52. Place in top 10% of a 5km run

I figure the first thing I need in order to achieve this is to actually be able to run 5km. I don't know what a kilometre actually is - some European measurement of distance obviously but, frankly, a mile makes more sense. A furlong even. Damn those foreign measurements.

Anyway, I have added running to my gym 'regime' (a word that exaggerates to a considerable degree what it is I actually do with weights). Over the last 5 days I have run on a treadmill twice - 12 minutes each time at 9 km/h. After the first time I ached in places I couldn't begin to describe here - this isn't that kind of a blog. Today's little trot was much less painful, happily.

But how do I progress?

My instinct is to increase the run by a minute on every second run until either I find the gym isn't open long enough to accommodate my session any more or until the effort kills me. (I prefer the former).

On the other hand, the target here is to run 5km quickly - more quickly than 90% of the (as yet unidentified) field. I assume that to be good at 5km you need to be able to run considerably further than 5km in order to gain the fitness necessary to speed up at the lesser distance.

Confused, I've decided to add a minute to my run-time on every second run until I am running for half an hour. I like this approach because it gives me constant improvement which is good for the soul (if not for the soles).

Once I am running for half an hour at 9km/h secondary school maths tells me I will be covering 4.5km in distance. So maybe from there I'll try some longer-distance runs - 6 or 7km - interspersed with shorter, quicker runs. I will have to look into how one increases one's running speed.

And I imagine I'll eventually have to go out and run on the ground too because I'm already aware that treadmill running is way easier than real running.
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Writing that novel

I've written small pieces here and there of an idea that's been floating around in my mind for 5 or 6 years but this week I have settled down to actually pull it together into a coherent story.

And easy it ain't.

Somehow when you're sitting idly and your ideas are running through your mind the story writes itself, the dialogues flow, there's rhythm and order and the words and sentences and paragraphs and chapters merge effortlessly into each other until - voila - it's done and you're up there on the podium accepting your Booker prize and relating to an adoring audience tales of your varied negotiations over the filming rights to your work of art.

Back on Planet Reality you decide you want to bring a couple of characters together so need to decide where and how they should meet - relatively easy - and write a believable, non-stilted dialogue. Which is relatively bloody impossible. I just do not know how to create a setting and a conversation that doesn't look contrived.

Many years ago - perhaps 15 - I harboured pretensions of being a writer and for a period of time I carried a notebook into which I dropped thoughts, ideas, snippets of dialogue and so on. Much of it has little practical application but all of it - I reckon - I could turn into a moderately interesting scene or situation even if that doesn't make it into anything resembling a proper story.

What I am thinking now is that I ought to resume observing and noting because I now have specific scenes in mind and I feel that with them playing in the back of my mind I will be more receptive to examples from real life that can help but which might otherwise have passed me by.
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Things to do with the Mrs

The task here is to find 25 things I can do with Mrs D that are fun or romantic. I would add the word 'new' to that - I don't want a list of 25 things we've done before. These don't have to be challenging, unusual Life List-type items. They can be cheap and they can be easy. They just have to be good for her.

Coincidentally yesterday she mentioned some things she'd like us to do so I have to put them on the list. We've done all three before. She also mentioned when in conversation with a friend that she'd like to see a live cricket match. I'm not much of a cricket fan but would definitely give a live game a try. So that's added to the list.

I don't know if it's coincidence that she's mentioned things she'd like to do at the same time that I'm compiling a list - or whether I'm suddenly paying more attention to her when she says these things. Hopefully it's the former.

The items after number 4 I think would appeal to her - and they also appeal to me. I need though to include a couple of activities that would mainly be her cup of tea.

1. Watch live recordings of BBC shows
2. London walks
3. Comedy shows
4. See a live cricket match
5. Try sailing

The 'problem' with the first three is that we've done them before. But because Mrs D mentioned them herself - unprompted, as it were - they're on the list.

Number 4 we've never done and number 5 I tried (and liked) years before I ever met my wife.

I will add these:

6. Attend an open-air festival
7. Attend a large sporting event
8. Camp overnight in Rhossili Bay
9. Create our own 'favourite things in London' guide
10. Watch a half dozen of the scariest movies in one day

So I have ten things for us to do. I can't pretend it's an impressive list but it's a start and it will undoubtedly evolve. I'll add to it soon.

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Setting the meditation habit

The daily meditation habit is proving a little challenging.

Two things get in the way: first, the conditions aren't always good - I've either had a meal (you can't meditate on a full stomach) or I am evidently distracted by a number of things to do and would be better off getting some of them done first before meditating.

The second obstacle is that I then forget to meditate. Pathetic, I know, but it happens.

Oh, and another excuse valid point: I sometimes only remember to meditate when I'm about to go to bed - a hopeless time to do it since I'll end up falling asleep - then falling off my chair and doing myself an injury. I really don't want to turn up at Accident and Emergency with a broken nose brought about by an unfortunate meditation accident.

My solution is this: my twice-daily meditation habit will be at fixed times by appointment with myself. I will meditate at 7am and - while I don't have a job - 4pm. I hope this helps.

The sessions themselves are 11 minutes long and of varying - though mostly poor - quality. The decision to go from one session a day to two a day was made on my assumption that quality would be improved by more frequent sessions. And then I want to lengthen the sessions - quickly too.

(And yes, I did meditate this morning!)

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63. Write your 25-year life plan

25 years is a long time. But now is a good time to start planning for it. I think writing the plan is going to take place over several sessions - it won't be a single event. More an evolved product. So to start things off I have considered some different life categories and written a line a two about what I want in each over the next 25 years.

Family: two more kids and a house large enough they can marry and still stay with us.

Friends: we will have 12 close friends and 24 other very good friends as well as many acquaintances.

Career: earning more than I ever have whilst working less than I ever have. £10,000 per month doing a job I love would do nicely. I might be doing more than one job at a time - maybe have a portfolio career. Certainly I like the idea of blogging for income (not that I earn anything at the moment) but I also think I'll be good at sales. And I reckon I can write a killer novel...

Wealth: for me wealth is partly determined by how much passive income I earn. I'd like half that £10,000 to be passive which means I need something that operates even while I'm asleep. Property lets fits the bill as well as anything which you create once and earn on-going royalties (like publishing a novel).  I want £750,000 in cash or near-cash form too - in case I see something nice at the shops.

Health: slim/athletic build, lots of energy, all important organs doing their thang.

Spiritual: I would like a more calm and wise worldview, an accepting nature and a certain peace with the world. I like the Buddhist idea of being free from grasping and acquisitiveness.

Skills: I want to be excellent at a couple of things - selling, poker, writing - and pretty good at a couple more - including fun stuff like magic tricks. This blog's 101 tasks will contain some of them.

Experiences: 25 years from now I will have a life list of 1000 completed tasks. Lord only knows what they'll be though.
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9. Meditate for 3 hours in one go

This idea came to me as I munched on a Buddha pizza ('one with everything') - hoho!

Actually, I have meditated on and off but only in a rather haphazard and uncommitted manner and never for more than a week at a time. Even for those short periods though I felt that I got better at it. Initially the mind wanders like a drunk who's missed the last bus home and it's practically impossible to take consecutive breaths without recounting an argument you had this morning or wondering if you've left the gas on in the kitchen. And you hear all sorts of things going on in your supposedly-empty house. But after a couple of sessions I did start to string a few breaths together and once or twice actually felt a sense of calm at the end of my 15-minute session.

To meditate for three hours is a whole different cup of haiku of course. I actually started some meditation this last week - just 10 minutes of breath-counting per day - but I think I should meditate twice per day if I am going to develop the focus necessary to gradually stretch the sessions. And I should add a minute per day to those sessions to work towards the 180 minutes I will eventually hopefully do.

One thought just sprung to mind (lucky then that I wasn't meditating): I'm unemployed as I write this but if, as I hope, I get a job soon I'm not sure how I will be able to schedule long sessions of quiet meditating time into my day. Finding an hour of quiet once a day will be tough - more than that will require some careful planning. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it I suppose. In the meantime this evening I will meditate and tomorrow I will start meditating twice per day.
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40. Know your digital camera and your MP3 player inside out

We'll start with the MPs player only today. Don't want to pull a muscle on day 1 of The Challenge...

And let's get something straight - I'm not much of a techno-whiz. Both my camera and MP3 player are not the newest. Every time I buy a new needle for the player I think to myself, 'I need an upgrade...' Just kidding. The needle hardly ever needs replacing.

But in truth, I got my player in the days when programmes were on tv and memory was something my grandparents were losing. But it's a great MP3 player - my sister- and brother-in-law in Boston (the US one, not the UK one) bought it for me and I wouldn't swap it for the world. It's not the one pictured on the left by the way. The one pictured on the left is the beauty I am going to buy when I lose (as, inevitably, I will) the one I've got. Whether it matches the one I've got remains to be seen. I'm hopeful.

The weird thing is my wife and daughter have these new-fangled iPods and they don't do half of what my trusty iRiver does. Mine's a multi-codec player,supports multiple languages, plays FM radio stations (and will store radio stations), has strange teenager-friendly EQ settings (nope, not a clue), has a GUI menu (but idiot-simple navigation), allows you to create playlists and folders, will record external sounds, voice or radio and has alarms, timers and a tea-making facility. (Last one there might not be true).

My player is so good you can't even buy it now (it's an iRiver iFP-895). You can buy a cover for it but you can't buy the unit. 'Obsolete' is a harsh word which is why I prefer 'collector's item'.

Anyways. Today I started to learn how to use that long list of goodies and, I must say, I love it. I've loaded songs onto the thing before obviously and I listen to the radio but I tried the voice-recording today and it is crystal clear. Which is useful: one of my Life List tasks is to use self-hypnosis and, having done some reading on that I find I will need to record a relaxation script - which I will do on my iRiver.

There's a difference between 'Menu' and 'Function', I find. A function is a thing you do - play music, listen to the radio etc. Whereas the menu gives you lots of settings to fiddle about with that will, amongst other things, alter your experience of those functions. The key to mastering this player is two-fold:

1. Pick a couple of the most useful functions plus a couple of the most relevant menu settings for each function and resolve to learn those.
2. Keep on practising changing the settings for the functions until it starts to become second-nature. So today I am going to record four good radio programmes using the timer facility and I'll also make use of the random play and shuffle features.

Tomorrow I will repeat with different functions or settings. Boy, do I know how to live. I reckon I can say I've mastered it when I can use easily any of the functions or settings necessary to allow me to utilise the player in any of the scenarios I am likely to want to.

PS Our American cousins can see the above-pictured player here iRiver H320 20GB Digital Music Player with Color Display

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