over all it's going well! but it's not very... "even"?
the mornings are good, i manage to scan through the social media quickly. if there's a youtube video i want to watch, i do so and leave it on in the background of later activities if it's longer.
backgammon is also good, i don't think i overdo it. in fact it feels recently as if i'm playing less? it's now usually around 40mins (and my ranking reflects that downshift). if i wanted to stay sharp i'd have to actually review my games... and that might make it take Too Long. hm. unsure if i want to do that at this point in time.
evenings are a bit more freeform. it's tempting to stay online longer beyond the social media scan, because there aren't really any more responsibilities. but of course there are other things i could be doing - reading, a bit of a self check-in with journaling, winding down in general. it's not too bad, i don't stay online until the very last minute before bed. but also i'm not really "guarding" it intentionally in any way to stay within a limit of any kind.
so that was the good part, here's the uneven part and some sticking points:
writing emails takes a long time and i count it as socializing. it's not surfing the internet for lack of something to do/distraction purposes. so i've taken to doing that at any time, wherever it fits into my schedule instead of confining it to the morning/evening internet time.
i use freetube to put some spiritual lectures on in the background of other activities. technically i'm not spending time randomly scrolling and browsing for things, i have a few channels subscribed and i'm just going through their feeds sequentially. not much different from a podcast on the phone, but it does mean the laptop is sitting open on my desk most of the time. half of that is the background listening, the other half is writing. since setting up joplin, i've been doing a lot of writing - organizing some life stuff, planning blog posts, whatever. it's very helpful! but in result of all of the above, the open laptop is a permanent fixture of my desk.
also a clear fuck up: since i do backgammon and some ebook reading on the ipad, pinterest has crept in outside of the morning and evening internet slots. it's never been that interesting/engaging before but now it's clearly some sort of replacement scrolling activity. i can't say it's been all bad, it's provided a lot of inspiration and i use some of the images as a jumping off point for my art. but maybe, if it's become a Thing, i should add it to the internet time slots? instead of just drifting towards it any time i see the ipad?
so overall i'm definitely way less consumed by the internet and there's plenty of mental space for other things, so it's already a success. but to be honest i was hoping for something more clear-cut and spectacular. that i could reduce the internet to a time and place, like in the early days of having a "computer room". is that even plausible anymore (for my particular lifestyle?) should i just celebrate having freed myself from the more compulsive parts of it?
i also hoped that there will have been more of those boredom moments of "what now?" i can't tell if they were there and i grew from that discomfort into creativity and/or easier engagement with other tasks. or if i let them dissolve those boundries around internet time instead...
