INPUT ARTICLE: Article: Starting a few days after surgery, elevate the leg with the ACL injury above the level of your heart. Elevation will help reduce your swelling. Using pillows to elevate your leg is fine, but don't put the pillows directly under your knee; this can limit your range of motion. For the first few days or weeks after surgery, you may find that you need crutches in order to move around effectively. Don't push yourself too hard: use the crutches if you need them. Once your dressing is removed, you can shower, but do not immerse your knee until your doctor says it's okay to do so. Depending on your schedule and the kind of job you have, your time away from work or school will vary. In general, someone with a desk job may need only a couple of weeks off; people with more strenuous jobs will need months. Talk to your doctor about your specific circumstances, and make a plan. After surgery, you will likely have physical therapy (see below). For the first few months after surgery, do not do strenuous activity outside of this physical therapy. As always, check with your doctor about your particular circumstances and how much activity you can allow yourself. In general, you should not drive until you are no longer taking pain medication and no longer relying on crutches to get around. You should also have good control of your knee. Typically, this takes at least a week or two.

SUMMARY: Elevate your leg. Use crutches. Stick to showering. Discuss your return to work or school with your doctor. Avoid strenuous activity outside of physical therapy. Use caution when beginning to drive again.

INPUT ARTICLE: Article: Rather than writing a personal blog, create and maintain a blog on a specific topic. Readers are more likely to return regularly to blogs that provide reliable content in a specific subject area. Reflect upon your interests. Perhaps you are an enthusiastic gardener or a voracious reader of celebrity news. Targeting a blog to your interests will help keep you engaged as a writer, and your passion for the subject will likely translate into enjoyable content for your readers. Focus upon an area of expertise. Maybe you work in computer programming, or have learned how to provide restricted-diet foods for your family. Use these skills as a foundation for developing a blog that will provide useful instruction for your readers. Careful attention to blog maintenance and to providing fresh content will help you grow and maintain a steady audience. Create a regular schedule to keep yourself on track. Perhaps you'll plan to post a set number of times per week, or designate different content for different days -- a recipe each Monday and Wednesday, for example, on a culinary blog, with plans to share shopping advice on Tuesdays and an amusing anecdote on Thursdays. Learn how to schedule postings in advance. Popular blogging sites typically give you the option of drafting posts and then scheduling them for release at a future date and time. Doing so will enable you to keep your blog active even if you're out of town or otherwise occupied. While the process of setting up advertising links via ad players such as Google Ad Sense, Amazon Associates, or Pay-Per-Post is fairly straightforward, it may take several months before you start to receive ad revenue. Ads typically pay on a format of "cost per thousand readers," or CPM, so drawing readers to your blog is very important. Search for related blogs and post comments to draw readers to your site. Always remember to link your URL. Scan the Web for opportunities to participate in "link ups" hosted by prominent bloggers. Link ups offer you the chance to submit a blog post that will then be posted alongside other bloggers' posts in a collection of links. Consider learning "search engine optimization," or SEO. This is a technique for improving the rate at which search engines such as Google list your blog postings in their search results. A quick Web search will yield tools to help you learn how SEO works. Maintaining a quality blog requires an investment of both time and significant mental energy. Payoff, however, comes both in the form of ad revenue and in the community successful blogs can create. The number of hours successful bloggers put in per week varies, but remember that in addition to writing content, you'll need to spend time on advertising, networking, bookkeeping, and efforts to maximize your social media and search results. Consider 20 hours per week a reasonable starting point in terms of time commitment, then evaluate your own work pace and habits once you're underway. Plan to spend at least an hour or two drafting and an extra hour editing each post. Always, always proofread before posting to ensure your content is tidy and easily read.

SUMMARY: Consider Your Audience. Update your blog regularly. Recognize that making money blogging will take time. Prepare to spend significant time and effort on your blog.

INPUT ARTICLE: Article: Try sitting in a room by yourself or positioning yourself outside (if you don't find the natural sounds too disruptive). On the floor, ground, or on a cushion, sit in a lotus or half-lotus position with your knees bent and your feet resting on or near the opposite thighs. Tilt your head down and let your eyes rest about two to three feet in front of you. Keep your spine straight but not rigid. Fold your hands loosely and allow them to rest on your belly. You can perform this meditation in a chair as well. Just make sure you sit up straight (again, keeping the spine relaxed). Each eye needs its own object. One should be only in the left eye's field of vision, the other in only the right eye's field of vision. Each object should also be stationary. Each object should be at a slightly greater than 45-degree angle from your face. This is close enough that your eyes can be in the normal position facing forward while simultaneously being able to focus individually on two separate objects, each unable to see the object on the opposite side. For best results, make sure each object is two or three feet in front of you so you can sit, eyes half-open and chin tucked in, just as you would in a Zazen meditation position. Each eye is fully aware of the presence of the object in its own field of vision. As you become better practiced at this you will begin to achieve a profound sense of relaxation. As with other forms of meditation, patience is key. It may take several attempts before your focus improves to the point that you empty your mind and achieve a heightened level of relaxation. Allow yourself to slowly come back to complete wakefulness. Try becoming aware of your environment a little bit at a time (the smell of someone making coffee in the other room, the sound of a clock, etc.).

SUMMARY:
Find a quiet setting. Sit in a zazen meditation posture. Pick objects to focus on. Focus on these two objects. Exit your meditation.