Notes to Self -- 2025

February 1, 2023 For February, there's a new essay entitled Yoga Nidra at the Gas Station , chapter two of my upcoming essay collection Notes to Self.  Ever on the lookout for new tools to deal with seasonal affective disorder (winter blues) scattered attention, and runaway thoughts, I recently started a daily habit of a new form of meditation. Here's how it works: I usually wake several hours before dawn, and while still in bed, before I turn on the lights one of the first things I do is reach for headphones and my ipad, touch a few buttons and icons, and listen to a guided meditation. Apparently it counts as meditation if you lie down, cover yourself with a blanket, put on headphones, close your eyes and listen to a narration of instructions to do relaxed breathing and sense various parts of your body named in relatively quick succession. If I had known this, I would have started meditating years ago, because it's not very demanding. In fact, it is very close to sleeping ...

Here's the way this will work: I'm here and now declaring that every month I will  post a chapter of the book shown below, Notes to Self .  which is a collection of essays 12 essays. They will be distilled from my daily journal writing, a 5 page a day habit that I began in on New Year's Day of 1983, which math tells me, and I have to believe is true, was exactly 40 years ago today. What is going to happen is that this book will be released one essay at a time and you will be able to purchase it at the publication party on New Year's Day of 2024. You won't want to miss this party. It will be very special. I can't go into all the details here because I haven't imagined them fully at this point but there will be music and refreshments and I'll have a Sharpie with me to personally autograph copies of the book. Another thing that will happen in this very ambitious multi-purpose blog is that I'll post a new song.  So at the end of the year I will be also r...