Consecutive Days Lived Well: 1
When I don't post, I'm going to restart my days-count. I think this should be a daily duty. There's rarely a day that I couldn't post if I tried, so barring some extreme circumstance, I should make it a priority to post.
Today was good. I felt like I was too wound-up and stressed because of various things, plus I wanted to catch up on some reading, so I took the day off. I hung out, or "loafed" as Whitman says, for a little bit, talked to some family and friends on the phone, and then Eva and I tried this Italian restaurant for lunch. The food was quality and the prices were reasonable. The best part was the dessert. Their gelato is top-notch. Afterwards I watched the ducks in the harbor and enjoying a light rain. If only it was warmer. Then I biked around town for a while to get exercise and went to Mark's to read. I finished Ethics (finally!) and read The Book of Tea and Drops of Rain: Rumi Quatriants. Dan, I think you'd love the Book of Tea, but I know I already recommend too many books, so whatever, check it out if you feel like it. I started on The Education of Little Tree. After that I'm going to read Teacher Man and Waiting for Godot, and then I will have read all the books that people have either recommended or given to me.

To begin posting again, I'm going to use "Consecutive Days Lived Well" as my initial criterion. It'll be similar to "Days Since a Collapse", except a collapse won't be the only occasion for restarting the count. My understanding of what it means to live well changes over time, so my decision about whether or not to count a particular day as one in which I've lived well is admittedly a function of something variable. I like the criterion because it focuses not just on "achievement" in terms of material changes in circumstance, recognition, or some other change from static state to static state, but it also takes into account activity, the value of which I've started increasingly to recognize from my study of non-modern thinkers. Tending to your domestic routines with tranquility and even reverance, spending time well with someone else, giving them a good effort on your behalf to connect with them, or admiring something beautiful for its own sake--these are activities, which I find to be important, but don't advance ourselves, or count necessarily as ends (in a sense they are ends in themselves). On the other hand, I do still value the advancements, and they will figure into my judgment. Aside from this, to give a quantitative critique, albeit highly subjective, I'll use the 1-5 system for a while too.
The past month has actually been very good for me. I saved a good amount of money, lost over ten pounds, got the internet working at my house, got a cell phone, got settled at work, and did some solid work on my book. Really, I'm tempted to start the count at 31, to include the last month, but I'll start fresh for the sake of bringing you guys along with me from a beginning, not somewhere in the middle.
Consecutive Days Lived Well: 1
Rating: 4

I'm not sure how I want to critique myself, so for the time being I'll just report.
I got up without hesitation, prepared quickly, and managed to read a thought-provoking article in the Economist while eating my breakfast. Then I biked to work and did my job well. I stopped at the bank to make a deposit on the way back, cleaned the bathroom, made dinner (tonight's pad thai was the best one I've ever made), packed up my old cell phone to send back to Sprint, did a round of eastern-style calisthenics, sat down to read Emerson for 15 minutes, straightened-up the room for a bit, participated in the Best Of Annapolis annual on-line poll, e-mailed my dad hotel information for my family's trip down here, looked up car information, and now I'm writing this. After I'm done I'm going to work on my book until 10:20, take care of my dental hygiene, and then go to bed. While I've been on the computer I've listened to Ravel's String Quartet and Dvorak's 8th symphony. It's been lovely. I also listened to Smetana's Moldau, which is the most intense piece of music I've ever heard, at least the beginning of it (I thought that the first time I heard it, and I still do). Yo Dan, remember how I said a few summers ago that if we had an apartment together I would start each day by blasting GZA and jumping around the place shouting and getting pumped up? I'd still do that on some days, but for days that I really needed a kick in the ass, I would blast the Moldau. Check that shit out. My biggest criticism of myself today is that I wasn't decisive about prioritizing my tasks and also that I rebelled against the idea of writing. I can't shrink away from that task. That should be the highest of my activities, and I should treat it with the appropriate respect. I shouldn't dread it in any sense.