I don't know if that was similar to meditation, but it felt AMAZING.
This is absolutely meditation! There are many ways to meditate, and you can pick whichever method works best for you. The key is really just dissociating your consciousness from the automatic mind chatter. To do this, you can:
Passively watch your thoughts, dissociating from them.
Silence your mind entirely (very difficult!)
Hold your mind in single-pointed focus (you can repeat a phrase, repeat a word, hold a mental image, focus on an object, etc.)
Get into the "flow" of something, remaining focused on that one thing and not letting your mind wander about something unrelated. This can be something like gardening, running, walking, or even riding a motorcycle, if you're 100% focused on the road.
You can focus purely on being right here, right now, in the present moment. Focusing on your own breath is good for this. One of the realizations of enlightenment is that the present moment is all that there is, and we are all one with everything in it.
Outward focus: I would place what you're describing into this category. You can meditate by simply focusing all of your attention on everything around you. Just take in the sights and sounds with your full attention. Have you ever noticed how easy it is to miss SEEING something when your mind is wandering? It's very difficult to do both at once.
Really, though, the end goal of meditation is to train yourself to be mindful throughout the day. When you're doing something, you're focused on what you're doing. When someone is speaking to you, you're focused on what they're saying. When thoughts run through your mind, you understand their meaning and origin, and you become skilled at cutting off self-destructive patterns.
You will learn to forgive yourself and others, then you will learn that no forgiveness was ever needed, because everyone is truly blameless. You will shed the mentality of victimhood, and you will develop the compassion for others that comes along with realizing that we're all a part of the one reality that created and sustains us.
Enlightenment is the ultimate realization that your true identity is everyone and everything. There are no rules to learn and no dogma to follow -- there is only remembering who you truly are. This information already exists within your consciousness because the truth is that there exists only one consciousness, and we are each currently experiencing our own subjective fragments of it.
The only thing blocking you from remembering this is the focus you place on the chatter within your own mind -- the biological structure that is merely a tool for your consciousness to interpret your physical reality.
Meditate, and you will bypass this.