I never intended to subscribe to the Journal. About 18 months ago I received one of those “you have unused miles on such-and-such airline and they are about to expire so why not apply them to a subscription to one of these publications” mailings. Sounded good to me, especially since I’ve never been much of a hard-nosed business guy. I figured a little help from the WSJ couldn’t hurt.
It certainly didn’t. Turns out that I started taking the paper right when this little housing bubble, mortgage crisis thing was getting interesting and I got a fantastic daily education on the ins and outs of the most dramatic financial crisis of our time. My ritual is pretty basic: set the coffee before bed, wake up early, get the paper, drink and read. Some days it’s fairly dull, most days it’s pretty darn interesting. And, habit forming to say the least.
Well, in the midst of all of this business education and libertarian (never really sure what that one means…is that a Republican in sheep’s clothing?) opinion making, among all the other stuff of life, I find myself hankering over the last few months to finally confront another, slightly more personal and challenging aspect of my personality. That is, my real fear of any form of quiet, meditative, silent, focused….anything. As a guy who is always on the go, whose emotions go from fairly mellow to incensed in about 2 seconds, and whose got high blood pressure, I’ve always known that some form of daily quiet would be REALLY good for me. And, in spite of all of that evidence I’ve just never been willing to face it.
So, I’ve literally been stewing about how to find the time in the day – between my coffee, the WSJ, exercise, work, music, kids, Mrs. Berry, among other things – not to mention the willingness, to make room for something new like a meditative “practice” of some kind.
And then, a couple of weeks ago, I received a “subscription renewal notice” from the WSJ. Did you know that it costs $400+ a year to subscribe to this thing? I had no idea. And, now that I do, I’m dropping it. Going cold turkey. I mean, that’s a lot of cash for something I can get online. And, here’s the real cost of that spirit of economy: it frees up plenty of time in the morning for me to start my new thing.
Problem is, I don’t know how to start. And this I know for sure: one morning soon, at about 5:30 AM, I’m going to walk outside into the cool air of a Southern California winter’s day, and it’s going to be all driveway, palm trees, grass…and me.
Now what?
