Finished a second week of the LIFTOFF program, with steady progression so far. A major wind storm kept us up overnight form Tuesday through Wednesday, so I shifted my lifting schedule a day to workout on Thursday instead. Key to any habit is recovery from disruption. Now I have one under my belt.

The storm took down a beautiful spruce in our front yard, one which I enjoyed looking at out the front window. Per Ron Padgett, I like to make eye contact with a tree. Tree removal is costly, but it’s impressive how fast an industrial wood chipper can consume a full-size tree.

I sat for three 20 minute meditations this week, completing the Brightmind level 2 course. This is my preparation for attending a 60 hour silent retreat with the Brightmind crew next week. We’ll see if I make the jump from 20 minutes to 9 hours of continuous meditation practice.

Recreation includes playing bass and playing Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla while listening to audiobooks in the evening.

Recent Reading

• Far from the Tree, by Andrew Solomon
• No Bad Parts, by Richard Schwartz
• The Two Towers, by J.R.R. Tolkien (finished)
• The Return of the King, by J.R.R. Tolkien
• Werner Herzog: A Guide for the Perplexed, by Paul Cronin. On hold for part of this week due to losing track of the book under a pile of laundry. Oops!
• Patterns of Distributed Systems, by Unmesh Joshi
• A Philosophy of Walking, by Frédéric Gros (finished)
• Bomb Power, Gary Wills (finished)