Day 30

 

I took a bike around the island today and the wind was intense. On the east side where there is no shelter from the wind, it was perpendicular to me and I was all over the road. Luckily I left early in the morning and didn't have much company on the road to worry about. The ride took about 20min longer than the typical 2hour 20min 40mile loop... but mentally it was a lot tougher. I am grateful to get the chance to ride in the wind and now know that I can ride in a 20MPH crosswind.

I spent a large fraction of the day working. Eww. SHUT UP MONKEY BRAIN, I AM GRATEFUL FOR WORK

I did my gratitude meditation this morning. I loved it. 

On my bike, I spent some time contemplating why I struggle to feel "Joy" when I am appreciating things or am feeling grateful. The way I understand it is that if you can be grateful that should bring about a feeling of Joy. Instead, I get an analysis of why I'm grateful. I think this may have to do with how I process emotions differently (Austim thing). I'm pretty logical and even my "feelings" of joy tend to be grounded in thought. I'm not sure how Mindfulness training (detaching from the frantic monkey mind) works with people on the autism spectrum who process feelings and emotions differently than neurotypical people... but I know it appears to be beneficial so I'm excited to keep working on finding out.

I'm working to see gratitude in all things. Shetty calls this “Grateful living”. He points out that we can be grateful for the "bad" things because often those are where we learn the most. He seems to trust in life and receive every moment as a gift. 

I think I'm going to call a wrap on the chapter on Gratitude. I still have a lot to learn, but "grateful living" is a muscle that has to grow and I am not going to become a monk overnight.  Tomorrow I will start the chapter on relationships

I started to read the book "The Miracle of Mindfulness" by Thich Nhat Hanh today. It's short. So far I'm enjoying it (talks about different phases of learning mindfulness). I'm about 1/3 of the way into the book and I'm at the point where I'm starting to pick up new ideas from him so it is going to be interesting to see what the last 2/3rds of the book brings.

I’m sure it’s a bad idea but “how can you value life if you don’t understand death?” Keeps jumping in my head. I’m proactively scared about the upcoming “service” chapter.  I’m stuck in a loop thinking about it may be valuable to me and to others if I temporarily volunteered in hospice. I can detach pretty well. I don’t understand death. I may be able to help people die in ways others with strong emotions would struggle with. Or my inner Spock would scare them and it would be a train wreck.  

I took no photos today. So here is an obligatory photo at close to sunset. (I’ve stopped photos of sunset as I just want to enjoy them and the camera doesn’t come close to showing the beauty). “Chew your drink and drink your food”