Peeling the Onion
I rang in the new year at a 10-day silent meditation retreat. Turns out it was a great way to avoid getting sick, since everyone had to be vaccinated and tested, and then we were quite effectively cloistered together in a bubble. The retreat was one of the S. N. Goenka retreats, and it was only fifteen miles from my house in 29 Palms. In fact, I had intended to walk there from my house, since that's kind of my thing, but my PCR results were not back in time, so instead I spent the morning of arrival day stressing about that and just had Amy drive and drop me off instead. More importantly, wait, what? Garret went to a meditation retreat? Is this the same embittered ex-Mormon now-atheist anti-anything-spiritual-or-supernatural burn-it-all-down-with-statistics Garret we all know and fear that we're talking about here? Indeed. My main motivations are that I want my college brain back, I'd like to get off the hedonic treadmill, and I'd like to be more present. In college a