30 January 2012, day one:

Day one was interesting. I planned to meditate around two o’clock, but I had to run errands with James (my roommate), so I’m doing it at seven.

To prepare for my meditation, I put a towel down on the floor to sit on, and I put my hamper in front of my barely-open door, because I knew my cat Kallie would come in mid-meditation and I didn’t want my bedroom door open all the way. I turned the lights off and paused the TV, which was on high volume because I was watching the new episode of House. I set a timer on my iPod Touch to go off in five minutes, and chose the harp ringtone because it seemed like the calmest one.

For the first minute or so, I struggled to sit upright because I’m usually hunched over like the missing link, and I struggled with my breath, which I’ve always had problems with. After two minutes or so, though, I was starting to get in the hang of it, and that was, of course, when Kallie came in, meowing.

I handled it fairly well, though. I only laughed a little, because she was purring and climbing on my lap and rubbing on my hands, but I got back into the meditation pretty quickly. For the first few minutes, I was told to just listen to my surroundings, which I did; all I heard was the TV from the living room, Phoebe (another of my cats) purring on my bed, Kallie meowing, and the sound of my TV’s static noise. It was very calming, just to sit and be aware of everything, to have a few quiet moments. I feel re-energized and a lot calmer than I was before. I’m not stressed out about my homework like I was before the meditation, either. I’m pretty excited to do it again tomorrow, except I’ll have to tweak a few things. I’m going to try to do it earlier in the day so I can benefit from it more, and I’m going to take my glasses off and maybe my ring and watch, too, so it doesn’t feel like I’m weighed down as much.

So today was a mission success.