Being online far less often feels good...
Mar. 14th, 2024 02:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solon_kitten I've started to make myself unavailable online a lot more often since leaving social media. I already avoided Discord whenever possible, but as of late, I've been needing more time to kinda recover from everything. I've had pretty much no energy to socialize, but in place of the constant addictive gazing through a timeline while looking for content, I've being doing other things that feel a bit more fulfilling.
I've started playing retro games from the NES, SNES, GB, GBC, and GBA, and actually enjoying them again. I've also been using the crap out of DOSBox and my Windows VMs to play games I missed during the 90s and 00s. And for the first time in a while, it doesn't feel like I'm dragging myself through them just to try and force myself to relax. I'm having fun again.
Likewise with reading. For the longest time, I used it as a way to de-stress, instead of actually sitting down and reading for my own enjoyment. Now, I've got a backlog of short stories and ePub books loaded onto my iPad to read (thanks, Smashwords), and I've been slowly working my way through them. I'm also looking to eventually get a physical copy of Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves for myself, since I'm pretty sure that's one book that's nearly impossible to replicate in eBook form (outside of PDFs).
Even my listening habits are slowly changing. I'm relying more on my music library instead of looking for streams to watch on YouTube and Twitch, and to be honest, things end up a lot calmer when I do so. I'm not trying to force myself to read through chat, or feeling like I'm missing out because I have the stream going in the background instead of actively watching. And when I do want to hear talking, I can catch up on a podcast or something, instead of dealing with something live.
I still want to learn to code, but social media always caused me to suppress my enthusiasm. People waring over the stupidest things, like programming languages and text editors, would just kill the mood whenever I looked for help on things. But I'm shifting myself off to a more "I'll do it myself" mentality, and it's...helping? I'm still slow to actually get things done at the moment, but I'm trying. Plus, I have access to plenty of books and learning material for my needs, so maybe being away from the tech community will do me some good.
As one of my mates put it when we talked about it, "Feels liberating, doesn't it?" Yes. Yes it does.
I've started playing retro games from the NES, SNES, GB, GBC, and GBA, and actually enjoying them again. I've also been using the crap out of DOSBox and my Windows VMs to play games I missed during the 90s and 00s. And for the first time in a while, it doesn't feel like I'm dragging myself through them just to try and force myself to relax. I'm having fun again.
Likewise with reading. For the longest time, I used it as a way to de-stress, instead of actually sitting down and reading for my own enjoyment. Now, I've got a backlog of short stories and ePub books loaded onto my iPad to read (thanks, Smashwords), and I've been slowly working my way through them. I'm also looking to eventually get a physical copy of Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves for myself, since I'm pretty sure that's one book that's nearly impossible to replicate in eBook form (outside of PDFs).
Even my listening habits are slowly changing. I'm relying more on my music library instead of looking for streams to watch on YouTube and Twitch, and to be honest, things end up a lot calmer when I do so. I'm not trying to force myself to read through chat, or feeling like I'm missing out because I have the stream going in the background instead of actively watching. And when I do want to hear talking, I can catch up on a podcast or something, instead of dealing with something live.
I still want to learn to code, but social media always caused me to suppress my enthusiasm. People waring over the stupidest things, like programming languages and text editors, would just kill the mood whenever I looked for help on things. But I'm shifting myself off to a more "I'll do it myself" mentality, and it's...helping? I'm still slow to actually get things done at the moment, but I'm trying. Plus, I have access to plenty of books and learning material for my needs, so maybe being away from the tech community will do me some good.
As one of my mates put it when we talked about it, "Feels liberating, doesn't it?" Yes. Yes it does.
