Ten minutes.
Funny how hard it is to find ten minutes just lying around.
Seems like I've always got ten for facebook or animated GIFs or one last twitter trawl before bed, but to spend that ten productively? Working through what's left in mind at the end of the day and coming out the other side with a little bit of reflection? Seemed well-nigh impossible.
But then I signed up for this wellness thing, a chance to set and share and aim to meet a few goals every week in the presence of friends, and the need for reflection was at the top of my list.
I used to write almost daily. Back in the days of deeply confessional quasi-public diaries on sites like Diary-X and Scribble, I and a few close friends (hi Liz!) would pour out reams of words, detailing our days and our feelings and - at least in my case - more than a bit of angst, delivered in song lyrics and deliberately truncated little snippets of expression I wasn't brave enough to let fly in full. I pretty much stopped writing sometime in college; too much going on, too little time, and the overwhelming need to take it all in at a torrid pace.
That tendency has continued despite my frequent wishes to get back on the horse over the years. I figure bending this Wellness Challenge thing to this end might help - ten minutes, every day, spent writing something. Anything. And maybe with a public goal, a social incentive to succeed, and the chance to do some real habit formation over ten weeks, I can make it happen!
There's a lot of overlap across everyone's goals - floss daily, eat more vegetables (!), work out, read more, sleep more, be a little more disciplined, a little better to ourselves. And I, too, pledged for vegetables and yoga and reading more of the print newspapers that threaten to bury me alive. But I also pledged to spend ten measly minutes every day - well, night - being a bit more reflective. In writing.
So here I am. It feels good to stare at this little white box and let some text roll off my fingers, banal as it may be. I think maybe this is gonna be a good thing.