I am a believer in the idea that any problem can truly be solved. its never ever a question of luck, its a question of assessing your resources and issues and coming to the best conclusion. which is why it is so frustrating that, after a decade, the issue of wasting time looking at screens still continues to plague me. you know I have diary entries from 2017 that mention in the same sentence "I hope I get to kiss [my future partner]" and "I really wasted this afternoon watching youtube". we've been together for nine years. And just today after work I sat down for dinner and said to myself "I really wasted this afternoon watching youtube". this cannot stand. I want to do great things, I want to gain great skills. that cannot happen with year after year of behaviour like this. to get the things I want and the life I live, something has to change. and yet I have said this countless times in this last decade. countless attempts and promises and late night "trust me bro tomorrow I'll be better!"'s. I have been in the same cycle that happens over and over again and feel as though I have tried everything. diaries and reward charts and wishing really really hard. does this mean there is no solution to this problem? that simply cannot be true. any problem can be solved. I just need to try something even newer, even more radical. hence, here we are. so how can I become the kind of person I want to be. what does that take? I think it will be a battle every day, and so I am going to write something down every day here. accountability has worked best in the past so this road will be documented here. additionally, we are going to start out real fucken slow. I think in the past I have tried to cram in too many changes at once and they fall apart, so all I have to do for the next month is: when I want to relax, I think hard about what is relaxing, and I go do that. I know for a fact that youtube and netflix nine times out of ten arent relaxing. so thats it then. the long slow road to recovery. more has to come this time, lest this end up like every other failed attempt. thats what different about this this time by the way. its public. and I'll have to stare at it unfinished forever more if I fuck up. hopefully I wont. hopefully this problem has a solution. 1. its important to remember to be vigilant even on the good days. because its on the good days that its easy to forget the bad days. not that I'm not happy. I was busy and out of the house frequently enough to not even need to worry about relaxing. and once I arrived home I relaxed not by scrolling or by TV, but by listening to a few choice songs. and although it was not necessarily a conscious decision to choose music over videos, I am now making a conscious decision to stop. 2. a friend I havent spoken to in a long time reached out to me to see how I'd been travelling. ups and downs was my response. ups and downs. I did watch some youtube today, I won't deny that. although for a good 30 minutes it was exactly what I wanted to be doing. the 15 minutes after that were not what I wanted. I think one of the traps of screens is the unfinished video. I found myself aware that I didn't want to watch beyond the 30 minutes of good art, and by the time I had already started another video, I was saying to myself "I'll just finish this one". I reckon it is after that moment that you forget the intention to finish that video and start another, rinse and repeat. luckily my partner was around to chide me into getting off, and I did. had they not been there I may not have been so lucky. later on in the day I found myself wanting to relax and clean. I opened up youtube to put something on in the background, but stopped myself and just put on some music instead. the aforementioned ups. I have a four day weekend coming up, with a few days at the end there devoid of plans. this will be a true test of my seriousness. 3. busyness is not an excuse. to beat an addiction people recommend replacing the action with a new activity. but the activity has to be of equivalent energy otherwise you arent beating the addiction you are just distracting yourself away from it for a spell 4. what is relaxing exactly? is eating relaxing? is cleaning relaxing? or are these activities that can be augmented by youtube and other screens without harm. based on the book I have been reading about distraction and the half finished clean that was done today, my vote is no. so, a failure today, but potentially a failure of identification. youtube during mealtime and on in the "background" has been considered harmless until now. no longer. 5. with a deadline I can often pull myself out of a youtube hole, but its the slipping in that causes issues most of the time. this happened today and I am not proud about it. it really is unbelievable how often this happens to me. I am going to make a promise that tomorrow is different, it will be a success. 6. I think there is genuinely something to be said about a video or podcast or music on while another task is being performed. I dont think the bag I made today would have been any better without youtube on in the background, and I also think that it improved the experience of my day somewhat. but it is playing with fire, thats for sure. dancing on the edge of what I can control. I dont regret it today, which is nice, but in future this is also something to avoid. 7. my lucky number, and almost a perfect day. came home after work for a solid 20 minute video, after which I put down the device to do other things. had the thought to put on a video while cleaning, resisted and listened to music. then ended the day with a relaxing activity that wasn't youtube. I will admit I was waiting a dumb video in bed just now, but otherwise basically perfect. well done me 8. I didnt need to leave the house until 830am today, and all that extra time in the morning reminded me how bad things are when given too much early free time. definitely watched like 45 minutes of youtube in the morning. the mornings have always been a weak time for me and whilst I think these current early starts are beating out of me the habit of morning tv, its good to know this is still an issue. I mean, the weekends still exist. outside of that, there were a couple additional videos I watched today, but they were genuinely background noise and comfort as I did something unpleasant (not like, chore unpleasant, like medical unpleasant) so whilst in any other circumstance I would have disagreed with the video, I can at least understand my motivation. I bring this up to keep documenting the ways in which I use youtube to "relax" and when it is and isnt helpful so I can work on building a mental map of how my mind functions around it. 9. this was a bad day for awareness. got home and just sank into games (which is kinda fine) and then into youtube (which definitely isnt). mustve spent a few hours, maybe more, and I do regret it. 12. things havent been going great, which I reckon is pretty clear from the three day jump. to be honest I'm not sure about the weekend but today I was pretty down and doing boring work at home so I switched on youtube and that was that. I think in the past I would suffer a few failures like this in a row and lose the motivation to continue but the whole purpose of this is to not stop so... tomorrow will be better, I'm promising that at least. the next post I make here will be a positive one just watch. all we can do is keep going I guess 13. better. not amazing. but better. bit of a flub at the beginning there after work but I managed to focus up and feel fairly productive and happy by the end of the day 19. when I started this almost three weeks ago I didnt think my relationship would be coming to a close so soon. its hard to maintain the strength of relaxing actively when a lot of the time turning off my brain for a bit seems like a more desirable solution. I do still want to pursue what I said at the beginning of this. but things are gonna be rocky for a while.

Will format later jesus chist