P.S. – Can we even fucking call them “phones” anymore?
Screen time today is two hours and thirty-nine minutes. It’s only 2:41 PM. Two hours and ten minutes on Instagram.
Fuck me I’d better wise up.
I came across a few videos today about breaking those habits. I even tried downloading a popular app to help me. Before even finishing the setup I deleted it. My job requires me to be on Instagram and Facebook, and likely TikTok as well in the near future.
Further down the hole I go, I guess.
There is a part of me that desperately wants to get rid of my iPhone. Eventually, I will, I’m at least putting that out there. Saying it for my own accountability. I’ve done it before, for a few months, before I convinced myself that I needed a smart phone for a new job (I most certainly did not).
Those few months were heavenly. I listened to a lot of records, spent most of my time outside (it was summer), and I wrote a lot more. I just felt like my brain could hold more. It was more resilient, less tired.
Now, I actually do need my phone for work, and that has me feeling trapped.
I’m prone to taking drastic measures in these situations, but i’m not managing to not do that. I realize that these shifts to a less phone-centric lifestyle need to take place over a longer period of time than I’d like. It’s a process, and one that needs to be handled smartly.
I write these posts knowing full-well that no one is reading them. That’s fine with me.
Somewhere along the way, a few months ago maybe, I realized that I wasn’t writing anything at all ever. I discovered that it was because I needed those short-term accomplishments to feel “successful” and to allow my brain to move from one subject to the next.
Now, when I hit “Publish,” I get the feeling that I’ve done something, and that now I can move on to the next thought.
My longer projects have always failed because my attention span is absolute fucking dog shit. I don’t want to so I have ADHD, I’ve never been tested for it, but there’s a chance there.
(Truthfully, I blame the smartphones, re: the above section.)
So if you are reading this, cool. Welcome to my head? Journal? I don’t even know what this is all about anymore.
Maybe this is all just one big work of fiction? What is life but a big, messy story.
I took half a second today to look at my dining room table and think about it at a deeper level, as is my great weakness.
I saw wood, shapes, carpentry, atoms, color, and a memory of our dog climbing onto it from the corner seat.
That table was more meaningful to me than everything and anything I saw on my phone today.
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