The Puppy

I hate to admit this, but sometimes you have to come clean.

I'm guilty of this more often than not, but I've decided to make a shift in my life.

There was a certain event in our history that I dare not speak its name.

Being isolated from the rest of the world physically became our new normal.

I was stuck in my own little bubble watching as my social skills slowly began to erode.

I don't think it was just me who went through this shift.

With no end in sight, I resorted to television to fill my time.

The problem was television always had commercials reminding you about the state of the world, and I wanted no part of it.

So I turned to streaming.

It was great.

No news.

No commercials.

No outside influences to throw my day off track.

Binge-watching became my full-time job.

I would watch entire seasons in a day and even finish an entire series in a week.

I'd be the first to admit I had a problem.

I streamed so much that I became sick of searching for something new to feed my hunger.

Then I found it.

Trying to exchange one vice for another, I shifted my focus to social media.

In doing so, I opened Pandora's box.

The difference between streaming and social media was that social media was portable.

You could take it everywhere.

The kitchen.

The bus.

The doctor's office.

It was limitless.

Then there was the algorithm.

I no longer had to search for something to watch. I'd watch one video and within minutes it was feeding me another, taking me further and further down endless rabbit holes.

The further I went, the more disconnected from life I became.

It Was Consuming My Life

I needed my phone to make breakfast.

I needed it when I went for a walk.

It was getting out of control.

Having my phone beside the bed meant I never really slept.

Insomnia slowly became normal.

When I woke up, my phone was there waiting for me like the puppy I'd left at home all day.

To make matters worse, I'd even stream television while scrolling social media because apparently one source of stimulation wasn't enough.

Then One Day Something Started to Shift

Then one day something started to shift.

I began to realize this wasn't just taking up my time.

It was consuming my life.

I started noticing friends with the same issue. Every conversation somehow found its way back to something they'd watched and how it made them feel.

I started to notice that the more I let other people influence my reality, the further I moved from my purpose.

So I began putting the phone down.

I only picked it up when I actually needed it.

I tried not to answer it every time it buzzed because I knew once it was in my hands, it would be hard to put back down.

When I went for my walks there was no music.

No podcasts.

It became my time to work on me.

Slowly, things started to change.

By noon my phone battery wasn't sitting at 25%.

I'd get to the end of the day and realize I hadn't even turned the television on.

I found myself getting more work done without the distractions.

And it felt good.

I know this is still a work in progress.

There will be days when I fall back into old habits.

I'm not going to beat myself up over that.

My next goal is simple.

I'm going to buy an alarm clock so when I wake up in the morning, I can see the time without reaching over to pick up the puppy.