Thursday, March 27, 2014

No, really, what's it all about?

I haven't been around lately. I would love to say I was traveling, or on a yoga retreat or something, but I was staring at my smart phone.

All my little experiments are about learning to wobble. Finding whiz, get it? That's what it's all about. There's no destination, just speed and sometimes grace. Sure, it's a little frustrating, because you never get there. You just keep turning over rocks. So, what am I working on now? Sleep. Steps. Meditation. All of which I can monitor from my smart phone.

So we wobble on. In fact, let's learn to wobble.




Sleep Cycle is my favorite app, perhaps of all time. You use your phone, placed under your pillow, to measure your sleep quality. When you set an alarm, the app uses your measurements to wake you up at the shallowest portion of your sleep cycle with a catchy, calming, echo-y song. You then can review all the oddly lovely graphs of your sleep. I've only got a week of measurements, but I'm seeing that I really do use weekends to "catch up" and stress makes my sleep poor, where exercise improves it. Duh. And Oh!

Steps are on my mind again. The snow is melting (very very very slowly, but that's probably good for the ground and my basement humidity). It's time to go for some walks. Now that I'm motivated to be well rested, I'm amazed to discover that the daylight savings time light seems to be a good fit for getting up early (I know, it makes no sense). So maybe I can get some walks in before work even! And my activity tracker is still motivating me.

And the holy goblet of meditation, you wily nebulous goal. One of my newer apps, called Happier has a meditation program. (I would love the app so much more if they didn't constantly direct you to purchase one of their programs, but I am loving the Meditation one....) Sure, I thought, nothing else has worked (like pure force of will). Why not? And it's really good. The facilitator has removed quite a few of my mental barriers to why I "can't" seem to meditate. Turns out, I was doing okay. I just needed a mantra to focus on. But it's only a 7 day program, and I'm on day 5. What to do next?

Wobble on, I guess. Because really, I'm not trying to "save" time, or increase my earnings, or lose 20 pounds fast (although all those things sound good sometimes). I'm trying to do better, so I can love better.