Every Day Counts Like Crazy

Live in a Buddhist Nunnery Every Day I lived in a Buddhist nunnery every day in October. There are thousands of Buddhist monks in Thailand walking around every day. But there are only about 200 nuns. Through Workaway I was able to volunteer at The Vijja Vipasannaram Foundation for one month. At 3pm on weekdays, all the volunteers ( Hungarian girl, old German man, 2 French girls, Chilean girl, young German boy, me) would assemble to ask the head nun any question at all about Buddhism. She is from Thailand, and lived for decades in Germany working as an architect. She has perfect English. After moving back to Bangkok and being in a leadership role at a big company, her growing dedication to the path of Buddhism led her to be ordained as a nun.  She told us the Buddhist creation story  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agga%C3%B1%C3%B1a_Sutta   Read ( The Beginning of Life on Earth) The 4 noble truths  https://en.wikipedia....

For the month of September I looked at the sky for 60 seconds a day. Every day. Sometimes I would count in my head to 60, sometimes I would set a timer.... There was no routine, I would just have a minute to spare sometime in the day and look up. I'm sure some people thought I was lost or strange, because I tried to not look away once the 60 seconds started. I saw some really lovely sunsets, and it always put me in a good mood to look up at the wash of constantly changing colors that's above our heads at all times. 60 seconds was long enough to feel like I did a thing, and short enough to be doable every day. One of my distinct memories of childhood is going out to the driveway, which was shaded by a carport with an old grapevine climbing all over it, and building a fort I made out of large leftover pieces of a tin roof, pillows from the living room, and blankets from me and my brothers' room. Once the fort was completed, I layed down on my back inside and...

Every day in August I did not watch a full Youtube video. This was a problem when I wanted to know how to steam rice for the first time, or relax after eating it for dinner, but I just used Wikihow for the rice, and a book for the relaxation. I did LISTEN to music on Youtube, but that doesn't count because I wasn't watching anything. When someone would pull up a Youtube video in front of me, I would either make an excuse why I couldn't watch it or tell them straight up I was on a Youtube fast. The point of the fast was that I would find myself getting caught in multiple-hour-long Youtube binges on content that, after the binge was over I had nothing to show for, except for, "Oh yeah, I saw that on Youtube" or, "There was this video where this guy was doing this thing and it was crazy"   End. So During August I got all that time back by not watching a single video! I wore a little silver chain around my neck as a reminder. That REALLY helpe...

It was Ben's idea. He says, "Love is the reason we're here (on earth)" So to try it out, we teamed up for July and attempted to spend 10 minutes every day making love. Not sex. Making love in our lives, making love a reality in our relationships....  lol got u This looked like writing a letter to a friend who lives far away, or listening to a lonely person talk for too long. I did 10 minutes of Metta meditation sometimes, and I cleaned up more than 1 mess for roommates or family members who made the mess themselves..... I would start most 10 minute love-making sessions with a mix of drudgery and excitement. Drudgery that I wasn't doing something for me, and excitement that I was being a good person! My making love didn't always last for 10 minutes. Most of the time I would just be talking with someone or about to NOT do something for another person, then I'd remember, "10 minutes of love!"  and I would choose whatever option I was ...

1hr of piano a day - fail Knee exercises every day (hurt my knee trying to meditate an hour a day in May) - fail  

meditate 1 hour a day - nailed it. pretty much

So the goal for February was: Write 1 story every day. Which I did. For about 19 days. Then I took my best story to my friend Sam- who publishes his own Zine... He marked it up, and gave me feedback like, "this part really worked for me"  and "i'm confused as to why he is back in the kitchen making another sandwich, I thought he already made the sandwich?!" This encounter made me stop writing every day. The wind was taken out of my creative sails.... I thought that I had written 19 masterpieces, and it turns my "best" story was pretty confusing...... "whats the timeline with this sandwich!?" So I pumped the brakes and only wrote a total of 22 stories in February... I'll end up writing 28 eventually, but I'll probably only share a few of them.... because honestly they're all not masterpieces!!!!! Here is a link to the first one that I'll share "Poor Peppy":  http://everydaycountslikecrazy....