Every Day Counts Like Crazy

→ 3 Travel Poems  ← 🚍 Greyhound Girl 🚍 To the girl sitting next to me on the Greyhound bus      our hour-long journey is over           and I never had the nerve to say,                what are you watching?                     on your phone? I'll love you forever      you were the one            crafted by God,                the missing puzzle piece.                 Go!       enjoy your show,           without me. 🌴 Vietnam Vacation 🌴 50 years ago, if I was in this country, I would not be wearing flip-flops,      but I would still be sweating. Shooting heavy artillery,      not selfies. I han...

Everydaycountslikecrazy 2020 will serve as a monthly blog for the Joseph Garlington  January 2020 I will be leaving Thailand at the end of February. I came to Thailand to "learn about Meditation and Buddhism" and i did. Lived with monks and nuns, asked questions, observed, and meditated alot, and now I know the role I want meditation to play in my life:       Seasoning. I thought it could be an entrée, and that I needed waaay more, but no.  Just seasoning. And I want that "meditation flavor" to season every moment of my life.  Because it is simply awareness, and I think it goes great with everything. My 2020 schedule will be: At least 5 minutes a day  1 hour on Sundays 1 10 day silent retreat a year 👏👏👏👏👏 👏👏👏👏👏 👏👏👏👏👏 👏👏👏👏👏 👏👏👏👏👏             -clapping hands emoji A note on Buddhism   (As I experienced it in the country o...

EveryDayCountsLikeCrazy 2019 is over! Look how I tried to not waste a single day! Jan - Exercise Feb - Jokes and Stories March - Kindness April - Intuition May - Meditate June - Piano July - Make Love August - No Youtube September - Look at the Sky October - Nuns November - Nothing December → 5 things for (at least) 5 minutes every day 1. Handstands 2. Math 3. Recording Music 4. Meditation 5. Playing Piano The photo demonstrates: 7 days where I did all 5 things 11 days where I did 4 things 6 days of 3 3 days of 2 2 days of 1 2 days of nothing This says alot about me. I try to be excellent, but not that hard. So I land in average and below.... But at the end of the day (year) I tried and did something versus nothing , and I'm content with that and give myself a big phat E for Effort. I'll officially be taking the year (2020) off from Everydaycountslikecrazy, and just relaxing and chilling this time around.......... but...

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 ...