2015

I know it's already the end of January, but I felt like doing some final thoughts about past year.

In 2015:

• lost a close family member.
• studied, learned and took classes in how to communicate, how to approach people with my emotions and thoughts, and how to help people understand me more. It's a real science and not so easy. Why don't they teach it at school?
• visited a friend in mental hospital and opened up about sharing my own story.
• learned programming. I started in February, now I'm able to write 1000+ lines of code in Java and Python. 
• found out I have allergies, pursued going to the doctor until got a diagnose. after that I pursued cleaning my home until symptoms got better. my life is so much better now
• studied entrepreneurship. I do have one idea that could work, but I'm still hesitant to start a company. but now I know how to do it.
• went to  a town in my home country where I've never been before and fell in love with it. one day I want to rent a house there and to do handicraft and painting and reading books there ...for at least a month:)
• went kayaking for the first time.
• went to Thailand, where I'd never been before. it was a great trip, perfect vacation and mind opener about buddhism. it's the first religion I feel emotional and mental closeness with.  I have true respect for buddhist teachings.
• started taking dance classes semi-regularly again (once or so a week). dancing makes me a better person, honestly.
• discovered minimalism for myself. or rather discovered, that the way of life I enjoy has a name and I'm not the only weird one out there.
• started meditating semi-regularly. It helped me with sleep issues, helped me deal with death in my family and the anxiety it brought. I wouldn't be sane if I hadn't picked it up.
• got a job offer and rejected it. but still, the knowledge that I'm actually good enough to get a decent job is good. now I'm just going to learn more and more and get even better.

I failed meditation challenge

Most of the people now days seem to be doing all those xx-day challenges. It can be about learning something or exercise or anything. But it seems like everyone is doing them.

And I also noticed many people struggle with those.
I must be one of them since I just realized I haven't meditated in a week.. and I'm supposed to be doing 30-day meditation challenge.

I usually try to start less things and finish all of them instead of having thousand things going on at the same time, so I'm kind of disappointed in my self. I was really hoping that this summer I'll gain a healthy habit of regular meditation.
This challenge wasn't even hard for me. It didn't take much time, I really enjoyed it. But I was busy and forgot and...

This was the second challenge in my life (this sounds differently from what I planned :) and I'm glad to admit that the first one was 30-day minimalism challenge. And that one I've done twice. It is just really relaxing and fun for me. Sometimes I swap some of the daily tasks, for example when it's clear it's not possible to not go to food store on no shopping day.

I do understand that the point of challenge is to be challenging. It wouldn't be called challenge if everyone completed it.
But at the same time.. it's just a game we like to play with ourselves.
So what, if some people start new 30-day challenge every week and abandons old ones?

Now I need to go and meditate for a bit :)

Meditating for dummies

This spring I decided I need meditation.

I downloaded many meditation apps and found that Calm has this 10-day 10-minute tutorial. I finished it, enjoyed it, but didn't start meditating regularly.

Now I made myself to start again. Since I really have hard time to force my brain to be silent, I*m using external help again. This time I found this program.
http://www.doyouyoga.com/course/30-day-meditation-challenge/

Let's see if I get a new good habit.