I Tried Transcendental Meditation...

..and c'est pas mon truc. I've been told on various accounts that I should take up meditation. My mom tried to convert me (though I guess it isn't really converting if she doesn't do it herself) when I was in college with the help of a burned CD filled with "oms" uttered by a guy with a lisp and an Instant Karma book with a handwritten bookmark that says "I gave this to you for a reason" in her hybrid cursive that is legible to not many people outside of my family. TBH, I didn't give meditation much thought until I read about Transcendental Meditation (TM if you're #intheknow) in New York magazine a few months ago. All the cool people, like Jerry Seinfeld and Lena Dunham and probably Gwyneth Paltrow do it, so obviously I should too. The thing with TM is, like most hobbies of the rich and famous, it isn't exactly free to learn. If I can't afford a luxury gym membership (I wish Equinox made me do it) then I certainly can't afford the introductory TM course where a trained teacher assigns you a mantra. And that's why nerdy boys invented YouTube. It didn't take me long to a) find a mantra online b) learn how to do TM with the help of a YouTube video.

Basically, all you do is concentrate on your mantra. That's a really abridged version but it gets the point across. I tried to do it first thing in the morning (like Carolyn Murphy, apparently) and it went great for like, two days. I set a a timer for 10 minutes on my phone, and sat on my floor and thought about nothing but my mantra. Then on the night of day two, a monster cockroach showed up in my apartment and even though I watched my roommate kill it with the lethal combination of dish soap, a flip flop, and a GRE practice book, I still couldn't sit comfortably in my apartment after the incident with my eyes closed without thinking there was a cockroach at my feet. I picked it back up on day four when my roommate got in the shower before me on a Tuesday morning and I decided the only way to not get annoyed (she takes really long showers and is the first to admit it) was to meditate. On day five, I woke up in the morning with Blank Space stuck in my head and decided I didn't want to replace it with an om, so I didn't meditate. On day six, I forgot about my wholesome morning practice. I didn't make it to twenty-one days, which is apparently how long it takes to make a habit.

So, all in all, if I had fully committed to TM (say with the help of an instructor) I could've gotten into it. But I just don't think I have the lifestyle for it. Exhibit A: My apartment is occasionally cockroach-ridden.