Something else to fixate on

As I was reflecting on how this experiment feels now, at this juncture, I was surprised that the thought that came to my mind was "this is just normal now." I don't have that longing of "I am so bored" that I had at the start of the month, and while I still sometimes open my phone looking for instagram, I'm just used to living this way. I don't feel a sense of missing out on something anymore. I remember what I was consuming before, obviously, but I'm just like... well, that could be nice, but it comes with a lot of strings so I don't know that I want it anymore.

I like that I now sit and read books before falling asleep. I like that I read books on my phone now and spend my days reading endless substack newsletters (a LOT of which I don't agree with on many points, but I'm trying to further refine my positions and views on a number of topics). I like that I found time to work out and that I spend more time talking to my parents. I miss getting updates from my friends, who choose to do this solely through snapchat for some reason, but I can't control other people's behavior.

But it isn't fair to say that I don't miss scrolling. Something about it was pleasing to my brain for sure. I still find myself doing the digital equivalent of being on the outside looking in- watching videos my husband thinks I'll like on his phone instead of mine, getting singular videos sent to me on facebook messenger, reading tumblr blogs just on a browser without signing in, even reading twitter feeds without signing in. The rabbit holes I can go down are severely limited without the app, and a browser doesn't always remember my place and will refresh annoyingly. All of this is beyond my control outside of creating an account, which I seem to be able to stop myself from doing. I think this level of consumption is manageable, for now.

The problem remains that people are doing a lot of thinking, writing, connecting, and sharing on these platforms. I think that's all fine and good. But the endless nature of them when logged in and online is just too much for me to handle. Honestly, I think it's too much for anyone to handle. Also, when I'm on the outside looking in like this, I have to actively look at just one person's account or feed- I have to have some intention with what I'm choosing to seek out. That requires thought and effort and is self-limiting in that way, too. When I'm logged in and exposed to explore pages and feeds and popular hashtags and recommendations from friends and for you pages... I'm just being shown content the app thinks I'll be interested in. I like it better when I can engage with content I think I'll be interested in. Fuck the app.

Of course, if everyone really decided tomorrow to stop using these apps, I'd have no new content to consume. If they just shut down and stopped existing, I think it would have a massive global impact at this point. It's like fossil fuels- sure, we need to stop using them, but not cold turkey, because that would be the end times. You can't just pull out something that is this involved in almost every facet of daily life, even if you know that there is Something Better beyond it. You have to be slow and meticulous about it. And importantly, everyone has to be on board. 

When I think about a world without social media, it's hard to picture, even though it did exist for most of human history. I don't even necessarily think the idea of social media is bad per se, but not like this. Maybe that means it won't be free, that you'd have to subscribe or buy an account (and I also hate the subscription-ing of everything too, but I think it makes sense in this model). That then makes it a class thing, whereas now it's a "great equalizer" where anybody can "become an influencer" or whatever, but I think we all know those stories of getting discovered or rocketed to fame happen mostly to people who were probably mostly doing all right beforehand. Actually, that would be interesting to study and properly analyze the data on...

I guess what I'm getting at is more or less some kind of less well-thought-out and organized version of what Jaron Lanier said in the "ten arguments for deleting your social media right now" book. The way it is is not the best way it can be. Right now it sucks up your attention and makes you act poorly. It's treated like a platform to engage seriously on when really it's probably best suited for Being Silly Online ("It" here honestly stands in for any of the sites I've talked about). It's also pushing for the de-anonymization of the internet, which is alarming to me to say the least. What happened to the days of internet stranger danger when we had all those PSAs about young girls messaging some stranger they thought was Susie from one school over but was actually Bill, a creepy 54 year old sex offender? Do they not show those anymore? What happened to "the internet is forever" and "don't reveal any personal info about yourself online" and "people can say anything online, don't trust what you read there"? I feel like everyone nowadays is like "It's best if everyone has their full name and face attached to every thought they've ever had, free for anyone to consume. Don't forget to specify every important demographic fact about yourself." When I was growing up we were told to lie about ALL of that. I think that was the better way to go, if I'm being honest. 

Altogether I personally think at this point that everyone needs to take a step back from social media, especially as it is right now. I think a lot of people could benefit greatly from doing what I did here. There are a few situations where I can see it being harder than I'm making it out to be here, but generally most people are just using it for funsies and to see photos friends post. You know if I'm talking about you. Do you really need to be scrolling? Is it always the best use of your time? I didn't want to get on a soapbox about this but honestly I feel really, really good after this month and I think I'm going to continue this way for a while now. 

That's the other part I was surprised by. I feel more like myself than I have in a long, long time, now that I don't intentionally immerse myself in who everybody else is all the fucking time. When I'm bored and don't have something that purports to entertain me, I have to find a way to entertain myself. Which means I'm forced to consider what I actually like doing. It's actually really nice to be doing that personally as I'm going through some of the same thing professionally right now- considering what I actually like and enjoy and feel skilled at rather than what I "should" be doing. It's a bit of a detour in some ways and incredibly basic and expected in others, but it feels right to me, and I find it easy to become passionate about it. Great things happen when you let yourself be yourself. 

As for whether I'll continue writing this, I don't know. I have decided to cut out other stuff this year (most notably alcohol which is considerable for someone who barely drinks at all), so maybe I can talk about that, maybe I'll just keep writing whatever. It's not like I came to this with a ton of purpose, but I think it's a good writing outlet for me. It feels low-stress and manageable. So likely expect to hear more from me, but don't be surprised if I disappear.

Coming to the end (of the month)

The whole goal of this experiment was to go 30 days. Though I realize now, there was some other stuff embedded in there, like whether or not I'd actually make it that long. I can now almost say I did (there's still a few days left, after all), but if I'm being completely honest, some may not agree with me.

I still looked at twitter- but I don't have an account. I haven't for years, and I will never get one again, at least not for personal reasons (I don't know what kind of career I'm going to have). This means all I can do is read what other people say, either by leafing through a hashtag, or reading someone's profile, and that's only because I finally found an extension that would allow me to look at it for more than 5 seconds before the site told me to sign up (I did this because during some major school issues last year, the most reliable and frequent updates were on twitter, which I find kind of depressing). I've looked at reddit threads- mostly for information on stuff; I'm sure we all know the beleaguered frustration of adding "reddit" to the end of a google search to get honest opinions about some product or service, rather than just ads or pages from the company itself. For all I hate reddit after logging off permanently 2 years ago (I really should delete my account), it DOES offer a way to find genuine opinions about a particular brand of leggings or a random website some youtuber recommended.

Youtube is the other big one. I know many would classify it as social media, and I see why. I realize now that I've come to the end of this month still using it that it's a notable exception I've made. I never felt worried about my use of youtube and my time spent on it. Most of what I watch is longer form content and I find it an interesting way to learn about different things. It allows me to watch workout videos, which I've suddenly had more time and energy for this month, and allows me to watch helpful videos around various little craft techniques. I leave comments sometimes, but I am very self-censorious and often will delete all or most of a comment after typing it. I don't have notifications on to reply to things, I don't use my real name, and most of my comments get lost in the sea anyway. That's fine with me.

Last night my husband and I met up with one of my friends and some of her work friends for board games. I found out something had recently happened to her that she'd elected only to share on snapchat. She asked if I was still off it and we had a brief discussion about it; I found out that I'm not the only person she knows who regularly just goes off social media without warning. To that I had to say I didn't want to be like another mutual acquaintance of ours, who loves to announce on social media what they are doing with their life next, only to quietly quit two days later. They have done this with social media before, more than once. I didn't want to be that person, proudly putting on my story "I'm going off social media, text me xoxo!!!" because it felt like it would defeat the purpose. I left something in my bio- "Off socials for march"- and figured that was enough. 

Part of me wants to go back now and see what I missed, but I have a sneaking suspicion I already know what it is. A lot of conversations of memes sent by my husband, my sister, and one of my friends, and potential a few craft videos sent by a group chat with two other friends. Some posts from people I know and love. And... that's probably it. I could probably catch up with everything in about 20 minutes. But I wouldn't just spend 20 minutes there. I'd go down the rabbit hole for a long time. I'd get stuck again. 

So now that brings me to the next question I have to ask myself: what do you want to go back to? Tiktok is honestly something I've all but forgotten about in the last month, particularly over the last week, so that's an easy no- except maybe to delete my account. Facebook is so boring at this point that I hardly think I'll get stuck there- I'll probably resort to doing what my mom does and checking once a month, or using it to find events, etc. I won't put it back on my phone. I've watched my husband and sister get sucked down the rabbit hole of watching videos on facebook from time to time, and now even my dad, and I don't really want that to be me. I'll probably also go and delete my reddit account, since I never posted much of value on there anyway. 

The real sticklers are Instagram, Snapchat, and Tumblr. I haven't mentioned the latter much on this blog at all, because I signed out probably last August after it got to be too much for me and haven't signed back in. I appreciate the anonymous nature of the platform and the way it has text posts instead of video content, but I find myself getting too sucked into stupid angry arguments and drama on there, and I find it emboldens some truly insane views that I just get tired of hearing about after a while. But I can't bring myself to delete the account there. I think it's because some of the stuff I've posted there IS something I'd consider to be valuable. It's a deeply personal collection of things as well, since I've had it since about 2014. It really has a lot of features I like in social media, and I'm loath to delete it even though I know I could simply start fresh... but it sucks up my time just like any other, and it often provokes me in a way I don't like. I think for now the best thing to do is just stay logged off until I start getting those emails about losing my username again.

As for Snapchat, the main issue is that it appears to be the way some people often communicate with me. Most people I have on there I never send messages to, mostly I just watch their stories. My friend remarked last night that I was the only person she knew who got caught up in the stories section over there, which has some truly heinous content- it's like the social media equivalent of gossip magazines and tabloids. I told her the only reason I get caught up in that is when I have only snapchat and nothing else on my phone. It is just where I redirect my energies, despite all its shortcomings. I told her last night I'd pay for a version of snapchat without it all at this point- a version which is just the chatting stuff, not the weird social stuff. I'd pay a subscription for that. $2.99/monthly is definitely worth not being tempted by all that garbage. Of course, the problem with that is likely the same as the problem with trying to do this for free through an app like screenzen- I can just stop paying, or disable or delete the app causing the limitation. That was my issue the last time I tried screen zen- for some reason the act of physically deleting the apps and not going on them at all is a better deterrent despite knowing I could just reinstall them. Maybe because deleting one app is like, three steps, but reinstalling multiple ones and logging in is many, many more. I'm inclined to reinstall this one, however, with screen zen, and give myself some period of time- say a week or ten days- to see how I do. I'd probably limit myself to 3-4 five minute sessions daily of that app, with a small delay- say 15 seconds. If, after the trial period, I can't handle it, I'll have to consider what to do next. Because I just don't want to get sucked into that vortex of shitty, time-wasting content, particularly since the ads are MUCH more annoying on snapchat than any other app. 

Last, but certainly not least: Instagram. This one is surprisingly the most complicated for me. I use it to talk to friends, and it's where most people I care about post updates about their life. I can scroll past most ads more easily, and I enjoy the kind of connection I find on there. I dislike greatly that it's moving more and more towards video content, and the reels are often just old, recycled tiktoks, which tempts me back there. I could take a similar approach to snapchat- install it with limits- but I have a feeling this one more than any other would strain the limits quite severely. Instagram is really a lot of what I want in a social media app- I can keep things private for myself and therefore semi-anonymous, connect with real people I know, and see their life updates, and it isn't solely video formatted. Because of that temptation, it's the trickiest one to wrangle. Because it also has an explore page that I can spend hours getting lost on with a variety of different content. It brings the temptation to film myself and post rants, and the temptation to follow people I don't know who post a LOT more often because it's their job. Everything about it is too enticing. So I think, for now, I'm going to stay off that one. It might be more feasible to check that one once a month, like facebook, on their web version, which is severely limited compared to the app, but I need more time away. I want more time away.

And that's the kicker at the end of it all. On some level, I want to be off these stupid fucking apps and websites. I do not want to use them. Most of what they do to me is cause me to waste time and get angry. That's no way to live. I've read so many books this month. I started a cross stitch project I'd been putting off. My screen time is greatly reduced, and I've been forced to embrace boredom more. I can see too how much people around me use these apps, and honestly, I was probably the same, if not worse. I don't think I'm more enlightened or better than they are, but sometimes I selfishly wish they'd join me. The reasons I stay on some of these apps is because of personal history and the ability they offer me to connect with people I care about, including people I may not be particularly physically close to, which affects our ability to have a close relationship of any kind. 

It's been a really good month. I don't want it to end. It seems ludicrous that I'm suffering even minor social consequences for not using a handful of apps. The problem seems to be that I started in the first place. If I'd never signed up, if I'd never downloaded the apps, if I'd never bothered... would I even have this problem at all? But of course then I'd always be wondering what if and feeling that maybe things would be better on the other side. At least now I know for sure... they really aren't. 

The thing is, despite what I just said about snapchat and maybe looking at facebook, nobody is strictly forcing me to be online. I could just... keep doing this. And I kind of want to. Why stop? I read an article about a man who did this for an entire year- he had to go back eventually, he said, because he had too many friends scattered all over and it just was the best way to get updates (he was about 10 years older than me, though, so a different stage of life). 

I realize now the purpose of posting about this somewhere has been just to put out in the void a little guide for others about how it feels being off social media for a relatively long chunk of time. This is more than just turning off your phone at night or putting it down to watch a movie or visit with a friend, or deleting your apps when you have a busy period of schoolwork coming up (something my sister does regularly) and reinstalling them a couple of days or weeks later. It's also less than what others have done. But I hope it can maybe convince more people that it's worth logging off or deleting the apps, even just for a time. Other people still exist and your friends will still like you. You'll probably find some new and creative ways to waste time. As always, I advise leaning on things that you enjoyed as a child. 

It's hard to put into words exactly what I enjoyed about this month, though. Was it just that I was less angry? Was it that I felt more present? Was it that I, an introvert, enjoyed a respite from the barrage of online voices and opinions thrown at me? Was it that I read more books? Was it some kind of weird superiority complex? Maybe yes to all of them.

It just occurred to me though- there's also the urgency factor. Even as someone who had most notifications off for most apps, because I hate notifications, I felt a lot of urgency to check to and respond to things on these apps. I'd open them and feel compelled to watch everyone's story just so that there wouldn't be that pseudo-notification of coloured rings around their profile pictures. I'd scroll until I was all caught up. I'd feel a need to engage with everything seriously and not just flippantly scroll past. I'd feel a need to react to and watch or read every single message someone sent to me. Nobody forced me to do this, and maybe this is a problem other people don't have, but that specifically designed UI that makes things look unfinished if you haven't done EVERYTHING... ugh. It got me so many times. This is why I am not a person who has 4876 unread emails, or more accurately, a person who does not have email notifications on on their phone. I cannot stand notifications. I cannot stand when something looks like a little to-do, especially when it's something that only takes a few seconds of my time. It's one thing when it's one, it's another thing when it's dozens upon dozens of them, with new ones throughout the day. It makes it feel like a chore to check them all. 

This isn't even some critique I have of the apps, although I know they're using it to drive engagement. It's just a particular facet of my personality that I'm sure many share while others don't. My husband never watches instagram stories. It just doesn't bug him. I have friends walking around with a bazillion unread emails while I viciously unsubscribe from future ones and delete a dozen a day just to know that I'm caught up. I cannot handle having notifications. It drives me fucking insane when I have to leave one to respond to later because I physically can't respond immediately, but I know I need the reminder. In some ways that's a good way to motivate myself, because it seems to be some way of being that I can't change about myself. It's also a good sign that I need to stay away from things that offer the same prompting and urgency with none of the importance or gravity. I honestly can't believe I hadn't thought of this before. I get anxious when I have an unread email in my school inbox- unspeakably so. OBVIOUSLY I'm less anxious with fewer notifications. It's why I had most of them turned off in the first place, and still do. My notifications are limited to: phone calls/facetime, texts or messages from other messaging-only apps, system notifications, calendar notifications (which I am fully in control of and actually represents a way I use this personality feature of mine to my advantage), notifications from the alarm app my parents have for the house, and government emergency alerts (albeit severely limited). Everything else- and I mean everything else- is turned off. If I want to check something else, I will open the app and check for myself. Because otherwise I would be stuck on my phone all day in a never ending misery spiral.

I'm actually really, really surprised I didn't think about this before. Instagram in particular was really bad for this- it wasn't just something I could use to kill time, but something I felt compelled to keep caught up on. I removed an expectation from myself. Holy shit. There's your peace piece, girl. Do not install the app again.

I can't say I'll be posting much more regularly throughout this week- I have a job interview and many other things keeping me busy coming up- but I think for now I'm going to just keep social media off and enjoy my time. Hope I convinced you to try the same.

Me & Fitness

 One of the things I've done this month with all this extra time I suddenly have is, once again, dip my toes back in the workout pool. That's a metaphor- I don't actually swim for workouts, though I probably should as I love it- I'm just... you know. Trying to be regular with things again.

The last time I had any kind of regular fitness routine was honestly probably high school gym class, and even then the last time I felt like gym class was a good and fair workout was the time in the eighth grade we played lacrosse separated by sex (so girls played the girls, and boys vs boys- I maintain that all gym classes should be separated by sex after like, grade 7, because in that one class it became clear to me that the difference in ability between me and an athletic girl my age was far less than between me and a non-athletic boy my age. But I digress). The point is- I'm not particularly athletic.

That didn't matter for a long time. I was young, and more importantly, I was thin. I don't say this to say that I was healthy back then, just that nobody EVER got on my case about working out when I had a BMI of 20 or whatever. That did not last. I've talked before in bits and pieces on here about my weight gain, but suffice it to say it has been a LOT, fuelled partly by depression, partly by two years of undiagnosed and untreated hypothyroidism, and I suspect partly by birth control, despite what my doctor said (I've yet to meet a woman of any age who didn't gain weight on birth control, but there could be some confounding factors in that). 

Around 2017, when I was 22, I started my intuitive eating journey and brought myself to a much more neutral, better, functional place with food. I think of food now mostly in terms of sweet vs savory, and in terms of carbs, fat, protein, and fibre. I don't think about how "good" or "bad" it is except in terms of freshness and expiry. I think about things like taste, satiety, and energy. It's nice. I think being able to focus on what I enjoy and what I need from my food allows me to approach it in a better way. I feel a lot more peace around it and don't feel so out of control, and foods that were once overwhelming to me and that I felt an urge to eat until I was sick are now things I can just leave lying around for MONTHS. I have no regrets.

Fitness and exercise are the one thing I can't seem to figure out for myself. That's the place I'm at now. I'm the slowest, fattest one much of the time (I use the term fat here neutrally, by the way- I have more fat than others. My body is larger. Whatever you want to say). I tell people I am a slow hiker and they assure me they are too- only to outpace me dramatically once we actually get there. When I say I am slow, I am not kidding. I am the slowest hiker most people have ever met. Before I got on synthroid, I had next to no energy, weirdly no appetite, and a slow, never-ending weight creep (among other things). By the time I was diagnosed I had foot pain so bad I could not bear to walk for more than half an hour, and was sleeping 10 hours a night (I physically could not get up before 10 hours had passed). The foot pain wasn't from my weight. It was from my foot muscles slowly atrophying, crying out for energy my body could not deliver because it was too busy attacking my thyroid for no goddamn reason. The reason I know this is that I haven't lost much weight at all on synthroid, but my foot pain is completely gone. 

Recently, I discovered that the muscle atrophy was not just limited to my feet. My core is completely decimated. I have back pain all the time and my hips are tense and sore. I have shin splints from the way my body is trying to move around all the time. But this was kind of a gift- it gave me a fitness goal. Before, all my attempts were just sort of "guess I'll do this" until it no longer seemed necessary. But now, with every core workout I do, my back pain is just a little better, my posture just a little taller. There's an Improvement that I can see that pushes me to do more. It's nice.

I have tried to do fitness in the past since the days of high school gym class ended. In high school I started taking TRX at a family friend's gym. I liked her gentle approach, and I need the action hours for CAS for my IB program. In university, I didn't have time for much- I tried to take a TRX class once, and it got cancelled due to low enrollment. We were told to attend the other session- the one offered during my night class. Night classes also prevented me from joining the dance team, since their fucking tryouts were always only one day a week and ALWAYS the day I had a night class. I did take up swing dancing for a while, and that shit is surprisingly good cardio, and around then I started climbing stairs in the education building with my now-husband. I had really good quads for a while. But the semester ended.

One summer I biked to work daily until the abuse from my commute and the poor behavior of other riders finally just convinced me to take the bus (that and it rained all August). The summer after I did that, the city put dedicated bike lanes on the same fucking path I'd been taking. For a while during my unplanned year off, I attended a gym twice a week- I even did some small group classes with a trainer and saw some progress. But then I got into grad school, and the gym (which was women-only, and I miss that) didn't have a location in the city I live in now. I took a kickboxing class with two friends at the start of grad school, but I didn't enjoy it much, and at one point near the end of the class I got so dizzy I had to sit down (something I find happens to me often with high-intensity cardio). I was also the slowest, fattest one in that class. Shortly after, in the beginning of 2020, I decided that was the year I'd get fit and started taking two gym classes a week at the same gym I'd gone to in high school. And, well, we all saw what happened in 2020. Attempts to go back in 2021 and 2022 were thwarted by a chaotic schedule, both personally and with regard to lockdowns and reopens. In all of those classes I was also the worst one.

I mention the slowest, fattest thing because this has been the thing standing in my way so much. People who are of average fitness truly do not understand how fucking discouraging it is to know you are the worst one there. To see that you are the only one taking the modified poses or moves, the only one that can't quite make it through the dedicated time of the move, the only one who has to sit up in pilates class and ask for a different spring set for certain exercises because even the easy move offered in the beginner class is too much for you. Two summers ago, I went camping with my now-husband and my sister and her friend, and on a hike, my husband insisted I set the pace. I eventually let my sister and her friend go ahead, and had to explain to my husband through tears that it was mortifying to be at the front, red in the face, exhausted, huffing and puffing, while I could hear everyone behind me was just enjoying a walk. The shame of it all was too much. This was after I'd spent a few months in the winter doing 10 minutes of the elliptical every morning before spring busyness removed my energy for it.

Writing it all out like this, the one thing I can see is that I am nothing if not persistent. I will not give up. I keep trying, all the time, knowing that this is important for me. I just want to acknowledge how tired I am, how hard this all is. It is hard to never be the best one, it is hard to feel as though you never have a talent, it is hard after all this NOT to feel like I am just not athletic and should give it up. Engaging in "intellectual" pursuits comes easier to me. For a while, I thought this might be genetic, but looking at my parents' histories, this just isn't the case.

My mom ran constantly until she had my sister and I- even then sometimes, out with the stroller and the dog. She did cross country in high school, well enough to compete. She ran races. She ran all the time, until life got really busy. My dad was on the football team in high school (though he insists he was fat, and I can see this insecurity hasn't really faded in him). He played very minor-league hockey through medical school, and was even ski patrol a few winters at nearby hills. He can still skate laps around me, despite a back injury that means he can't do any of it at a very high level anymore. My parents also put me and my sister in dance classes until I was in the 9th grade, and that was very athletic. Most nights a week, I was doing exercise. Sometime around high school, that stopped for me, and by this point my parents had become very unathletic. Today that is largely because of age and other health concerns, but my parents were both somewhat active people back in their day. So why am I not?

I don't have an answer. I don't even have a guess at an answer right now. I'm frustrated by that. In studies of athletic ability, they find these things are more related to genetics than anything else- so if your sibling or parent is good at some activity, it's more likely that you will be too, and vice versa. I've never been exceptionally gifted at skating, skiing (my neck is still sore from whiplash from a skiing fall literally this past weekend), or running. 

Maybe it's that I'm looking for something I'm naturally good at rather than something I enjoy. I know people say that all the time- that the best activity is the one you'll keep doing. I think they are leaving something out- the best activity is the one you'll keep doing regularly, despite your relative skill. It's the one that fits into your schedule and your budget, the one you have access to. 

Two things stick out from what I just said upon some quiet contemplation. One, I am being too perfectionistic about all of this. Doing any exercise poorly and being the absolute fucking worst at it forever is better for me than never doing it at all because I can't do it well. It is also highly unlikely that I will find some magical form of exercise that is pure fun and just magically fits into my life at all points in time. Also- my "once every few days I guess" current attitude towards beginners pilates videos is SOMETHING, and I need to count it. Two, I have not even remotely tried all of the things I might like, not on a serious level. Those roller skates in the garage still fit me. I still have access to the university pool. I have climbing shoes I bought, and I go to the bouldering gym literally as often as my husband. I've been skiing TWICE this winter, despite living 1.5 hours away from a decent ski hill. I also completely left out my old walking commute from undergrad, which probably did a lot more heavy lifting than I gave it credit for (and is something I sorely miss). But hey- lockdowns are over. You can try out the gymnastics place. Maybe trampolines will do it for me. Maybe swimming will do it for me. Maybe I can get into roller skating now that it probably won't result in 8/10 foot pain anymore. 

I'm tempted not to post this. But I'm noticing a trend lately where I will write posts and not post them. So here goes nothing.

Digital Declutter

 I really hate the feature on iphones where, when you take a photo to send to someone in an imessage, it saves it to your phone. I don't necessarily need to save the photo of the crusty, dirty mop at my dad's office that I asked if he was sure he wanted me to use (he wasn't. I did not mop). Yes, I can delete them, but my computer has just been backing up all my icloud photos forever. There are photos in there I don't have on my phone because they aren't important and I deleted them, as well as photos I deleted because they are painful to look at. But I digress. 

You know what there was a lot of on my phone? Videos. Of me. Talking to myself. Sometimes they're more benign (in my opinion), just me voicing thoughts aloud and wanting them recorded for some particular reason I can't pin down. I almost never watch these again. Other times it's me ranting about something. There were so many of these in the last two or three weeks before I deleted them. All of them were about something I saw online that clearly got me going.

I have to admit I am proud of my self-restraint in that these videos were not posted online. I've really reined myself in about ranting even just on my instagram story- nobody wants to see it, I never feel good about it later (only embarrassed), and nobody cares, including me later when the moment has passed. But I haven't had much of an urge to make them anymore, and I have a hunch as to why. I'm sure anyone can guess where this is going, but we're going anyway.

First of all, I'm no longer watching content from random strangers talking about something, usually something the algorithm knows I'll interact with. AKA something that I either really support or that really irks me. I started getting a lot of alternative medicine quackery on tiktok right before I deleted it, and it was really irritating me. I'm finding it hard to avoid going into specifics here, but I don't want that to be the point of this post. The point was that I was on these apps watching people film themselves talking absolutely nonsense garbage, and there were so many little buttons on the screen that encouraged me to respond in the same way. Post a response video. Make your own. The button is right there at the bottom of the screen all the time... and other apps had the same features. Lots of buttons to press to record yourself and upload some content to keep others online too. Snapchat's default is to open to selfie mode I think (I can't actually check). It feels like it requires a truly herculean effort to avoid falling into these many traps. AKA not something I, as an individual with a lot of stuff going on in my life just like everyone else, have the energy or attention to devote to avoiding. 

And those two things together- the video content from people and the myriad of little buttons encouraging me to respond and/or make my own- meant I was thinking about filming myself all the time. I speculated on that at the start of this experiment, and now here I am writing a blog post every day. I haven't filmed myself once. It feels silly and stupid to do that in response to, I don't know, a line in a book I read that I particularly disagreed with. I'm more likely to rant about it to someone I know and start an actual honest to god conversation, or at least just speak the thought aloud and bounce it off some other living person out in the world. Sometimes that's all you need. 

The thing is though... people often don't respond or care when I do that. That's not always a bad thing, nor is it a malicious thing. The people in my life are busy and don't often care as deeply as I do about the same things. In fact, it acts like the opposite of those algorithms, in a way. I'm not getting pulled in and sucked deeper into outrage or frustration. Sometimes I'm being actively prevented from doing that. Best case scenario, I find common ground with someone, or someone challenges me in a productive way that makes me think. Algorithms never did that for me. 

I'm also noticing more space inside my head for my own opinions and thoughts, now that I'm not constantly subjecting myself to everyone else's. I truly don't think humans were ever really meant to comprehend that. We're built to maintain local social circles, and yes, sometimes those might expose us to differing opinions. Including ones that result in excommunication and physical violence- it's not like humanity never did that before social media. It's not like it was impossible to be physically isolated in a community that doesn't share your values before you could log on to tiktok and see what feels like the values and opinions and stories of everybody in the entire world and experience just how many of those don't line up with yours. But I think that's the problem, at least before you might think if you left that physical community, you could find something different. Where can you go that's outside the internet? What community is there outside of the vast majority of internet-connected, content-producing humans?

Anyway. I don't know if there's anything to that. But I feel more like I am living my own life, by myself, doing my best, instead of living my life alongside everyone on planet earth, if that makes sense (I suspect it only does if you immerse yourself in social media and then remove yourself as i did). Everything is quieter and I have more control over how much noise gets into my head. I also haven't really thought about those friendly acquaintances in a while. I hope they're doing well, but it no longer makes sense for me to know as much about their lives as I did. Then again, what a gift that was. It always felt special to know, even if it didn't totally make sense. 

Also- I said at the start of this that I'd still find ways to waste time, and I stand by that. But wasting time feels like when I do things like, I don't know, pull every single strand of hair out of my hairbrush, or eat the popcorn outsides to save the middles for the end as a fun snack, or like when one of my elderly neighbours spends all day outside in the fall blowing every single individual leaf off the rocks beside his lawn. Wasting time is me in high school doodling tiny flowers in the margin of my social studies notes, or me in undergrad trying on all the dresses in my closet, or putting on makeup just to take it all off again. It's things that don't really serve any purpose other than making time go by. And what does it really say that I put social media in that category?

I mean, really, what I spend a lot of time doing when I work from home- watching youtube videos and simultaneously playing games on my phone- is indicative perhaps of my short attention span, but it doesn't really feel like wasting time. I'm usually watching something I enjoy and learning about something new, and I'm playing a game, which is a thing I like to do as well. Or I'm reading, more often than not. Or I'm here, typing. Or- and this is some new health thing I'm focusing on at the moment- I'm making myself actual meals. Or I'm going on walks with my mom. Or I'm petting one of the dogs, or doing a load of laundry, or or or. All productive little tasks. Even me going to play a video game downstairs for an hour feels more productive and useful than scrolling. 

Nothing is ever as satisfying as scrolling is, for sure. But in general, if I move away from thinking of productivity as just my work output- in this case, work towards my PhD- and move towards thinking of it as time well spent, well, then I'm spending my time well. And it's things like that that make me want to keep going.

Actually Out There, Living Life

I'd apologize for the delay, but it doesn't need that. But I do want to talk about it: I was out skiing. My husband, as per usual, went out on another trip- but this time, he stayed in an AirBnB in a small village about an hour and a half away from where we live, closer to the ski hill. A friend from further north came to join him for a few days. And they invited me. I went skiing. In March.

The skiing wasn't great; the two of us also went out to the same hill on Valentine's day and the snow was MUCH better then. That day I had no falls, but also stayed on the smallest chair; yesterday I went up a larger one with some big green runs and spent an hour getting down through some severe anxiety and fear after a particularly bad fall almost immediately after getting off the lift. My sore neck today tells me it resulted in some whiplash. It wasn't my last fall of the day either. I fell three more times, but only one involved whacking my head again, leaving me today with a dull, low-grade headache. Despite it all, though, I had fun... particularly when I was left alone to just do runs on the smaller chairlift and the easiest run on the entire mountain. Something about feeling safe enables me to focus on other aspects of what I'm doing with my feet, legs, body, arms... everything.

In anticipation of a lot of social contact on this trip, I'd planned to be a bit of a hermit on Saturday, but then of course my parents wanted to go for breakfast at one of my favourite places, and I wanted to play some gauntlet with my dad, and I had to pack up and run some errands. No time for computer work at all, hence: no post. But I'm back today. 

Unfortunately in all my living-life-not-on-my-phone-ness, I missed several notifications I'd set up for myself about an in-person teaching seminar I wanted to attend. I missed it (and I lied about being sick... but last week several people just no-showed without so much as an email, so I feel kind of morally neutral about the whole thing). I suppose that's something to keep in mind if I'm going to keep living off my phone.

Things like that actually make me wish there was more segmentation of devices. I know that's not particularly eco-friendly of me to say, but at least my parents' very old personal digital assistant devices (which we still have, but no longer charge or turn on, unfortunately) didn't have games or social media to distract you. At least my old point-and-shoot camera would just let me look at photos, I had no way to upload them from that device, or edit them, only delete them (I think- not confident on that last one). At least my iPod is only distracting if I choose to play solitaire from the clicker wheel. Devices With Only One Purpose really are something. After all, if I had a device that was only social media- not simultaneously my phone, my camera, my music and podcasts, and a way to get weather, internet, news, and games- I could probably just lock it up for a month, or leave the charger somewhere that isn't my bedroom, or purposefully leave it at home. Out of sight, out of mind. I feel like that would make it easier to make habits around.

Of course, as I type all that, it DOES occur to me that I could treat my phone like the Social Media Device and just carry around a camera and iPod (though I'd have to buy new headphones for the latter if I want to use it), and a paper calendar (which I do have, but don't really use since google calendar is so much more helpful). And my kindle, I suppose. I could start actually visiting the library to get books and carrying them around. But something about that fills me with anxiety. I want to be able to be reached. Short of carrying around a flip phone, I have to take my cell phone with me, and it's difficult to justify avoiding convenience. After all, books and devices take up space in my pockets and bag.

The other thing I'm thinking about lately is that this whole thing is easier because most of the people around me are still connected. My husband continues to send reels to my still-existing instagram account, and he shows them to me on his phone from time to time. My dad will sometimes send me a video on facebook messenger, which I can watch- but just the one he sends me. It's like instead of the algorithm out there curating the content it thinks I want to see, it's my loved ones. They generally do a better job anyway. It would feel unfair to ask this of them, but honestly, they're still on the platforms as much as they are of their own free will. Far be it from me to complain if they want to follow in my footsteps. 

And lastly- being out at the airbnb this weekend brought back a new feeling, one I hadn't experienced since high school: the social media FOMO. There were times this weekend when my husband and the others were on social media. I noticed how many times they would check it. I still find myself falling into checking my phone habits, but more I look for my news app, or I look at the weather (this is something I already did a lot before- I like to know what's coming up), or I just start reading a book on my library app. The disjointed method of reading books isn't my favourite, but it lets me read more than if I tried to make reading a purist experience, and it's a good replacement for social media in my eyes. The FOMO wasn't quite the same; I am over a decade older, with a lot of experiences in between, and have a slightly different way of processing and dealing with uncomfortable emotions. I'm also no longer in the phase of my development where I'm so hyper concerned with what others think of me (obviously I still worry about that, almost everyone does, but it's not like adolescence). 

All together I find myself reflecting on themes of convenience and efficiency. I had a whole thing written out here, but it didn't make sense. Mostly, there's the thing where removing convenience of something makes my life more efficient, but that isn't always how it is. Sometimes it's less efficient for me to have to sit around and think about what I want to do, but at least I'm asking that question now instead of doing the equivalent of writing in that answer in stone, forever. Some of the best parts of life come when you are inefficient. Some of the best thinking. In writing this post, for example, I had some thoughts on my drive home this morning, I wrote out a lot of it and erased big sections, I went and made myself lunch, I watched some unrelated videos... it's not a linear process. Other days it is sometimes better for me to do something inconvenient- leave my desk and take a walk, for example- to make things more efficient- I'll do my work faster and better than if I just sat and tried to power through it.

At the end of the day, I guess the two aren't always what I want for myself in the long run and in the grander scale of what my life is and how I want it to be. 

I'm just gonna leave that there- since I think to continue writing this post would, unfortunately, be both inefficient and inconvenient. Have a day.

Clutching at happiness/should I make a substack?

I've done it! I've proved my own point! The type of content I take in is likely to make me think I should also make that type of content. I haven't had the urge to film myself ranting about something for a while. Now, of course, since I've been reading a lot of substack newsletters (subscribing for free, of course... I live in my parents' basement for a financial reason), and I just came upon one that has a very ... let's say casual style, similar to this blog. It almost makes me think I should write one. But like.. about WHAT? I can't justify charging people money for that, but it is appealing to think that alllll the posts I've made in the last month could have netted me a whopping $8, or whatever that $8USD would be after substack took its cut and I paid income tax (which I'd get back later because surprise surprise, you don't actually pay income tax when your income is about $5000CAD/year. Grad school is great, guys, you should go for real). But I digress. I probably won't make a substack because you have to like, have a theme for that, and allow comments, and the idea of all this ending up in someone's email inbox is just too personal. The idea of this being in someone's news aggregator (something I just learned about this week) is funnier. Enjoy this update, you.

But the post for today, continuing on my journey of social media, is thus: I'm kind of unsatisfied. I think it's still that loss of easy dopamine. Even youtube shorts don't cut it; they're not very interesting and the fast-paced style is now kind of aggravating to me. The algorithm they have has NOTHING on tiktok. I have found more time for reading, which is great. But maybe I'm reading too much nonfiction and it's too hard on my mind. Maybe I need to read some fiction. Something fun and easy. A little closer to the dopamine boost without the same ill-effects, since I'm far more likely to learn a little something, even just about writing style or worldbuilding. 

And in any case, it's not like I didn't feel like this before. As much as I purport to like staying at home all the time, it does kind of get old. Without some pressing deadline to motivate my work as there was last summer during my comprehensive exam, I'm kind of aimless. I'm waiting for my supervisor to bother some technicians I don't know and have never met about a particular kind of analysis I need done for future experiments. I have some data analysis to do and to send to my supervisor and other people involved with my project. That's kind of all I can do for today. That, maybe another core workout, and cleaning my office a bit. Otherwise I'm just... sitting in front of my computer all day.

I think part of it is once again this trap of being In My Parents' House, where I don't really feel like I can be in public areas doing what I want. When I'm here alone, I spend a lot more time in the kitchen, the living room, the dining room, I spend time reading by the fireplace and cooking and baking. When I'm not here alone (funny that there is no opposite word there, to say "not alone." I have to say the whole phrase, there isn't some word that fills that purpose. Anyway), I spend a lot of time downstairs or in the office. Or I leave. 

The problem is that I don't really want to be anywhere else today. I mean sure, it would be fun to go downtown and look into all those cute little shops for plants and books and witchy herbs and things, but that's more fun with a friend, and everyone is working today. I could say fuck it and just play sims all day, but that feels irresponsible. I could be responsible and get all my work done and then be able to just play sims all day minus the fuck it attitude, but of course I'm not doing that. It's no fun and I need fun.

Tiktok pundits here may say I sound like I have ADHD. I don't, but thank you for your concern. I say this only because I can recognize that my brain fundamentally needs some Fun Juice to feel satisfied enough to do work, during which my brain consumes Fun Juice to output productivity and make complex decisions. So I need the Fun Juice first is what I'm saying, or else I'm going to be really thirsty later. For juice. Once again, my predilection for metaphor has revealed the limits of metaphor. 

Just now I almost did it! I almost clicked away! Oooh, curse you, social media, for hardwiring me to be unable to just get in the zone. Shit like this is why I don't want to go back.

The other thing is like. I find myself every day with a kind of hollow ache, wondering what random people are up to. What about that person from high school or undergrad? How is their day going? What's up in their life? Boy would I like to see. When it comes to friends I see regularly, I don't long for it as much: I know I'd get a meaningful and thoughtful update if I chose to have brunch with them this weekend. Or if I texted or called them. They're right there, always accessible, often offering me information without me having to ask. Social media for them is kind of silly, since watching someone's instagram story of their baby sitting up does not even remotely hold the same gravity as visiting and seeing that baby do that. That baby! That I knew as a crying lump! Can sit!!!! Or seeing my other friend's highlighter-pink hair in person (and watching other friend's baby stare at it in awe, visual cortex adjusting to make sure it has room for this particular hue). It's just not the same online. And ironically, my friends who live far away already don't post that many social media updates. 

I have also gotten feedback that I should have told people I was going off social media. Ironically, this is from the friends I saw in person last weekend. But I've seen other friends do that, and seen them fail to follow through, and saw how sanctimonious, silly, and self-important they looked as a result. Do I really think that people need to know that I'm not there anymore? But now that I think about it, that's kind of dark. How much do I really matter to those acquaintances from high school or undergrad or wherever if not announcing my absence from the app means nothing to them? There's some thread of a good idea in here that I can't quite express as eloquently as I want to at the moment. 

At this point I no longer catch myself reaching for my phone to specifically open instagram or tiktok, so I know my brain has gotten used to their absence. It's accepted they aren't there and it isn't going to get that stimulation. It's learned new pathways now: the Libby app, the Kindle app, the CBC news app. Often the browser as well, to google some concept in a book that I don't fully understand. Or Signal, since it's encrypted and I like the note to self feature quite a bit. The fact that it took something like two weeks to do that REALLY makes me not want to go back.

I don't feel like my life is lacking anything of substance because of my absence. I see people I care about. I find information about topics I care about. I engage with the world. If I want to know what ice cream flavors the local ice cream place has, I have to actually go there and see (I can't even call them because they're so newfangled and millenial that they don't have a business phone number). I don't feel like I'm a new person or anything.

The other thing I'm wondering about is how common this social media absence thing really is. It's ironically almost impossible to measure, and it can't become a trend on social media pretty much by definition. But I see lots of people on the social features of my "I am sober" app talking about being sober from social media. Now of course I have to do what I don't want to do but need to learn to do online: wonder if they are lying, since I have no way to verify their claims. But if I believe them... this absence thing is more common than I thought. 

I still long to be that girl who says she has no social media accounts and can focus on homework and get it done in a reasonable amount of time. But there I go again! Assuming she isn't lying! Why does everyone LIE so much that I have to learn to do this? Argh. 

The only thing I can say is I promise I'm not lying here, but I can't make you believe me.You're just going to have to take my word for it.

Maybe this really is a crutch

I mean that in a positive way. Crutches are something you lean on, temporarily, until you heal enough to walk normally again when your leg is broken. Crutches are also sometimes things you need permanently to replace function that was lost that you can't gain back or never had in the first place. They're a tool. They're only a bad thing when your continued use delays healing and normal function.

I think the fact that I am missing more days here and there suggests that this is a crutch in that former sort of healthy way. Either temporarily or permanently.

Yesterday was still fairly productive in any case; I went to the dentist (less fun than I was expecting if I'm being honest, and it's already hard to expect fun at the dentist) and submitted a job application, and did a workout (that actually challenged me- this is to fix my hypothyroid-destroyed core muscles), and cleaned the bathroom (something I aim to do weekly now that I am getting paid to do it elsewhere). I also had a nice date with my husband and went to bed early. All in all... pretty excellent. It was also the first day in this whole thing that I didn't really think about social media as much.

That's normal, I think. When you remove something from your life, it's normal to feel its absence at first. Especially something you spent a LOT of time using. Something that dictated a lot of your life. I don't love that I'm saying that, but it's true. The way I approach the world and information and my life and who I am feels really different. It turns out that when you aren't constantly bombarded by the opinions of random people and when you aren't constantly barraged with a flood of information, you feel different.

I'm still taking in opinions and information, of course, but I have more time to sit with it thoughtfully and hear people out. I'm not getting in as many arguments- at some point I thought I was very argumentative, but I think the nature of the online world makes people that way. I really don't argue with people in my real life that much, which is both good (I'm not as abrasive as I thought) and bad (sometimes I need to stand up for myself and my thoughts). In either case, it's a lot more peaceful. 

The urge to constantly share information with others has not changed and I'm starting to doubt it ever will. Lo and behold (I'm learning I use that saying more than I thought), I'm still a social person with strong interpersonal skills. The skills assessment from Gallup that I took at a conference in 2019 and later paid $67 for the full report from is decently accurate- most of my innate skills are in relationship building. I play nicely with others. As a result of playing so nicely with others, I got a lot of nice, thoughtful, and kind feedback on stories I'd share from time to time. What I just remembered now is the way I'd sometimes directly solicit that kind of engagement only to not receive it, and how bad that felt. I'd wonder if I said something too abrasive, too harsh, too unrelatable. Were people cringing at me? Were the people who just swiped on past even watching the stuff I put up? I took it so personally. I don't have to deal with that anymore. It was like watching myself try to be an influencer on a small scale, and it was painful. 

Once again though I have to reiterate that I'd pay a monthly subscription to access the features of something like snapchat or instagram without the ads and the other explore page content. I'd pay for fewer features. I'd pay to have apps that allowed me the things I want from them (connection) without the things I don't (distraction). I wish I could use instagram sans explore page. I wish I could use snapchat sans the shitty stories from people and brands and companies I don't know. I wish facebook was just actual updates from friends and family. I think those parts of those services really do tap into something we all want.

My mom and I actually had a really good discussion the other night that was partly about this. She got facebook years ago but barely uses it, and that's the only social media she has. She doesn't even know how to delete friends; I had to promise her I'd show her how to remove a friend's ex-husband from her friends list. She pretty much just signs on to say thank you to birthday wishes and check updates from family far away, about once a month. The rest holds no appeal for her. It was interesting to hear her speak about the way she uses the internet- she watches a lot of old and cheesy sitcoms, she uses apps that let her read magazines and news sources (hence the barrage of articles in the family group chat that none of us ever read), and she likes to look up recipes (and print them. And print them again. Not in a printer-friendly format either. Our house overflows with printer recipes tucked in amongst cookbooks). She likes to shop online too, something worsened when she was convinced the pandemic would render supply chains inoperable and prohibit her from purchasing jeans (I still have some of the useless skincare shit I purchased at this time when she all but made it mandatory for my sister and I to make some online purchases). But she doesn't use social media. She doesn't look at reddit threads for horse lovers or Golden Girls fans.

My dad is very different. He's on facebook all the time, but I've truly never met anyone in as many facebook groups as him. It's an entire hobby. He'll find the group, request to join, and google the answers to the questions, or just guess. He claims he hasn't gotten rejected yet. This middle aged male physician from Alberta is in a surprising variety of groups, to the point one of my husband's friends in an entirely different city, who maybe interacted with my dad once at our wedding, asked me a few months ago if it was my dad in one of his facebook groups. These two have almost nothing in common. My dad is also on instagram (where he posts almost nothing but dog photos) and twitter (which he mostly seems to use to follow politics, particularly regarding healthcare in this province). The downside of this is that he is often scrolling, scrolling, scrolling while in the same room as other family members trying to have a conversation with him. He sends me memes very often now (and the ones from his on-call nights are often funny only to him). I will often find him scrolling when he is home and my mom has gone to bed.

If I'm being fully honest, I'd rather emulate my mom's usage compared to my dad's. My dad may be enjoying himself, but he is in that rabbit hole more and more of the time. Perhaps because he only discovered these apps in his fifties, he is still capable of unplugging to read, but it's become more and more common that even that time is interrupted by scrolling. My mom is starting to complain about it. Sure, he often finds funny videos or great deals, but he's less and less present. My mom will at least put down her article about whatever clickbait topic to have a conversation with me. 

It's interesting to observe things more as an outsider now too. I can see how much time my husband spends getting sucked into these things. I can see how little my sister does, despite her insistence that it's bad for her, too. She and I have a similar love-hate relationship to these things. 

I don't think I want to go back at the end of the month.

The job I applied for yesterday is one I feel fairly confident about. I'm somewhat overqualified. But come July and August, it would have me working full-time, normal adult job hours (8:30-4:30, M-F). I've worked similar hours before and it really leaves you very little time for the rest of your life. I may also have to do experiments or thesis work during all this. That is to say: if I have time off, I'd rather be doing something I enjoy, particularly in the limited summer months. Reading. Writing. Visiting the family cabin. Swimming. Eating ice cream. Walking the dogs. Walking myself. Eating outside. Sitting outside listening to music on a warm summer evening. All of that is interrupted by social media. 

At the end of the day, I have been more productive with my time. I'm not devoting more time to work- or perhaps I am. But it's not significant (at least, it doesn't feel that way). When I say productive I mean: my rest is more restful. I'm doing more of the things I want to get done outside of work. I feel like I have more energy for social outings. I'm more interested in leaving the house. While I agree that "time wasting" activities can be productive, I don't think social media is one at this point. It is a true waste of time, energy, etc. I don't ever want to get bogged down in a shitty comment section ever again. I don't want to send nothing to my friends except memes. I don't want to get sucked down the rabbit hole of whatever algorithm. 

I do miss hearing about old friends and acquaintances. But is that worth the trade off? I would say I could check once in a while, but if I'm being honest, the stories feature really kills off that practicality. Most people just post stories, which disappear after 24 hours, requiring you to check every single day if you actually want updates. And isn't that convenient. That's how they get you, as I like to say in real life often when anyone refers to any frustratingly appealing feature of anything at all. Maybe it's not that odd that way though. I mean, really, how much would I know about these people in a pre- or sans-social media world? About as much as I'd know from checking the thing once a month. 

I want to keep the freedom. I want to keep the peace. I also want to attend my high school reunion, so I should check facebook once in a while. I also want to write my thesis and have a full time job this summer, so I need to keep distractions to a minimum. Actually, that's not totally accurate. Here is what I am roughly aiming to accomplish in the next five months:

- Spend 10 hours reviewing applications for a summer research program, by April 17
- Spend 20 hours over 2 days getting first aid certification
- Spend 30-40 hours grading probably close to 90 final exams (that 90 number is assuming that about 25% of the class drops out, and based on the midterm grades... it might not be that far off) (I'm not kidding, most of them failed) (yes, really, most of the grades were below 50%)
- Start training for and then work a full-time job (a third one, if you count my thesis work as a job)
- Spend ~4 hours a week at my current second job, which is 2 hours of cleaning, and 2 hours of digitizing old charts
- Schedule, prepare for, and have a committee meeting with a 5-person thesis committee
- Start writing my thesis in earnest
- More experiments (planning, execution, troubleshooting, potential re-dos although I really don't have the materials to support this, data analysis, data presentation, background reading, etc)
- Start writing 1-2 research papers (based on those experiments and ones already completed)
- Finish a mentorship program I have been in since October, with 4 more hours of meetings, one of which I may have to attend on a plane
- Last round of edits on a review paper on which I will be last author (this is a big deal in research, or at least it is in science research, I don't know about other fields. The last author spot is usually for the PI/prof in whose lab the work was done, but because I took on so much of the editing and mentoring, my supervisor (who already has dozens of publications on which she is the last author) said I could be last author).

And probably more I'm not thinking of. So like. I want to hold this in mind the next time I think it's totally reasonable to spend 3 hours scrolling tiktok on a saturday morning. 

We'll see what changes between now and April. I will be on a trip during that changeover, visiting my sister where she attends grad school on the coast, for art history. April is where shit gets busy. But these things also won't be done in overlap; some are flexible, some are time sensitive, some are only a day, some are only a couple hours a day. I'll be busy, but I'll still find time to play with the sims and start my cross-stitch kit and go camping. It's not like last summer when, during my comprehensive exam, I worked pretty much 50-60 hours a week on preparing for 6 straight weeks, and only took about 5 days off the whole time (one of which was the day of my written exam, so the morning wasn't even really "off"). But you know what the funny thing was about my comprehensive exam? I knew even then- and I forced myself to follow this wisdom- that scrolling on my phone was not going to feel restful or like a break for me. I took days off to do things like have my bachelorette party, help a friend move, attend a friend's baby shower, and just generally leave the house and not be on my computer. I didn't just sit in the basement all day (except the day after my bachelorette, when I was hungover and forgot to take synthroid). I Did Stuff. I also made myself take walks and make tea on my breaks, instead of just scrolling (though I wasn't perfect at that). 

Okay, I think this post is sufficiently bloated and poorly written. Time to hit publish!