On November 27 last year, I decided that I will go to the Gym every single day. I did not decide how long I will spend there, I did not have a target for weight loss or any set goals. Just that I will go to the gym every day. It can either be my local Gym or the one at my office. The choice depends on work and other priorities in life. The time is not fixed. I will make a visit to the Gym and will only sleep if I have done it for the day.

I have been doing it ever since. I did not go on Dec 25th as it was a holiday and my local Gym was closed. I could have driven to office and gone in the Gym there. But that is ok, I don’t intend to be too hard on me either.

What do I do at the Gym? Nothing fancy. I picked up a weekly schedule from the internet and stuck to it. Each day some cardio and some weights and stretching with rest days in between where I will just do some cardio and stretching. Not much, just 30 minutes every day. I have had days I go up to 1 hour and also days I just do a 15 minutes and I am out. As I said the goal is to not miss a day in the Gym.

Why on Nov 27th ? Nothing special. I had this thought on Nov 26th and why wait for the new year for a resolution. Do it the moment you decide to do it. Don’t delay as no magic happens on new year. Also I don’t intend to overdo, just giving myself a routine. Baking something into my day that could have some benefits in the long run.

A few weeks back I wanted to do something else. On a daily basis I started writing down ideas, thoughts, conversations, snippets of what I read, what I watched, feel and so on. Just like recording my day. This was done primarily to help me on my weekly podcast (a note to self) that I do in malayalam. But without me being aware, it has become a habit and now giving me a sense of how the week went by. I don’t always use everything in my podcast but have a running google doc that list how my week said goodbye to me.

Yesterday night I had another thought and that was to find time to write daily. I have done 365 days writing projects before, but there was always this understanding that it will end on the 365th day. It never became part of my life. It was a project. And projects are not our day or our life, they are things that use our day and life. And they all ended when 365 days were done.

Forget about writing, I just want to carve out some time every day for me to sit and put thought to paper. I am not even worried about the quality of those thoughts or words or sentences. Just 15 minutes daily. May be just type into my phone. Everyday, that it becomes one thing to check off before I sleep.

Pretty much like journaling, but what I write will be things I will publish like this post. I will post them on my blogs and some of them some of them might make their way to the Social media. Hopefully these writings can form the base to a book project I had ben entrusted last year by a publishing house in India, but I never started working on. I was thinking of dropping that idea all together when this thought started bothering me.

I have a small plan too. We need plans. Day-1 today starts with a personal note on my blog vinodnarayan.com, this can also include poetry or flash fiction or anything of that sort. The next day I will post in malayalam at pahayanmedia.com again mostly personal, translations, poetry and so on. The third day I will post something more connected with profession and career on Penpositive.com. Then they will repeat. The one I post on penpositive I will also post on LinkedIn as that is my professional refuge.

How will all these matter to me ? I don’t know. But as Annie Dillard, in her book “The Writing Life” says that the way we choose to spend our time each day is a reflection of how we are living our life overall; if we want to live a fulfilling life, be mindful of how we spend your days. 

Am I mindful ? I don’t know, but we will figure out.