Digital detox

I notice the past few weeks I've been in a bit of a state. I suppose polycrisis could be a word, though it's hardly that dramatic. However when one thing goes everything else seems to as well, and life just generally seems to be in a bit of disarray.

I haven't slept well for a good few weeks. I have almost got out of the habit, and most nights I can't get to sleep until well past midnight, and then I wake up tired or, like I did on the Friday just gone, oversleep for work. I'm finding I am not doing anything productive with my days really, and am not practising mandolin despite having many new pieces I need to get in good shape before the concert in August, and the two concerts in November. I haven't studied my M05 Insurance Law much either, despite needing to sit the exam before Feb-27 (yes a while away, but it will come quickly, and I need to be prepared). I've books I want to read, movies in the cinema I want to watch, languages I want to study.

My diet is not perfect recently and in fact yesterday I bought a tub of raspberry sorbet, ostensibly with the idea that I would eat it gradually, and then ended up eating the whole thing at once. 80g of sugar in one sitting. After that I had a massive bowl of cereal too, so even more sugar. I also bought many tomatoes, and salad, etc. at the same time but those went untouched. The two burgers I bought did get eaten, though. Of course, because they're unhealthy.

And now to the main point: yesterday, my screentime was 8 hours. 6h 39m of that was Brave, and was essentially all me reading blogs whilst having stand-up in the background. I've found that almost all of my time yesterday I had some kind of drone of stand-up, or best-ofs from comedies, or whatever, droning on in the background. It makes me feel sick and numb, yet I continued it the whole day long.

8 hours is a travesty, though. It's obscene. Sure, reading the blogs is not terrible, but the general fact of having 8 hours of it is poor.

So, I think I need a digital detox. I've been saying that for a few weeks. But it's getting really bad.

I think I will go for the following rules:

• Technology use for the sake of production, for instance for music, is fine. Likewise, no issue with writing blog posts.
• Use of VLC to listen to music recreationally must be limited to 30 minutes per day (I will need to create a playlist for that purpose), and I cannot listen whilst on the train to and from work, or when walking to and from places, etc. For those I need to be content with myself. Music listening has to be intentional.
• No use of Youtube, for instance in the background, or anything like that.
• I can play Terraria with my friend on the Monday as that is social, but I can't spend the whole of my time on the laptop.
• Ideally the phone will be off for most of the day.
• I can use the phone for texts and emails of course.

With all this, the hope is that screentime will stay quite low, say below an hour. I have to factor in email and texts take a certain amount of time, but basically the bad bits: Youtube, google-searching random things, ... all have to go for the week. Just for a week. I can turn the phone off as and when and that will help too.

Hopefully after a week I might feel a bit better doing this. Really, I would like to get back to a state where it's more under control. Actually with the old phone it was, but since I got the new phone (which I had hypothesised would be less addictive due to it being slower and having an LCD, not AMOLED, screen!) it's actually got much worse.

I don't really like the term digital detox, but it's clear that I'm in a bad state. I can't be picky. I have a bit of a problem with it, clearly.

It's not just the screen time of course. I also need to spend a more considerable portion of my time out-of-house. The days that have been really bad (like yday) are days that I've spent the entire day at home. Likewise, I feel better when I do exercise (like the gym: I've been quite bad at going to the gym of late, though I've managed it twice this week at least; I do need to rest though because I've done something to my forearms I think through bad form on the overhead tricep curls or the use of the arm curl machine) so I can probably try cycle more or whatever whilst my arms recover, or just do legs at the gym.

What else? Sleep will recover if I eat well, reduce my screentime and exercise well. Sleep, diet, tech use, exercise, ... that's most of the way there.

I'll try be better next week.