DAY 20

WHAT?!?!? Am I really one third of the way through this countdown? Time always seems to fly by from Thanksgiving to New Year's, but this feels almost like time hopping. As this realization came to me just now, I wondered if I should have started doing this earlier, though "Last 30 of My 30s" really works best for a title.

The fact is, I've been mediating and writing daily for 80 days now. I started a 100-Day countdown as a warm-up for this. And also because I wanted to do it anyway. I know I sound like a... I really don't know what I might sound like. But I know that this is not common behavior. I realize that. I got this idea from reading about a Taoist practice called a Gong, during which you typically set a daily goal or a few goals that you will do for 100 days without missing a day. If you miss a day, you start over, when you get back to it, at one. This is a gross over-simplification because I've never formally studied this spiritual practice... only took the basic idea of it and made my own thing.

The first time I tried one, last fall, I made it all the way to 100 days, meditating for 20 minutes a day, and writing (journal or creatively) for 20 minutes per day. I thought I would keep going after the 100, but when day 101 arrived, I enjoyed giving myself a break and some flexibility. I then went off and on, never finishing another 100-day streak before I began this one on September 27, 2015.

Tonight, in honor of my 80th day on the Gong and my 10th on my Blog journey, I will not post my three things, but something I wrote on Day 1 of my Gong. Re-reading it just now, I was struck by how I was seeing the world on that day in the context of today. But I'll let you read for yourself, this excerpt from my personal journal.