Thursday, March 15, 2018

Meditation

Meisou

I felt really crappy this past month, so I'm trying different things to get myself out of the funk. I tried journaling again, and it's kind of good. I'm trying to get back into exercising. It's pollen season and kind of windy, so YouTube exercise videos are good.

I'm also trying meditation. I don't mean meditation like the religion I married into. That would be much too intense, plus, I can't do the lotus position (I think it's because my legs are too short).

No, I mean what the self-help people are calling "mindfulness." Before bed, I listen to one of the online guided meditations available on YouTube. I'm not sure if it actually helps me relax or sleep well, but it isn't hurting, and it's only about 10 minutes I would otherwise spend fooling around on the internet.

I'm not a religion expert, but mindfulness and meditation as defined by my (husband's) religion seem different. I can't imagine myself heading to my husband's family temple and sitting in the lotus position while the resident monk hovers over me with a bamboo sword. Mindfulness seems much more accessible with smartphone apps and YouTube and FB pages. While conclusive evidence of efficacy is debatable, it can't hurt, and it's only 10 or so minutes. Worth a shot. We'll see how it goes.

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

If it works

Umaku iku nara

I decided I would try journaling again. I tried it once, and it made me depressed, so I stopped, but I kept on hearing about it, so I decided to give it another try. I watched the You Tube on bullet journaling and went to the page and read all the information on it.

I know you're supposed to use a nice notebook with good paper, but I'm on a budget so I got a notebook with a vinyl cover at the 100 yen shop. I saved three pages for the index and used three pages for a "future log" and additional notes, and two facing pages for the monthly log for the month of March. Then I dove in and wrote whatever I felt like. I logged things I had to do and did and other stuff that I thought was cool that I came across during the day, and whenever a question popped into my head at work, I wrote it down, and when I had a minute googled it or looked it up in the books we have at work and wrote down the answers.

I ended up with over a page and a half of notations just for today.

Somehow, I don't think it's how bullet journaling is supposed to work.

But I felt like I was getting stuff done, and I looked over the notations before going to bed, and felt really good about my day, so whatever works, right? And I felt so good that I exercised for the first time in over a month, and now I'm sore all over but I'm feeling good about it, so it's all good, right?


Sunday, March 4, 2018

Lying is one answer

Uso mo houben

The other day, I took the day off to get a breast biopsy. Yes, a breast biopsy, you know, what you do when you get an abnormal breast exam and/ or mammogram and the surgeon does to make sure it isn't cancer? Yes, that. But I didn't want to deal with explaining to my husband what a Category 3 breast lesion was, and how stabbing it with a needle and sucking out some cells involved a blood-draw-caliber needle was more a precaution than anything. I don't know if he would have been "oh, ok" like he was supposed to, or if he would have freaked out like I was afraid he would. I wasn't ready for the latter. So that morning, I packed a lunch just like almost every other day the past two weeks, and left the house when I usually did. The procedure was done by 10:30, so I drove to the mall and ate the lunch I packed in the parking lot and bought a T shirt at Uniqlo (last year's shirts were on sale at 50% off and I found the discontinued color I liked) and walked around until it was time for my consultant gig. After I finished that gig, I went to Costco and the adjacent home improvement store, and then I went to Starbucks (and remembered to NOT get a decaf latte)
and did some English proofreading and fooled around on the internet until it was the usual time for me to go home.



So technically, I've lied to my husband. Oh what a tangled web we weave. At least it was a cheap web (500 yen for the T-shirt, 380 yen for the Starbucks sakura latte).

(And it was good.)