Transcendental Meditation

I want to focus more on my well-being. Most days I feel like a carpet constantly being stepped on, my fringes faded and tattered. I feel like a shadow of myself. I've been getting angered much more easily lately. My patience has been wearing thin. Usually my patience is what I admire most about myself. My ability to deal with frustrating things in a calm manner made me proud. But now, I can barely deal with the bus arriving five minutes late without feeling so stressed and angry that I develop a headache.

I realize that I can't be happy when my emotions are so out of whack and my fuse is so short. I realize that I can't be a better person if I'm on the verge of snapping at someone who cuts in front of me on a line or if I glare at a person trying to make smalltalk with me. That's not who I am. So it felt like a sign when I opened the newspaper one day and read a short article about Transcendental Meditation. Apparently Jerry Seinfeld does it.

I was intrigued. 

It seems easy enough to do, dedicate twenty minutes of my time twice a day to sitting with my eyes closed. And it could help with my insomnia and stress.  I feel like it wouldn't hurt to try it. So I will. Perhaps it will help me find a clearer path to a happier, personal state. Perhaps it will help me reclaim my joy, my peace. At the least it will provide me with twenty minutes of quiet. I'd like that very much.

Introduction.

I am a chronic worrier.

I am victim to a mind that refuses to quit. I don't know if it is the thoughts that fuel my mind, or my mind that fuels these thoughts. What I do know, is that  I worry about the things I cannot change, the things I wish I could have changed and those things that have not yet happened. Days are spent playing out a pointless possibility. Life has become a series of scenarios, both factual and hypothetical. One part of me lives in the real world, doing real things, living a real life. Another part of me cannot help but worry about what could happen while I am out living life. Will I trip and embarrass myself? Where will that happen? What will I be wearing? What if I trip in front of many people? Will I ever see those people again? Will they recognize me? And on and on.  I can only watch without pause. I spend so much time thinking, that I barely enjoy the moment. And that is the problem. I want to enjoy the moment. Not think about it two days later and realize how much I could have enjoyed myself. It is like I am living vicariously through the experiences I'm barely aware I had. My worries and anxiety results in restless nights and stressful mornings. It is not acceptable to just accept a life full of the stress my mind continually conjures. So as an act of respite, I have decided that the only way to rid my mind of these anxious and frequently absurd thoughts is to purge them.

That is how this journal came to be.

I needed a way to chronicle these thoughts. I needed something to motivate me to let things go.

Quite often I find myself talking to an empty room, just to release all worry that has built up inside my busy head. Today I choose to write it down. In doing so I hope to reclaim my mind, my sanity, and my life.

It is like I have tunnel vision. All I can do is worry. That is all that falls into my sight. But around me there is so much more. There is life, there is light and I need to take it all in.


These are the words of a chronic worrier, looking to find solace in her own mind.