The main result of a deliberate, careful and short session of meditation when I first wake up is a noticeable drop in inertia. I have less reluctance to get things done.
We like cookies from a local bakery. These cookies cost $2.50 each but we think they are worth it. They are hefty and good and we always split one between us. I like to take the time to stop by the public library on the way home and look over the New Books shelf. New books on car repair or plumbing don't grab me but psychology books may. I borrowed several including Clapper's "Facts and Fears" about his career in US intelligence, and "The Elephant in the Brain" about complex multiple motivations in human behavior.
I like my habit of looking over titles of books, even though I already have too many to read before I die. Just seeing what they are about keeps me aware of the world's changing interests and insights. Doctoral students and researchers have to develop book handling so that some idea of the worth of reading the book can be extracted by sampling the language, here and there, looking over the preface and the table of contents, all in a rather short time, like maybe a half hour.
Both of the books I mention here seem worthwhile. I confess to doing quite a lot of jumping between books and I probably have 8 or so books I am currently "reading" but I didn't want to drop either Clapper or Elephant. So, I had a good excuse to work at reserecting my iPod for in-the-car listening. The Classic iPod has an enormous capacity but it has been a pain to get an audiobook from Audible.com, move the file into the iPod, jump thru all the hoops and over the hurdles and actually listen while driving.
Clapper's summary of decades of work in American intelligence seemed a lttle less heavy so I choose to install it in audio form and I began listening today. Much of my driving around town takes 15 to 20 minutes a time so for his 18 hour book, the next few weeks of my driving will probably include a narrator reading "Facts and "Fears". I can listen at home if I want to and I can download the book if I want to read faster than the narrator speaks. I have the habit of sending good sentences and ideas to Goodreads and Twitter and I may do some of that if I buy the Kindle form of the book.
