Attention span = 0

What is with me lately? Before the chaos of the pre-Christmas painting and home repair mania, I felt pretty focused and in control, by which I mean, most of the stuff that needed to get done did, and I managed to do some writing I liked (at the site which I will, I promise, eventually link to here--I think we go live in about two weeks) and feel like mostly, I was paying attention to the people I needed to and even, a bit, to myself. But the last week has felt like a windstorm, one in which I'm hanging on while debris blows past my ears and renders me deaf, blind and dumb. My focus is terrible, I'm having trouble finishing articles I've already started for the other website, and just sitting down and paying attention is excruciating.

At the risk of disappearing into a sinkhole of self-deprecation, I will announce with pride that I exercised five of the last seven days, in spite of a fly-by by the flu over New Year's. Sadly, today's gym experience was cut short when my friend's son, who was having a playdate with the Babe in the glorious free-with-membership childcare at the Hollywood Y, was bitten--in the face--by another child. Oh dear. Ironically, my friend's son (if not my poor friend, who was pretty shaken) was ultimately nonplussed and eager to go back into the playroom, but the Babe was having none of it. So after 25 minutes of cardio, off we all went to the Griffith Park pony rides. "Ha ha" has finally evolved into "horsey" for my uber-verbal little darling, which makes me both sad and proud, and she got her equine fix today, taking eight happy laps around the ring ("Again!" Again!" So sweet.)

I realized a few weeks ago that in order to maintain health (and we'll leave sanity for another day's discussion/post) I need three things, at a minimum: sleep, exercise, and meditation. They work together, meaning, just one of the trio is ok, but when I have all three, all three work better. When I exercise, I sleep more easily, more deeply, and better. Ditto with meditation, though regular, twice a day meditation does seem to produced the effect (advertised by my teachers when I learned the techniques in August) of reducing sleep requirements, and/or, increasing energy levels. When I sleep enough, I eat more healthfully, since sleep deprivation often creates a feeling of hunger (trying to pump up energy by consuming more of it.) Sleep deprivation also, I am certain (and this is my theory, one that I've never read anywhere but after having two kids, and dealing with massive sleep deprivation while they were babies, it makes sense) lowers my metabolic rate, while regular exercise, even the bare minimum (which, sadly, for me, is 45 minutes five to seven times per week) has a remarkable upward push on my metabolism. The meditation gurus swear that meditation does the same; I don't know, but again, there is a real increase in energy when I experience "quality" meditation on a regular, twice a day schedule. Ah. There's a rub. "Regular?" "Twice a day?" I can count the number of times I've had two full, twenty minute meditation sessions in a single day during the last two months on one hand. Sad.

So...I'm going to work on that one. One of the bloggers I most treasure reading, Lisa of A Bird in the Hand, has a journaling project this year--she's got a new journal, in which she'll write or make art on one page, every day (or, at least, that's her goal, and she seems incredibly disciplined, so I expect she'll do it!)--and I'm trying to figure out how to emulate it. My darling friend Dorrie gave me a beautiful gold-bound blank book for my birthday this year, and it's sitting here, next to my bed. I used to start making my lists for the organization project, but maybe I can find a way to expand its use in some Bird-esque way... I'm not much for journaling (um, aren't you blogging? isn't that the same thing, but lazier, because it's on the computer? Yep. Ok, maybe I do like keeping a journal...but apparently only a public one. Private journals (and this is just me, I know they're incredibly important to many, many people, including people I adore) always seemed so navel-gazing to me. I mean, I wasn't that interested in all that self-examination. Of course, then I went into analysis, and....

And, now I ramble. Publicly. On my blog. But at least I was able to write this entire post without getting distracted, clicking away to Defamer, or Perez Hilton, or The Superficial, or The Wednesday Chef. So maybe I'm making progress after all..