This year, my New Year's resolutions included finding a daily spiritual practice.

I'm not religious. I was raised a Jewish-Atheist with little-to-no emphasis on the spiritual side, and the spirituality I've come to on my own feels deeply personal. It doesn't involve churches or ritual or tradition, or the other solace and community-building aspects that many find in their religion.

But. The past few years have included many deaths and disappointments; at times I felt as though I was trying to grab handfuls of water. I needed something to sustain me during the hard times.

So on January 1st, I began to meditate daily. I asked J., my Wise Woman, for tips and she gave me some. "Sit upright on a hard chair with your feet planted on the ground," she said. And she showed me. "You don't need to sit cross-legged." (So of course I sat on my bed. Cross-legged. Actually, J. told me, she meditates on her bed too.) But for actual instruction, all she said was, "Follow the breath and keep coming back."

I sat in meditation for 15-30 minutes every day. I felt great. The calm extended far past my sitting time. My writing, which had felt like blood trying to pass through plaque-narrowed arteries, freed up and I finished my novel. But somewhere in April the meditation started getting progressively harder and harder. I'd forget until the evening when I was tired. I'd fall asleep. I'd keep my sessions short. Once or twice I forgot and got up in the middle of the night to do it. And then in early May, I stopped.

"Follow the breath and keep coming back." Why couldn't I keep up with such a simple practice, just a few minutes a day?

Here's where I could begin to beat myself up for it. I could call myself undisciplined, unserious, a dilettante, a failure. "What, you couldn't even meditate every day? But I try not to do that to myself anymore, that kind of punitive lashing. In Harry Potter, the house elves are trained to beat themselves up when they misbehave, to smash their own heads against the wall for even the smallest mistake. I was a very good house elf for most of my life. But I'm not a house elf anymore; I am free(r), I wear my own clothing, and I won't judge myself like that.

When something like this happens, I want to look deeper into it. What else is going on?

~

On Thursday night, I was at A Great Good Place for Books hearing Meg Waite Clayton read from and talk about her new novel, The Wednesday Sisters.

Somebody asked Meg to talk about her how she writes, her process, and she talked about discipline, a discipline she learned in law school. Every day, two thousand words or two o'clock, she said.

There were many writers in the audience. Correct that: there were many accomplished book authors in the audience. Five of them gasped. "No way!" and "I hate you!" and "Two thousand words? That's eight pages! Every day?"

"Oh, I don't get two thousand every day, that's why it's two thousand words or two o'clock," Meg said.

"Lunch breaks? Coffee breaks?" I feebly asked.

"Oh yes, and standing around looking out the window breaks," she reassured me.

"But still..." the authors said.

"It's a discipline," she said again.

~

A discipline. The writer refers to her work as discipline. Many writers do. That's the word those who meditate use too. Duh.

Okay, this is nothing new. I've understood this intellectually for years, even as I've fiercely proclaimed myself a binge writer and defiantly showed my productivity despite working in blurts and bursts. But really, the most productive-while-sane writers I know do practice it daily. Masha Hamilton works every day. Ellen Sussman works every day. Jessica Barksdale Inclan works every day. Meg Clayton works every day. And on. And on.

Back in January, I was working with my novel with Masha Hamilton, and she set me the challenge of writing for at least 15 minutes every day. So even though I protested Meg Clayton's extraordinary discipline ("Lunch breaks?") my protestation felt a little insincere to me. Because since January, I, too, with one or two exceptions, have written every day. Sometimes it's fiction, or my column. Sometimes it's just blogging. But I've written.

I've written every day. Me, a sworn binge writer for decades. What's more, I have reaped the benefits so clearly -- the process of writing feels so much more fluid, so much less fraught, than it has ever been. My output is huge. And while focus and inspiration are other topics, the writing itself -- the process of writing itself -- feels like something I can rely on.

~

Hmmm. You know where I'm going with this. But let's review the facts and timeline.

• January, and I resolve to start a daily practice with the goal of finding something to sustain me through the hard times.
• January, I start meditating and ... then later in the month I take Masha up on her challenge to work at least 15 minutes on my novel.
• Pause in the narrative for a three week retreat in February writing ten hours a day. BINGE!
• March, back home, still meditating and writing daily.
• April, I'm writing about an hour a day minimum.
• April, meditation getting harder.
• May, meditation stops.
• May, writing continues.

See? No need to beat myself up at all, I've found the daily practice that's working for me right now. The practice of writing. And the meditation? Perhaps meditating daily for five months freed me up to write daily, and once I was writing daily, the meditation slid aside.

Have I switched from binge writer to daily writer forever? Who knows. All I know is, this morning, without a project or deadline or contest to win, without any outside stimulation, I eagerly got up to write this.

I also know that in October I'm beginning a six-month mentorship program with Wise Woman J. As part of it, she said, she'll expect us to have a daily practice. She was talking about meditation, not writing, and I'm thrilled -- I'm looking forward to adding the meditation back in. I miss it.

By the end of the year (and New Year's Resolutions can take a year to manifest, can't they?) I'll have both to sustain me. Meditation and writing, the two practices feeding and augmenting each other.

Daily -- and spiritual -- practices.