Fast--Day 4

After x-mas I started a 5 day fast. 

On day 4, and I feel great. A little hungry, but not ravenous.  It's interesting how I feel so much better fasting than I ever did doing cleanses.

Worth noting that my meditation is much deeper and more intense. Could be because of the increase in serotonin.

Went for a walk and noticed that when I start having fantasy arguments my brain is probably trying to find some cortisol to get at some blood sugar.  Becoming aware of that, I was able to shift my attention to my breath, my body, my tan tien, and gradually shift out of this habit. 

But also being forced to face why I'm overeating.  The craving at night is emotional now, not hormonal. I feel that emptiness. But better to feel it than try and fill it with food. 

I wonder what the effect of lowering my insulin will be on my general impulsivity.

Looking towards 2030

Today I look over the last decade of my life.

If I were candid with myself, it feels very much like my decade of watching TV.  I won't be too unkind to myself.  It was a good decade for TV.  And life presented me with some opportunities that I don't regret taking. 

Writing for Salon gave me the confidence to start apply to Banff, start book projects, reach out to agents, know that I could be taken seriously.  TV has a very important impact on the world, on culture, on how we think about people. But when it comes right down to it, it interferes with my sleep.  And it interferes with my commitment to writing.  It rewards and increases my impulsivity and undermines my commitments to care for myself, for Ben, and help build a better world.

I have an opportunity with my current work, and my current writing, to work towards bigger goals. I have an opportunity to put my writing towards creating a more innovative and equitable education system. Towards giving young girls more insight into what they can do with technology.  Towards giving other countries what they need to localize and take control of their own education economic potential. 

For that, quite simply, I need to sleep better than I am. I need to have mental clarity and solid algorithms that can transfer my knowledge to others.

I think back to that study that Annie Dillard wrote of in The Writing Life.  About how male butterflies presented with an oversized cardboard butterfly over an actual butterfly, will choose the cardboard butterfly every time.  I can't spend my life humping cardboard butterflies.  Even if that is what all the other butterflies are doing.

The next decade of my life is crucial.  It can determine how I spend my last decades on earth, in can determine the quality of my life before death.  And it can also determine, or be part of determining, how we as a species live, or die.

2019, what happened....

This blog has not been as much of a presence in my life this year.  Interesting, since I'd made something of a resolution at the end of last year to turn it into a book.

I worked in April to start putting it into a more chronological form.  Then I seem to have given up around May.  That was when I signed up to ERN and started doing much of my journalling there.  I needed that community. And I think they benefitted from me.  But I don't want to give up this journal. It's been my lifeboat.

I also diverted some of my meditative/creative energy into the still unfinished Vipassana essay

I don't want to give up on the project of turning this into a book of some kind. I don't want to give up on writing about meditation.  But I also don't want to be writing from a place of worry and forcing.

My biggest learning from this year is about hormones, what they play in my life.  Insulin in weight gain, serotonin in well being, cortisol in both of those things.  I've learned there's a difference between anxiety, the emotion that I have little control over and worry, the habit of forming pictures, stories and ruminations from that anxiety.

This year, I want to test the link between worry and creativity.  Am I more or less creative and  productive when I worry less?

The end of worry

A lot of changes this year.

• I lost 30 lbs and kept 25 of it off. In large part because of a mindful eating app!
• Because of my understanding of insulin, I feel confident that I can keep it off for the rest of my life.
• I started understanding hormones and the role they play in emotional and physiological balance

• I've had some big insights into how meditation mediates my body and my brain, increasing my serotonin, decreasing my cortisol. 
• I've been able to bring my insights from the ERN program, I have more  embodied awareness about the effect of cleaning routines, or lack of.
• I can physically feel how anxiety is connected to the medial prefrontal cortex, the storifying part of the brain, the default network. 
• I have a growing, embodied awareness of what it is like and what life would be like, not being mediated by this part of the brain. 
• I'm much better at recognizing spikes in cortisol and dopamine, and in dialing it down.
• I seem to work well with an OKR plan (three aspirational objectives, and measuring progress with key results.)
• I know I want to be motivated by the four immeasurable qualities (compassion, lovingkindness, joy and equanimity) not anxiety.