always peaceful during those long waits. It’s frightening not to know what the future holds, and I am definitely not a mindfulness guru.

With that being said, keeping my attention on what was happening in the present moment did help me to worry less about what might or might not happen to me in the future.

Grief

Someone I knew died years ago before they had a chance to tie up all of the loose ends in their life. Our relationship had been  complex and sometimes difficult for many different reasons, so I was surprised by the grief I felt after they were buried.

There had always been a small part of me that held onto a faint hope that our relationship would eventually improve. Having that sliver of hope snatched away for good was sad.

You can’t change the past, though. It is what it is, and remaining mindful as I adjusted to this change in life helped me to accept the finality of this person’s death. Not everyone gets the chance to fix the things they could or should have tried to fix much earlier on in their story.

 

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February 27, 2017 · 1:00 am

What Will Exercise Routines Be Like in a Hundred Years?

A new fitness fad comes along every decade or so. There were gentle stretching exercises for ladies in the 1910s, twist dances in the 1950s, aerobics videos in the 1980s, and Zumba classes in the 2010s. (If you haven’t seen it already, this video shows 100 years of fitness in 100 seconds).

A hundred years ago, exercise was built into everyone’s day. The vast majority of people didn’t own cars or many other modern conveniences back then. They walked or rode a horse into town, chopped wood, scrubbed their clothing by hand, planted, weeded, and then harvested their crops, preserved food, repaired their wagons and tools, carried buckets of water to the plants and animals under their care, and did many other physically demanding chores from morning until evening.

The First Half of My Prediction

As fossil fuels become far more rare and expensive, humans will start adding some of these activities back into their daily lives in order to save money. Walking a couple of miles to a nearby destination only costs as much extra food as it will take to fill your stomach once you need to eat again. While this has already been a common thing here in Toronto for many years, I see it becoming much more socially acceptable to walk to all kinds of places in suburban and rural communities, too, in the coming years.

Eventually the price of driving to all of those locations is going to be too high to do anything else on a regular basis. As grocery store costs rise, I wouldn’t be surprised if it also became more common for people who own a patch of unused land to start growing and preserving some of their own food again as well.

Exercise will no longer be about purposefully lifting weights or setting aside half an hour a day to break a sweat. People will naturally need to do these things during their daily routine in order to save money or maybe even to survive in general. This is going to change everything from what folks do for fun to how far away from their jobs or schools they’ll be willing to live.

I wouldn’t be surprised if tele-commuting became almost universally available for students and workers alike, especially for those who aren’t able to live closer to town for any number of reasons. Why physically go into school or the office if you can get all of the same information online while saving valuable money and time on the commute?

The Second Half of My Prediction

The other thing I see happening with exercise in the future is it becoming much more technologically-aware. We have just entered the age of digital fitness trackers, and I only see them becoming more important in the future for many different reasons.

Imagine students who are enrolled in online schools getting credit for gym class while they’re digging potatoes out of the garden or wiping off the solar panels next to their house. Some kids would respond much better to this than they would to playing the kinds of team sports that are generally shown as examples of staying active. I know that I would have been much more interested in gym class had I been shown a wider range of ways to stay fit and then been allowed to pick a few that interested me the most. There’s nothing wrong with liking football or basketball, but there are so many other forms of exercise out there!

Think about how much information your family doctor could get about your health if he or she was able to see an average of how many minutes of exercise you’ve gotten per day for the last year as well. Maybe he or she could also see your blood sugar levels, blood pressure numbers, and resting and active heart rates, too. I’ve known people whose blood pressure rises dramatically whenever they have it checked at the doctor’s office because they get so anxious around people in the medical profession. These sorts of changes to the way health data is collected could give doctors a much more accurate picture of how their patients are really doing.

Insurance companies could give discounts to people who agreed to share their activity levels or who showed a steady increase in the number of minutes of exercise they did every week as well. While I would never agree with forcing people to share this kind of information in order to qualify for insurance coverage, it could be a nice incentive for folks who want to save a little cash and begin some healthier habits at the same time.

Will some of these predictions come true far sooner than 2117? I wouldn’t be surprised if they did, to be honest. It will be interesting to see how technology and exercise continue to develop over the next few decades. Only time will tell if I’m right about some, all, or none of the societal changes I think are on their way.

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February 25, 2017 · 1:00 am

Suggestion Saturday: February 25, 2017

Here is this week’s list of stuff from my favourite corners of the web.

Counting Steps to Increase Physical Activity. Is everyone staying active this winter? I use a program similar to this one, and it’s been effective for me.

Orthorexia Nervosa “Unhealthy” Healthy Obsession via Charmsthefoodie. This is a self-test for an eating disorder called Orthorexia. While it wasn’t included in the DSM-5, I’m hoping it will be included in the future.

34 Books by Women of Color to Read This Year. I love these kinds of lists.

How Writing Poetry Every Day Made Me More Patient and Emotionally Resilient via businessinrhyme. I’d especially recommend this link to those of you who are poets.

Fantasy Novel Title Generator. This might work well for pet names, too. “Hero, Dragon, and Child” could be a book or a trio of mischievous cats that you’ve just adopted from the local animal shelter.

Motivating Factors in My Life via WomenWriters. What life was like for this writer who was stuck in a bad marriage in the 1960s.

From Helpful Tips for Biphobics:

Being biphobic is currently a popular sport for many, and does appear at first glance to be a simple task. However, it’s not as easy as it may seem, so I’ve compiled this list to help you be aware of the many pitfalls you might encounter.

First, it’s important to understand that as much as the intent of your biphobia may be to hurt bisexuals, you may be inadvertently helping them.

What have you been reading?

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February 23, 2017 · 10:10 am

5 More Modern Scifi Books You Should Be Reading

Last month I recommended five modern science fiction books that I really enjoyed to my readers. Today I decided to write a follow-up post so that I can recommend even more great reads to you! Who knows? Maybe this will become a series on this blog. We will see what happens in the future.

The Passage by Justin Cronin.

What is it about?

A virus turns humans into vampires so quickly that our species is now on the brink of extinction.

An FBI agent suddenly finds himself in charge of keeping an abandoned child safe in a world where no child is safe anymore.

Humanity must adjust to this new world, so the rest of the plot is about how that happens over a long period of time and what happens when the precautions people take to protect themselves begin to fail.

Why should you read it?

This is one of the most suspenseful and action-packed books I’ve read in a long time. Dividing it up into sections that told different pieces of the same story was a good idea. In some ways, it was sort of like three novellas set in the same universe one because each section was focused on such a specific part of the storyline.

One of the other things I appreciated about it was that the vampires weren’t misunderstood, secretly romantic, or anyone’s boyfriend. They were violent, dangerous, ugly, and menacing. This black-and-white approach to the genre was refreshing. I really like it when monsters act like monsters.

Oryx and Crake  by Margaret Atwood

What is it about?

It’s a dystopia set in the near future. Jimmy, a man who thinks he’s the last living human on earth, is grieving the loss of his friends Oryx and Crake.

His only companions are the Children of Crake, a small group of genetically-modified, human-like creatures who are about as intelligent as the average 7-year-old child. They think of him as a messenger from their creator and obey his every command.

The plot thickens when Jimmy runs into his old friends and realizes that he isn’t alone after all.

This is the first book in her MaddAddam trilogy. If you like it, the next two books in the series are just as excellent.

Why should you read it?

The first thing that drew me into the plot were all of the flashbacks to life right before society collapsed. Your social class determines everything from what kind of school you’re allowed to attend to how much food you have to whether or not you survive in this society. It is a very rigid system that’s basically impossible to escape.

The Children of Crake weren’t the only genetically modified creatures in this universe. In fact, they weren’t even the most interesting ones!

I also enjoyed the storytelling. This is something I’d especially recommend to anyone who has read a lot of science fiction or who is already a fan of Margaret Atwood’s writing in general. She plays around with this genre in some pretty spectacular ways.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie 

What is it about?

This is a collection of interviews done with people of all ages and backgrounds who survived the zombie apocalypse many years after humanity more or less won the war.

Patient Zero’s experiences are included early on. Most zombie fiction doesn’t bother showing where the virus comes from or how it started to spread, so I was fascinated by this section.

Another interview is with a feral child who somehow escaped being attacked and then survived alone in the woods for years before finally being rescued. Despite being much older now, this witness will always remain a small child as far as their mental understanding of the world goes.

There is also a dog who was trained to fight the zombies as part of a military strike against them. That interview was obviously done with one of the humans who worked with the dog, of course, but it was fascinating to see how such a partnership was created and why it functioned so well.

Why should you read it?

Regardless of whether you hated or loved the movie that shares the same name, this book is nothing like that film. The only thing they share in common is their title.

I loved the interviews because they covered the civilian, military, and medical sides to the story. Some characters saw and fought multiple zombies. Others had more sheltered experiences because of the nature of the work they did or where they happened to be when the outbreak began.

This reminded me of the oral histories I’ve read about real historical events. One person’s perspective can’t tell you the whole story, but you’ll learn a lot about what happened and what was possibly a myth or a misunderstanding if you interview many people and compare their memories.

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North

What is it about?

The title gives away much of the plot. Harry August is a man who keeps living the same lifetime over and over again.

No matter what he does or where he goes, every death that finds him only brings him back to the day of his birth.

This isn’t to say that every single lifetime of his is exactly the same, though. He makes different choices every time that lead to happier (or sadder!) outcomes later on in life.

Why should you read it?

Reincarnation is fascinating.

I’m also intrigued by the idea of reliving your life in order to correct mistakes that you made in it. Would things be better or worse if you hypothetically took back those cruel words you spat at someone, or never travelled to the place where that awful thing happened, or ordered a salad instead of the shrimp special on your twenty-third birthday that gave you life-threatening food poisoning the last time around?

11/22/63 by Stephen King

What is it about?

A high school English teacher named Jake who travels back through time to attempt to stop the assassination of President Kennedy.

Like The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, trying the change the past is much harder than it looks. Every time Jake changes one thing, the universe does its best to thwart him and restore time to the way it originally was.

Why should you check it out?

This isn’t your typical Stephen King tale. There are no monsters, demons, or gory plot twists. As much as I occasionally enjoy his pulpier work, this is a wonderfully mature and complex story that I’d recommend to people regardless of whether or not they’re already a fan of this author’s writing style.

This is one of those rare cases where I’d recommended watching the TV show by the same name just as much as I’d recommended reading it.

Is it cheating to admit that I’m not entirely sure I finished the book when I tried it a few years ago?  It’s been so long ago that I can’t remember for sure, but I love the TV show so much that I’m now planning to give the original story another try. Sometimes it takes me a few tries to read all the way through a full-length novel, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

This is the kind of story that excels on the small screen because of how much it depends on small details. In this case, visualizing those little details was much easier for me to do by watching it unfold one episode at a time. You may want to try both and see which one appeals to you most.

Happy reading!

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February 20, 2017 · 1:00 am

How to Survive a Post-Apocalyptic Storyline

Congratulations!

You’ve just been selected to be one of the secondary characters in an upcoming post-apocalyptic novel.

If you wish to die nobly in order to spur the main character on at a critical moment in the plot, please disregard the rest of this message. There is always a need for volunteers for this position, and so your sacrifice in this manner will be greatly appreciated by everyone who expects this kind of tearjerking moment in a world without any modern conveniences.

If you want to live, memorize these rules and be sure to follow them religiously once the first scene has begun. They won’t guarantee your survival, but they will greatly increase the odds of it.

  1. Ignore the news and the government. There has never been one single instance of a government body or a news organization having any clue what is really going on in an apocalypse. Do not listen to any advice they give, and avoid traveling to any safe area they recommend in the first few scenes. It will be a trap.
  2. If the protagonist travels east, head west. While this isn’t always something that’s possible to accomplish, staying out of the way as much as possible is the safest thing you can do until or unless you are promoted to a main character role. Every big battle will take place wherever the main character roams, so you will reduce your chances of getting caught up in one if you travel anywhere other than those locations. This rule can be broken during the climax if other secondary characters have already been killed off and if you are willing to take the risk that the author still has some tricks up his or her sleeve.
  3. Do not endear yourself to the audience. You will feel tempted at times to play up the best parts of your personality in order to lure some of the audience’s attention from the main characters, but encouraging them to love you will only increase the odds of you succumbing to whoever or whatever it is in the storyline that has killed off so many other people before you. This is especially true if you are young, vulnerable, or happen to remind the protagonist of a loved one that he or she left behind in the beginning of the story.
  4. Avoid playing the hero. If you know your safe house is surrounded by monsters, avoid any foolhardy attempts to sneak past them regardless of who in your party might be in dire need of medicine, food, or water in that scene. There is only one hero in this story, and any attempts to steal that spotlight will be interpreted by the writer as foreshadowing for your eventual death. Stay in the shadows and away from the dangers of sudden plot twists as much as possible while the keyboard is still clicking away.
  5. Remain slightly hopeful. Characters who lose all of their hope for the future are in just as much danger as characters who are still obnoxiously cheerful and upbeat after days of hiking through the mud and shivering the night away without a single blanket to keep them warm. Stay neutral when the dialogue is not focused on you and slightly hopeful but still realistic about the odds if you happen to get accidentally caught in the same scene with the main character after the opening act.
  6. Memorize the most common kinds of creatures found in the science fiction and fantasy genres. Elves and faeries are almost always trustworthy. Unicorns are harmless to non-virgin humans. Ghosts may be frightening, but they are rarely a genuine threat to anyone. Orcs, zombies, vampires, and goblins are always dangerous unless you happen to wind up in a rare post-apocalyptic romance novel where a member of their species happens to be the main character’s love interest. Once you know who or what you’re dealing with, you’ll know whether to stick with, tolerate, or avoid any non-human characters that may be lurking in the book.
  7. Listen to your elders. While not every post-apocalyptic story will include an older, wiser character who knows exactly what is going on, be sure to listen to them if they appear at any point in the storyline. The chances of that individual guiding you safely to the final scene are much higher than you might think.  People like this usually appear in the plot for a good reason and should be trusted unless you have an even stronger reason to ignore their sensible advice. In some cases, this can even shorten a full-length novel into a tidy short story with only a small reduction in the overall suspense and excitement of the tale.

With any luck, following all of these rules will help you survive until the final battle. Every character is more or less on their own at that point, so be sure to continue practicing your swordsmanship, long distance running, emergency medical drills, and spell casting until you know exactly what kind of book you will be assigned to and therefore what skills you will need to survive whatever disease, monster, battle, natural disaster, or other source of conflict may be coming your way.

Newer posts in this series:

How to Survive a Paranormal Storyline.

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February 18, 2017 · 1:00 am

Suggestion Saturday: February 18, 2017

Here is this week’s list of comic strips, confessions, and other links from my favourite corners of the web.

What Aliens Really Want with Humans.  If any aliens read this, I would gladly sign up for this sort of arrangement if I can bring my spouse and some other family members.

Shakespeare in the Bush. In 1966 an American anthropologist attempted to tell the story of Hamlet to the Tiv in West Africa. How well does Shakespeare’s work translate in a culture where leaders always have multiple wives, nobody knows what a ghost is, and witches are the source of a lot of people’s woes? You’ll have to keep reading to find out.

Telling Family the Childfree Choice via WriterDann. This was very good advice.

Netflix Cheating: Your Significant Other Is Probably Stepping Out on Your Joint Viewing. I’ve never done this to my spouse, but the title of this post alone was enough to make me recommend it. What a funny dilemma to have.

Thanks to Tumblr, I’m Genderqueer via tmamone. Trav has taught me so much about gender identity and how complex it can be for some people. This is an article they wrote recently about their experiences. I highly recommend checking it out.

From Rescue via BodyofBreen:

Yesterday, as I walked past the lighthouse and on toward the Boardwalk, a young man rushed past me, vaulted a fence, and, while standing at the cliff’s edge, shouted “Someone’s struggling. Help her!”

In the water below, a young woman was treading water dangerously close to the cliff face.

From Raising the American Weakling:

When she was a practicing occupational therapist, Elizabeth Fain started noticing something odd in her clinic: Her patients were weak. More specifically, their grip strengths, recorded via a hand-held dynamometer, were “not anywhere close to the norms” that had been established back in the 1980s.

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February 16, 2017 · 1:00 am

Why I’m Giving Yoga Another Chance

Those of you who have been following me online for a while might remember my previous forays into yoga.

I’ve tried a few different times now to practice this form of exercise regularly. I love the idea of becoming more physically flexible than I currently am. Yoga seems like it should fit in well with my current weightlifting and walking routines.

Why did I stop practicing yoga the first few times I tried it? 

Simply put, I got bored.

Yoga isn’t exciting like lifting weights.

There aren’t many tangible markers of your progress with it like there are when you move up to a heavier set of weights or suddenly find it easier to lift up grocery bags filled with canned goods.

Yoga doesn’t make your pulse race like cardio exercise either. I’ve never felt out of breath while doing it or wondered how much more I should be pushing my heart-rate up before backing off for a while.

The same thing could be said of a lot of things, though.

I lifted weights for quite a while before I saw any big results with them, and I am able to walk briskly and to dance for much longer periods of time than I could when I first got back into regular exercise.

I didn’t see a lot of progress at first when I started studying Spanish either, but that is beginning to change as well. There

Yoga isn’t any different from those things, so I think I’m going to be giving it another try.

How do I hope to succeed this time?

  1. By picking a different introduction to it. Part of my problem was that the first few Youtube series I’ve tried for people who are new to yoga weren’t very interesting. The instructors in them spoke in quiet, monotone voices, and they often moved  from one pose to the next without explaining what they were doing.
  2. By ignoring the little voice in my head that complains about being bored. Sometimes I get bored when I mediate, too, but that doesn’t stop me from plugging away at it. This isn’t a case of me being ethically or physically uncomfortable with what I’m asking my body to do, so I’m going to try to push through my initial reaction to see if I can find the good parts of yoga.
  3. By focusing on the parts of it I do like. One of the reasons why I’m so interested in getting back into this type of exercise is that stretching certain muscles feels really good. I especially like the stretches that involve gentle twisting my calves and lower legs in general in certain directions.That isn’t a part of my body that I spend a lot of time thinking about, but I expect a lot out of it and enjoy being able to flex them.
  4. By trying again if this attempt doesn’t work. While I sincerely hope that this will be the time that this form of exercise starts to feel more exciting to me, I’m also prepared to regroup and try again later if it doesn’t work out.

I will keep all of you updated on my progress.

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February 13, 2017 · 1:00 am

The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Meditation

There are certain stages people seem to go through when they first begin meditating. Today I’m going to walk through them with you, so buckle your seat belts and prepare for a fun ride.

Stage 1: Confusion

A lot of guides make meditation sound so easy. Sit down somewhere comfortable, close your eyes, and clear your mind, they say.

Sitting and not thinking is going feel really weird and confusing in the beginning, though. This isn’t normally how people behave. Our minds really aren’t used to it, so they need some time to figure out what is happening. While they adjust, you might feel confused or like you’re not meditating the right way.

Don’t worry, though. This is all part of the process.

The desire to move your mind or your body is strongest when you first start out. I know that I still get the urge to open my eyes or wiggle a limb when I’m meditating. In fact, I just wiggled my left foot as I was writing that last line. The mere thought of sitting perfectly still was enough to make me want to move.

This is why I recommend guided meditation for beginners. It is so much easier to stay still and stick with a routine if you have someone telling you how to breathe or which parts of your body you should focus on relaxing at a particular point in the process.

That outside guidance also reduces confusion. You don’t have to worry about where you are or when you’ll be finished if someone else is gently nudging you along.

I’m not going to be recommending any one particular guide here because I haven’t found one that is well-rounded enough to meet my expectations. I jump among a few different products depending on how I’m feeling on a particular day and what I can find online for free.

These things work well for my purposes, but you might want to take a different approach to the question. If one single program meets most or all of your needs, that’s great!

Stage 2: Boredom

This is so boring. Why aren’t I getting anything out of it?

One of the biggest reasons why I had so much trouble getting into the habit of meditating when I first tried it out is that it didn’t seem to be doing anything for me. I’d sit in mental and physical silence for X amount of time without feeling any different at the end of a session than I did beforehand.

Like losing weight, learning a new language, or beginning the long journey home after completing some kind of sacred mission, though, this isn’t the sort of thing that you’ll see quick results for.

Don’t concentrate on the end goal. Focus on your task at hand especially if nothing seems to be changing. This is how it is supposed to be. You will get better at it as you go along.

Yes, it’s going to feel repetitive and mundane some days. This is completely normal and not anything to be concerned about in the least. Boredom isn’t necessarily a bad thing in this case. Your brain will adjust and so will you if you give it some time.

I also think that our technology-obsessed society would really benefit from learning how to handle being bored again in general. I know that I get restless more quickly than I used to because my smartphone is so accessible whenever I need a distraction.

The nice thing about meditation is that it will give you the opportunity to sit with those feelings without trying to find a solution for it. Sometimes boredom can’t and shouldn’t be fixed.

Keep plugging along at it.

Stage 3: Thoughtlessness

There will eventually come a time when you clear all of the thoughts out of your mind and no new ones will rush in to fill their place.

It’s hard to describe what this kind of experience is like because there are no words or thoughts at all when you’re in the middle of it.

Have you ever woken up just as your final dream of the night was leaving your memory for good?

It feels like a calm version of that.

You’re dimly aware of your own existence and of the fact that something special is happening, but you don’t have any conscious feelings about any of it.

The other metaphor I like to use to describe it is that it is similar to floating around in a little bubble. All of your needs are being taken care of, and there is nothing you need to do, say, or think at the moment.

It is peaceful and invigorating all at once, although neither of those words come to mind when I’m in this state.

Even now this isn’t something that happens to me every single time I meditate. Some days I can’t clear my mind out fully for whatever reason, and that is okay. The nice thing about meditation is that there is no punishment for doing it “incorrectly.” The simple act of trying is enough, and there will always be another day to sit down and see if your mind is more relaxed.

One of the things that made me stick with meditation over the long haul was the fact that there’s no such thing as failure here. It is what it is.

This leads me to the last stage…

 Stage 4: Peace

Meditation can have some nice benefits for people who practice it regularly.

I recently took a break from meditating while healing from an accident. The (thankfully mild) injury I sustained during it prevented me from moving in certain ways, and the discomfort of it was also enough to cause a distraction when I attempted to quiet down my thoughts for those first few days.

There is peace to be found once you settle into a regular rhythm of meditation, though.

The first time I saw the picture on the right, I giggled.

The second time I wondered about how long the subject might have been meditating before she was captured in this precise moment.

Look at how relaxed the muscles in her face are. A small part of me wonders if someone could have gently placed the hat of leaves on her head while she was meditating without her necessarily noticing or caring what was happening.

I still see the humour in this shot, but it also reminds me of how I feel after some mediation sessions these days. It is so relaxing to open your eyes after 15 minutes of perfect stillness and slowly grow accustomed to the sights and sounds of our world again.

It will be fascinating to see how this develops the longer I practice meditation.

If you haven’t given it a try yet, I highly recommend doing so. This is one of the most positive things I’ve ever done for my mental health. I can’t praise it enough.

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February 11, 2017 · 1:00 am

Suggestion Saturday: February 11, 2017

Here is this week’s list of short stories, rants, articles, and other links from my favourite corners of the web.

Can Writers Be Entrepreneurs and Activists? via seejavaciawrite. I couldn’t agree with this more.

Masked. Sometimes I share links without giving away any hints about what’s inside of them or why I’m recommending them. There’s nothing scary or disturbing in here, but I think you all will enjoy it more if you don’t know what to expect when you read the first sentence.

10 Things to Know Before Moving to Germany. He didn’t write it, but thank you to @Oparide for sharing this link with me.

Why I Really Don’t Love Valentine’s Day via AwkwardGirlLA. This blogger’s feelings about this holiday are pretty similar to my own. I wasn’t into Valentine’s Day as a young girl, though, unless we’re talking about eating sweethearts.

The Future is Mixed-Raced and That’s a Good Thing for Humanity. What an interesting article.

From Surprise Procedure via Vodstok:

Paul sat in the waiting room with his head in his hands. He’d considered bolting every ten minutes since he’d arrived, but burly, surly-looking guards stood near every exit. He was trapped in a prison of a court order and his own poor decision.

From It Never Was Golden:

Longing for the past is generally referred to as nostalgia – a gentle, tender feeling that might make these stories seem like nothing more than harmless sentimentality. But it is crucial to distinguish between wistful memories of grandma’s kitchen and belief in a prior state of cultural perfection

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