another update.

It's November 1, which means I'm half-way through my experiment. 

One thing I've learned in life, in the last few years, is to be very okay with changing something if I don't feel like it's working.

If the counselor isn't doing it, find a new one.
If the book isn't keeping me going, put it down.
If the project loses the fire, cut ties and move along. 

So, with that said, I'm changing up my routine half-way in. 

1. I'm reading again. I already started Russel Brand's latest book. I found that not having a book made me go to other things that I didn't want to go to. Twitter. A game. Reading more news stories. I went through quite a bit of old notes and that worked for a while but I found not having a book, wasn't working like I thought, eventually. 

But, and this is a big but. It was a very important time. My wife and I were talking later about how amazing it was that after I stopped reading, we actually started implementing some of the things I had read a million times. We made some pretty big decisions. (More on that eventually.) 

Reading can be procrastination of sorts and it was for me. Once it wasn't, it was just a rule not to read, which wasn't doing what it was supposed to do. 

2. I got rid of the ban on email before 11. But I didn't get rid of the ban on email to create a creative space. Again the rule revealed something better and then the rule wasn't needed. 

3. Meditation. I'm still meditating. I'll be honest, it's hard to do every day and there are some days I've missed. I don't have a huge story with my meditation but I do think it's affected some small things in good ways, including the realization that I have a lot of meditation time built into my life that is not sitting on the floor with my eyes closed but might be just as productive. I've also realized that if meditation isn't working, like a counselor, it might be worth trying a different form. 

So, there's the update. It feels like 1/2 way through this is less about doing something for a certain amount of time and more about changing some things in the way I live, which is always better anyway. It's less about rules, even though it started with rules, and more about learning what the rules were supposed to teach. 

Cheers to that.