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Last night I sat for my first meditation in I don't know how long. Just a quick five minutes to ease me back in gently.

There is nothing in the Journal to indicate that I've sat in the past 385 days. I've mentioned meditation a few times on the blog but only in passing, nothing specific to actually doing it.

I've started using the Loop Habit Tracker app to aid with keeping to my goals this year and have four habits listed:

• morning pages (daily)
• read the Daily Stoic and Daily Thoreau (daily)
• do some exercise (at least 3 times a week)
• meditate (at least 3 times a week)

Although exercise and meditation are listed as three times a week I would like to do them daily but won't beat myself up if I don't.

Thanks to On This Day I just realised that I also chose a word for 2020: self-compassion. I'm not entirely sure how well I lived up to it but it was certainly an improvement on previous years.

I wrote:

"I intend to be more forgiving of my failings rather than berate myself for them, hopefully journeying on a more constructive path to resolution."

I think I achieved that in the main. Things started getting a bit touch-and-go in Autumn when I desperately needed to find another job but I don't think I was really blaming myself for not finding something. In the end I just trusted to the process, became more relaxed about it, and everything fell into place.

I've done it again, forget that this is 2022. 2020 was the year we moved house, when I allowed myself to throw caution to the wind and trust that things would work out.

I was certainly able to be more self-compassionate during these times. Yes, I worried that I wouldn't be able to find a new job but we were in a better place (certainly physically and, for me, emotionally) so life sat a little lighter on the shoulders.

It is amazing how moving to a different area can change your outlook and perspective, leaving a lot of the mental baggage behind you just as you have left a place – clearing out the mind just as you would clear out a house. The moving process was like therapy, decluttering the emotions along with our possessions, realising what thoughts I wished to take with me and what could be discarded.

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Well, it seems that I'm fitter than I thought: 3.5 km on the treadmill, 2.5 km of which were jogged. I'm happy with that. 🏃