As I’m taking a year of life that is different than most life, I get a good chance to reflect on ways I want my next settled life (that is, my grad student life) to be. The difficult thing is that everything is different now, so I can’t run experiments on diet, sleep, caffeine, etc, because of all the confounding factors. The nice thing is that I have a lot of time to figure out ideas and a lot of diverse experiences.

Some thoughts, and I’m open to everything from the profound to the mundane

- make sure there’s a farmers' market near my house and at least one good coffeeshop. This has been nice in Seattle.
- keep biking. This is also good.
- meditation will probably still be in the morning. An hour would be a nice number. After sitting for an hour or more many times these past two weeks, I’ve jumped up to 45 minutes in the morning, which feels totally doable now. I’ll work up from there.
- make a bunch of Indian food. Dishes/appliances I would like include a food processor and a big wok, or maybe a cast-iron skillet. (That’s the best thing for a skillet, right? I’m cool with maintenance.)
- here’s a thought: keep nothing immediately edible in my house. I’ve enjoyed staying a bit hungry, and if food always required me to work, I’d probably get back to 3 standard meals/day and feel pretty good.
- somehow limit, but not eliminate, drinking. Like Gerrit’s “only drink in houses, not bars” idea.
- make sure my home desk setup works nicely. Big monitor, comfortable chair. Or standing desk?
- figure out something about sleep. Sleeping naturally always is nice, but it’d be good if it didn’t take so long.

And one more thought, which probably deserves its own post (and then I’ll quit blogging for tonight, promise).