The last two days have been very chaotic for me with the snow and work being crazy because I'm taking Friday off  -- I turn 37 on Saturday. But in the world of the Internet (my job involves a website), taking a day off means working extra hard beforehand and afterward. (And really a real day off was the only good thing about Corporate America, in retrospect.)

Once again, I didn't sit until after my daughter's bath. I meant to do it first thing in the morning, but the walk needed to be shoveled and the child taken to emergency daycare with the snow day, and somehow this week I have frequently found myself several hours behind with no idea in the world how I got there. And so, there I was, after seven and finally sitting down in the playroom. Just me and the hermit crabs and the very loud ticking clock.

I don't have a timer. I know Sharon said we should shoot for twenty minutes, and I've read all these other bloggers' posts about bells and apps and setting alarms, but I'm really Type A and every single thing in my life is timed. I got stressed and almost cried today because I hadn't found time to meditate, and hello, I'm not going to make meditation a chore. I'm just not. I volunteered for this because I thought it would be good for me, but I'm not going to let it become something I dread. Timing it would do that for me, so I release you, timer. You may go home now.

I made a decision today before sitting that I am going to keep this commitment to Sharon and to myself to meditate every day this month, but I'm not going to time myself. Some days it may be more and some less, but I'm going to meditate and not worry if it was 18 minutes or 32 minutes. Today it was about twenty, so ooh-rah, meditation.

(I suspect I am the rogue meditator of this pack of bloggers. I've never been a rogue in my life, so this is interesting to me.)

I sat down and conjured up my fort. Yesterday, Sharon commented and said instead of deflecting I should acknowledge the thoughts and move on (I'm paraphrasing). Maybe I'm not entirely sure exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. However, tonight when I sat down, I was very, very tense. I'm worried about my to-do list at work, I haven't posted on my blog yet, I hadn't meditated yet, and I sincerely wanted to just sit down and read.

The work thoughts bounced off my fort POW POW POW POW POW. My fort literally bowed a little with the intensity of those thoughts. After a while, they left and the insecurities about the novel I'm working on came to visit. Why don't you have an agent yet? They said. You've been blogging about this novel and you have no agent, no book. People will think you're a fool.

I acknowledged those thoughts and told them to please go away, because HELLO, I'M MEDITATING.

And after a few more minutes, they actually did.

Then I had some cool writing ideas, and things got sticky: I wanted very badly to think about them, because usually if I don't write down my writing ideas they flit away and I never think them again. But if I'm meditating, I can't be turning over writing ideas in my head or filing them somewhere; I have to let them go.

So I did.

That was pretty scary.

I hope they come back.

I think, though, if I'm going to meditate properly, I have to be okay with letting even the good thoughts go for a while and just float.

All I know is that I was beyond pissy when I sat down, and I'm okay now. Nothing has changed. I still have a ton of work to do. All the problems I had before still exist.

I'm not as upset as I was.

So there's that.