I have been meditating for the past 10 days. I aim to meditate at 9:30 pm every night, although that doesn’t always happen. I got home and meditated later than that after seeing Maps & Atlases and also last night after seeing Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
I’m trying to exercise more which (partially) means exercising before work more. Which means more days where I need to wake up at 6 am. If I had to I could stay up late and wake up at 6 am basically every day. But the point of getting up at 6 am more often is for health. So if I’m going to do that, I want to do so while also maintaining 8 hours of sleep. That sure sounds easy, right? Not.
And so that means getting into bed around 9:30 pm. Except when I started attempting this routine, I would just get in bed and toss around for a few hours.
Hence, the meditation. And while I don’t feel like I get much out of it in the moment (although, while I’m new and don’t really understand it, I don’t think that’s the right way to think about it), or feel different overall, I have been having an easier time falling asleep by 10 pm than I was before meditating.
10 straight days down, we’ll see how long I can keep that streak alive and how long I can keep alive a streak of general repetition. Tonight is the first of two nights I’m staying with friends in Chicago and then next week I’ll be at my family’s cottage with a large group of friends for over a week. We’ll see how these changes to my overall routine impact the meditation routine.