The type of meditation I grew up hearing about was breathing meditation: quieting the mind and gaining focus through following a simple bodily process that is always present in a living human being. I find this method hard to use on its own, no matter how long I sit. It is monotonous, the breathing can be very subtle, and I've always found it easy to switch off my brain but keep the pretense that I am still following my breath. By the end of the retreat I had learned to meditate on my breath better, but in the beginning I found it difficult.

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It's been a while since I've come back to Lawrence; not a whole lot going on other than job-hunting and carousing, so I haven't updated the blog.

It's sometimes hard to believe I ever went on a 3000-mile bike trip, but I have a memory now and again that helps bring it back. And I feel different, about myself, about my life, and I know that came from the many experiences I had on my trip. One thing has been bugging me, and maybe others who followed this blog: I never gave an account of my experience at the retreat near the end of my trip.

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It's been a while since I've come back to Lawrence; not a whole lot going on other than job-hunting and carousing, so I haven't updated the blog.

It's sometimes hard to believe I ever went on a 3000-mile bike trip, but I have a memory now and again that helps bring it back. And I feel different, about myself, about my life, and I know that came from the many experiences I had on my trip. One thing has been bugging me, and maybe others who followed this blog: I never gave an account of my experience at the retreat near the end of my trip.

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Well, I'm back, maybe to stay? I don't particularly like to blog much while I'm not doing something exciting like, uh, living in another country or riding my bicycle every day across this country. But I've got some stuff I'd like to finish up, and I occasionally have some new stuff I do want to throw out there. So for the time being I'm removing updates from my Facebook page so that people interested in my travels but not much else won't get inundated.

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Well, I'm back, maybe to stay? I don't particularly like to blog much while I'm not doing something exciting like, uh, living in another country or riding my bicycle every day across this country. But I've got some stuff I'd like to finish up, and I occasionally have some new stuff I do want to throw out there. So for the time being I'm removing updates from my Facebook page so that people interested in my travels but not much else won't get inundated.

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