You can't meditate like that

So if I have not already made it abundantly clear, I am a total hippie. And I practice meditation. 

Let me be clear - I don't meditate. Meditation is a state of mind-body-spirit that I can only dream of one day reaching. I practice. 

In finding my own personal form of mediation, I have tried a LOT of things. And I don't think I've 100% got it to a science, but I have some tools I know help me personally, and I will always be refining. Like the practice, we as humans are also evolving and in flux, and so adapting to this is also part of our practice. 

No matter what I do in a day as part of my ongoing practice, I almost always try to give myself a 15 minute, more traditional quiet, mind-clearing still meditation alone in my room. The instructions given by the majority of teachers I've encountered in my studies recommend not lying down. Though many of the meditation techniques come from the East, most teachers know that when Westerners lie down, we tend to fall asleep. We can't help it - we are overworked, overstimulated, and in need of rest. 

.   .   .   

One night around the age of about 6, my dad was putting my sister and I to bed. I was lying on my back with the soles of my feet on the bed and my knees in the air as he tucked me in. 

"You can't fall asleep like that," Dad told me. 

My child-brain interpreted this literally, as any parent-trusting youth would. I in fact believed that it was humanly impossible to fall asleep in this position.

So for the following several weeks, I was determined to prove him wrong. Each night after my parents tucked us in and left the room, I assumed the impossible sleep position, only to awake with legs straight or curled into my chest. As I would lie there in defeat, I became more convinced that my dad was in fact always right.

Until one night I awoke, (probably having not yet even really fallen asleep, but those are just details), and MY KNEES WERE RAISED! 

I had done the impossible. 

I was astonished at the powers I posessed, but I knew I could not bear to tell my dad that he was wrong, so I kept it to myself, for probably another few years (entirely too long), until I thought about it again and realized, my dad merely meant, "it would not be ideal to try to fall asleep like that, though, come to think of it, it is possible to fall asleep in many positions - sitting up, at your desk, or even sometimes while driving."

.   .   . 

When I learned you maybe shouldn't meditate lying down, something in my head struck that old chord, as I was transported back to my 6 year old girl self, ready to prove the world wrong. 

I tried still meditation practice in many seated positions, but nothing got me into the zone like lying on my back with my knees up does. And so, that's how I prefer to meditate at night. 

And I almost never fall asleep. 

Can I borrow some courage?

My friend Jessie is an incredible writer, a rad feminist, and a pop culture connoisseur. I look up to her for being so unabashedly, unapologetically unashamed of her fuck-ups and stumbles along the path of life. 

In her most recent post she talks about happiness and relationships. In one particularly poignant part, she muses: 

‎"But attaining happiness isn’t the same as sustaining it. And it’s not like you get happy and it just stays with you from then on out. You can lose happiness just as much as you can gain it."

I know this all too well, as I spend a large part of my life researching, practicing, and quite often failing to understand the science of happiness. And though I have had far too many glimpses of happiness to complain, I do know that the most challenging part of happiness is maintaining it. 

For us "feminists" or "independent women" or "single ladies", or whatever the hell you want to call us, as much as we rant against letting our relationships define us, we do know that our happiness is inextricably linked to our relationships with other humans, especially the romantic ones. 

In her recent post (seriously, if you haven't read her blog yet, do it and then come back mkay?), Jess took off all her protective fem-armor, and talked some real talk about relationships. This got me wondering, could I do that? 

Really, could I? 

After all, I myself have experienced some of that make-everyone-else-want-to-vomit type happiness, which, unfortunately or fortunately, was while I was in a relationship. And just as Jessie points out that happiness can be lost, I of course did lose mine. I just don't know how to talk about it without sounding bitter. It is a fine line, and being honest usually gets you called a sap, a bitter bitch, or just gets you sympathy -- none of which I want, so I guess I'll keep my mouth shut until I can borrow some of that courage from my girl Jessie. 

Ok really, go read her blog.

The time I got addicted to Intervention

It was a normal winter day, cold and kind of gray outside, but it didn't make much of a difference, because I was in a hermetically sealed windowless office. My computer, which I believe was from 1999 (seriously, it had a tower. how long has it been since computers had towers??), and almost everyone was gone on holiday vacation. I was working in the U.S. for the French government, so while they all jetted back across the Atlantic, I stayed in Atlanta, where is was always slightly too warm to feel like it was really Christmas time.

My friend and I had developed a ritual where we would hang out and drink a six pack of beer, eat frozen pizza, and shoot the shit while we watched intervention. Sometimes we would watch 3-4 episodes in one sitting, adding our own commentary to the narrator's while  we cracked open another beer and smoked cigarettes out the window. 

Something about watching others' lives in complete shambles made us feel better about our lives only being in shards. We could act like total carefree dummies while we watched other people be bigger ones. 

It was around this time when I caught myself sitting in my office, with next to no work to do, watching intervention on my ancient computer. 

I texted my friend to tell her what I was doing and she reacted as any normal friend should:

"Oh my god Brittany, what are you doing? You're addicted to intervention. We are going to have to have an intervention intervention!"

The sudden self-realization was obvious, and I had to reform. If I were ever going to get off the couch in time for spring, I had to get it together. And I did. 

I'm not going to lie and say I stopped right then and there. Sometimes I relapse and catch an episode here and there, but I keep it under control. Plus, I've sort of switched over to hoarders. It makes me feel better about the clothes on my floor. 

Falling out of love

...with technology. 

I go through phases where I can't stop reading, watching, writing, photographing, updating, listening, consuming.

And then, like a gluttonous child who's eaten too much cake at her birthday party, I just curl up in bed and want to ignore it all. The constant stream is often too much to keep up with. Sometimes I need a break. And not a 10 minute meditation at the end of the day. I mean a few weeks where I just sort of zone out. 

I'm not saying that I don't spend the better portion of most days on the internet, but I will say that sometimes I just stop listening to NPR in the morning, don't listen to much music, I quit following the news, won't call my family, and completely forget about pop culture.

My brain just overloads and then shuts down. And then I inevitably pick up where I left off and keep going. But, I wonder what other people's tolerances are. Does anyone else ever spend an entire day staring at the screen and only crossing two things off the to-do list? Does anyone else get home from a mentally exhausting day and have dinner in bed-- that dinner consisting of red wine and cookies, but still, does anyone else do that? Am I alone here? Can I get an amen? Anyone? Are there any horse socks? Is anyone listening to me.