Gaming break 13/30

Something changed two days ago. I found myself reading, drawing and studying for hours without noticing the passage of time.

Usually at some point in the day I will feel like my brain is screaming at me, but these past few days have been so quiet. It’s nice.

My brain is working through having much less easy leisure. I was surprised by how much even reading felt like effort, so I lowered the bar - I picked a simpler book and have been blazing through it.

Obviously, a little gaming break is not a silver bullet - I see a lot of people online treating it like it’s this magical thing that rewires your brain and makes you productive™. I am an ape, born naked and bald. I’m made for much more and much less than churning out product. I find the cult of productivity poisonous. This experiment is an attempt at reclaiming my ability to enjoy things more slowly, notice the patterns and habits I might have accidentally created and evaluate them.

One thing I neglected to mention is that alongside my gaming break I also cut down on the time spent online. I deleted all recommendations and history from my accounts, so that the home page was blank on the two sites (apart from this one) I regularly use. I started this back in quarantine in 2020, but I never really managed to finish the job and rethink my YT usage. I’m happy to say it’s working so far and I’m using it more purposefully, but we’ll see if it lasts. I have done this in the past and had some changes stick permanently, so I’m hoping it’ll be the same this time.

I think I might try setting my YT homepage to subscriptions again but do one thing differently - set some time aside for discovering new stuff, not enough time to get lost in it though.