I am feeling the call of the offline. Touch grass, if you will.
That's a great question. I'm not too sure. But I will have some interesting thoughts here. Probably.
I just bought a Kyocera DuraXA Equip over the weekend. Why I choose to use my hard-earned dinero on something as strange as this I am not sure. But my phone has commanded my attention by ringing perhaps thrice a day, compared to the constant influx of notifications that I had with a smartphone.
This is not the first time I have used a dumbphone in modern times. The first time was Lent of 2024. I did not do well. Although I did not scroll on my phone, I ended up using whatever else to curb the insatiable lust for content. My tablet, binging the TV, scrolling Reddit at work. I hate that website. It was supposed to be a time where I prayed and fasted, minimizing distraction for the 40 days. But I could have done much better.
Today was Labor Day. I kinda forgot that we had the day off, but at least I didn't drive into work. I took care of all the chores I neglected over the weekend. It is shameful for me to brag, but I have not spent much time scrolling on the phone. I only watched an hour of Seinfeld and the rest of the day I wrote letters, went for a walk, cleaned the house and put the laundry away, and wrote a script that I will use once I get this bad boy hosted on the web.
Lately I have lamented how little free time I have. I get up at 6:30 or 7:00, I leave for work at 7:30; I work from 8:00 to 5:00, I get home at 5:30. From 5:30 to 10:00, there remains only four hours and a half; however, I must take care of housework if I want clean dishes to eat off of and clothes to wear in those precious four hours. In those few daily hours I must entertain the mind, manage energy, socialize, exercise the body, and fortify the soul. It's exhausting.
Comparatively, when I was a teacher, I had about eight hours of free time daily (being only part-time) and I did about half as much as I do now in the month of my current job. So, I suppose I am in a net-positive state. It is strange, though, how this is normal. Were we men made to be so time-constrained?
I would try to live as much as it was in 2003. I've been watching Seinfeld to try to emulate life then. To see what normal adult life would be like.
A part of me, in the past, has wished I was in a different era. That I were a peasant, tilling the land in long days with a hearty wife and joyous family. Or were a peer of Shakespeare, or of Nobunaga, or of Washington. Perhaps as a caveman. Humans seemed to have really existed back then. Or, at least, there were fewer reasons to doubt existence itself. I feel infatuated with reality. I cannot get enough of it. There is only that what is real. I want to exist more, to feel more, to be more. I can no longer stand the opium of content. Would we not be worse had we dulled our senses so much? Why do we feel the need to blunt our perception of reality? Why is it easier to fill the void in ourselves with alcohol, with drugs, with Youtube, or Instagram, or with explicit content, or with TikTok? I am no saint (yet, still working on it). I have fallen prey to some of those. It's all an excuse to exist less.
I lament that it is so difficult to stop these habits once they have been started.
I will eventually migrate my neocities content to here. I've got some decent psychotic rants there.
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