Tag: media fast

MEDIA FAST REPORT

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a little something about doing a short media fast. Here is my experience and my short conclusion:

  • You don’t automatically have more motivation when you have more free time, but when you get rolling you’re more likely to keep working and keep creating.
  • The longer you’re away from the internet the less you miss it. Doing my half-hour per day wasn’t as inviting as I thought it would be.
  • My guess is that that is so because when you have a time limit, you have to prioritize. And prioritizing probably means excluding. It feels safer and easier to just avoid things rather than being forced to make decisions like including/excluding.
  • Cooking counts as creating. Oooh yes.
  • Media including movies is a bitch.
  • Next time we should probably do no books and see what happens. Julia Cameron had something to say about that, didn’t she? In The Artist’s Way, the theme for one of the weeks was not read a single text for a week. Again, back then there was no net.
  • This thingie below would have never existed if we hadn’t sat down with Daphne and said “okay, let’s make a collage”.

collage

And this would have never existed if we hadn’t said “okay, what should we do now? Let’s paint!” — “OK, what?” — “eachother!”

painting_eachother

But motivation is still a limited resource that can be separated into qualitative levels: you can have good motivation, bad (negative?) motivation, pure motivation and unstoppable motivation. All the lack of distraction does is bring forward the standard kind of motivation that under ordinary circumstances simply isn’t strong enough to become a greater priority than habit and addiction (media/internet). I suppose the kind of motivation we’re after is the one that needs no media fasts to rear its elusive head; it just trumps anything and everything!

But then again, you have people like Frank Herbert who just wrote— motivation, inspiration, or no… How about it, qb?

GROWING SICK OF THE ‘NET YET AGAIN: INCOMING MEDIA FAST

I’ve been disciplining my body these days more than I ever have. Namely, I’ve been following Reddit’s Starting Stretching, Bodyweight Fitness Training Routine for beginners and I finally restarted going for runs, aiming to relive the “glory days” of being able to run up to 10 kilometres, which in fact I managed to do exactly one year ago while I was in Sofia (post about me finally running 8k).

For the past few weeks, I’ve been going to the Alsos almost every day, rotating the bodyweight fitness (push-ups, pull-ups, handstands, L-sits etc) with the running. And it feels grrreat! Daphne has been helping a lot with cooking healthy and nutritious vegetarian meals with lots of protein, not that I’m shy of the stoves, but  I tend to cook the same three or four things, not experimenting unless in the mood, and with her in control we’ve been eating like vegetarian kings. It activates me and it’s bringing in some good skills to have. I don’t know if I would be doing it if I didn’t have all the free time I have now, but that’s beyond the point. Having a workout and exercise routine helps me bring some (illusion of) order to my disorganised life, and with some much appreciated visible results.

Nevertheless, what I haven’t been able to organise, discipline and harness at all– seriously, AT ALL — is my mind.

In June last year, apart from running 10k, I posted this little write-up I’m still proud of:

I’M SICK OF THE INTERNET – AREN’T YOU? GETTING THROUGH INTERNET ADDICTION

Trouble is, I didn’t go through with what I pledged I would do. As far as I can remember (which isn’t a lot, because, as typically happens when you regress to addictive behaviour, your memory-forming functions give way to the reptilian dopamine-releasing pleasure centres, quite conveniently, too, because you don’t really want to remember in shame the ego-shattering moments when you and your actions fail to hold up to your initial intention), ten days later I was again browsing the web, free as a bird — or, to be more precise, free as a bird enclosed in a cage made of invisible walls.

A few days ago, while I was running no less, the thought came to me: why don’t I try again with this whole less internet, less  media thing? I could use the extra time to think and create. I seriously miss creating…

The next 4 days I’m going to be in Loutra doing a media fast with Daphne: each day, we will be allowed to use the internet for just 30 minutes, and that’s just for e-mail, practicalities and Rights4Water. The rest of the time, anything with a screen will be off-limits. No movies, no games, no TV, no smartphones — I will switch mine to battery-saving “dumbphone mode”– no distractions from the interestnet. The only exception will be my Sansa Clip Zip I will be using for audiobooks, podcasts and music for when I’m doing exercise. The idea is to limit options, minimise distractions and allow for deeper thought and even boredom, which will force us to be creative instead of us automatically turning to the mind-numbing net for excitement and stimulation.

Let’s see how it goes.