Every month this year, I’m trying something new and documenting what happens. Check out what I’ve done in past months here. In October, I made a deliberate effort to meditate every morning for 7 consecutive days. Here’s how that went.

I have had good Octobers. Last October, I spent most of my weekends in New Hampshire despite living in Virginia. The year before that, I had just moved to the D.C. metro area, and I visited museums and walked around colorful neighborhoods.

In 2015, I spent Halloween hiking Camel’s Hump in Vermont. (This Halloween, it’s already blanketed in snow.)

Google Photos likes to remind me of these moments with push notifications on my phone, prompting me to “Rediscover This Day.” I usually buy in, clicking and reminiscing over falls and foliage past.

But I’m also learning how to focus on the present. Hence, this month’s challenge of trying meditation for a full week.

Sometimes being present means enjoying the state of no obligations while on vacation. My other main “new thing” of October was a visit to a country I’d never been to before: The Bahamas. Let’s start there, shall we?

Trying…a new country

I’m a big ride junkie: the head rush when I hang upside down on a roller coaster, the drop in my stomach when I plummet down a water slide – these moments elate me and infuse my body with adrenaline. By the end of the ride, I’m so jazzed I want to run to the back of the line again.

If you haven’t noticed, I’m basically 12 at heart.

You probably know what I’m getting at if you’ve been to Atlantis on Paradise Island, Bahamas: water slides that zoom through shark tanks and heart-throttling steep drops are highlights of the resort’s water park.

I had a fantastic time zooming down slides like a kid trying to show off a love for thrills, especially because the abundance of water meant I could step away from my phone for the day and just float down the lazy river without thinking about Instagram or email.

We took a cab from the airport to get to the resort, and our driver encouraged us to get outside Atlantis during our stay. “The resort is synthetic,” she said, it doesn’t represent the Bahamas.

I stared out the car windows at the colorful streets of Nassau, knowing we didn’t have enough time this trip. We ate conch fritters and sunk our toes in the sand, but we really just brushed the surface of real life in these islands. Guess we’ll just have to go back.

Trying…consistent meditation

I’ve technically meditated before, from half-hour sessions at a startup I interned for to attempting to use the Headspace app on a few flights.

Success, let’s say, was limited, and I pretty much swore off meditation in favor of more active, less boring de-stressing activities like running and yoga poses.

Well, I can’t run due to a knee injury and my anxiety persists despite getting more sleep than I ever got in college. Thus, I decided to give meditation another chance.

This month, I committed to meditating every day for a week to see if A) I would see any benefits with sustained effort and B) if I would actually want to keep up the practice. I downloaded the Calm app because it was the number one rated meditation app in the Google Play store, and everyone knows that life is a popularity contest. Here’s the day-by-day breakdown:

Day 1: Basics of Mindfulness

I decide to go with the “7 Days of Calm” program, mostly because it’s entirely free and seems like a good place to start. And I’m in The Bahamas, so it should be easy to be calm and relaxed, right?

Ha. Hilarious.

The problem is that my brain knows what it shouldn’t be thinking about, which, according to the soothing voice of someone named Tamara, is anything except for my breathing. Naturally, my thoughts turn to what I’m going to write for this blog post, stupid things I’ve said in the past ten years, the concerning rumblings of my stomach, etc.

Tamara reminds me that “mindfulness takes practice.” I’ve noticed.

Day 2: Returning to the Here and Now

This session is all about “mental noting,” which basically means thinking breathing in, breathing out to myself when I’m doing those two things.

To me, it doesn’t seem all that different from focusing on my breathing yesterday, and I have a hard time concentrating (shocker.) The coffeemaker bubbles, a cruise ship horn sounds in the distance. I’m relieved when the ten minutes are up – though I do feel rather still, sitting on my fluffy white hotel pillow.

Day 3: Paying Attention

This one’s all about noticing the body through a full scan, and Tamara instructs me to “breathe into” each body part as I mentally account for it. I’m surprised to realize I have lower back pain I hadn’t noticed before; apparently, I’d just been blocking it from my attention. Who knew my own mind could be so devious?

My big win is managing to tune out the churning dishwasher (I’m back home in Boston by this point). Progress.

Day 4: Pulling Out of Autopilot

Oof. I’m a major auto-pilot offender, often pulling off the highway in my car and realizing I don’t remember the last twenty minutes of driving.

So I’m excited about this session, though I’m not sure how it really differs from the previous sessions until partway through. Tamara prompts me to mentally say thinking whenever my mind starts to drift.

This, of course, happens a lot – for me, the future is always tugging at my thought strands, trying to drag me into next week or how I’m planning on writing about something. We need to make choices rather than resort to habit, Tamara tells me. I’m working on it.

Day 5: The Value of Non-Doing

Today’s session is interesting because it presents a direct real-world application: to simply pause whenever you’re feeling stressed or anxious. Simple, but pretty good advice, especially for us high-strung folk.

Day 5 teaches the value of being OK with “stopping productivity” and having no agenda – something all of us could probably use a bit more of.

Day 6 (oops):

This is where I confess that I messed up. I spent all of Day 6 out of service range in New Hampshire, which I’m not really sorry about, but I am a bit sorry that I didn’t have the foresight to download the session beforehand.

Instead, I sit on the ground in a quiet room and listen to the app’s nature sounds, focusing on my breathing for 5 minutes. (I don’t think I could make it through 10 minutes without Tamara guiding me. I’ve been doing this for less than a week, after all.)

Day 6 (actual): Patience

Back in civilization, the real Day 6 session advises me to respond to myself with kindness and compassion. Real talk: I don’t always do this. I know lots of people can say the same. This particular advice is something I’ve been trying to follow recently, and I think applying what I’ve learned so far through meditation can actually help me.

This is the first session I complete before going to bed rather than in the morning. I find myself saying, “I need to meditate, I was really stressed out today.”

Just voicing this thought is comforting, because it makes me feel like I have some amount of control over my stress. Zeroing my mind in on my breath during this session helps me drift off to sleep more easily afterward.

Day 7: Awareness

I made it! I actually meditated for seven days straight. Today’s directive is to conduct a full-body scan and just notice the feelings I experience without reacting to them.

Becoming aware of the tingling in my toes or an itch on my arm without doing anything about it makes me physically uncomfortable, so I’m not super happy with this one. Oddly, this turns out to be my least favorite session of the week, though being a bit hungry may have contributed (hunger dictates many of my moods.)

Apparently, Tamara can read my mind, because her mantra today is When you’re hungry, eat; when you’re tired, sleep – based off of a parable regarding enlightenment. I like this simple message.

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Takeaways: I’m not planning on sticking to a strict meditation schedule for the time being, but I do think that meditation has more of a role to play in my life than I previously thought. Even though the week has ended, I’ve been finding myself continuing to turn to my breath when I’m feeling anxious, the in/out consistency bringing me comfort and slowing down my racing mind.

My biggest lesson from this month was to focus on the present more – easier said than done, but worth pursuing. Relaxation doesn’t magically come from traveling to an island paradise; you have to put down your phone and appreciate those moments in the sun.

Marvel at the giant rays. Scream your way down a water slide. Play in the waves. Just be.