I have caught myself slipping. Picking up the smartphone out of pure habit to cycle through apps and websites. Grabbing the laptop to tinker or look something up on the web or whatever. I keep removing apps, using website blockers, etc. I just reinstall apps, pause website blockers, etc. But the impulse remains. There is a deeply ingrained urge, a need to stare at a screen – any screen. For any reason or no reason at all.
For the past 8 months I have been using the Day One app to keep a digital journal. It's a fantastic app with a lot of neat features. They even recently released a web app to allow you to create journal entries using a browser. Even so, I'm thinking about keeping a journal by hand again.
I haven't been in a good place mentally or emotionally the past several weeks. In most of my free time I played video games or watched TV and had no desire to do much of anything else. Aside from alternating feelings of anxiousness and guilt, I felt mostly numb.
In a recent interview, I heard J. Max Wilson talk about how he'd been doing a 7-day social media fast each month starting with Fast Sunday. That sounded like an excellent idea to me and I decided to adapt it for my own situation and give it a try.