Excursions

The weekly report from Digital Wellbeing on my phone informs me that the daily average screen time was 20 minutes less than last week’s. And I am pleased to see that trend has been downwards for the last few weeks. I uninstalled YouTube from my phone a few weeks back, which is one of the key reasons for lowered usage.

YouTube sucks away time without you noticing. The best way I know to control this beast is to not be available to you. The web app is a pain enough to not be distracting. So just get rid of the app from the phone and get your time back.

It’s just February, not peak summer yet by any means. But the afternoons are already hot enough that it has started to feel like the season of Mangos isn’t far enough. Today was another warm afternoon, and we couldn’t resist the Pune special Mango Mastani from Sujata Mastani.

I sometimes hate how I read stuff online – hopping from link to link. Reading, but not letting it absorb within. To not pause and think. That’s not the way I like to do it. If what I read doesn’t make me agree, disagree or learn something new, it’s futile.

Though it sounds cheesy, I love the word play in this advertisement of Federal Bank. “Rishta Aap Se Hai, Sirf App Se Nahi”.

It’s in Hindi and I won’t even try to translate - the fun will be lost.

Seth Godin reminded me today that “no one cares about the noise in our head (or the actions we take) nearly as much as we do”. That noise kept me wary of changing a few things with my setup till today. I pulled the plug and have changed how and where I write. Thanks, Seth!

We are enjoying the walks around the neighbourhood with Snoopy. With this guy getting all the attention, it makes our evenings joyous. He is the favourite among my daughter’s friends. And they all are his best friends. He enjoys running around and walking along with them. Neither of them can get enough of the other. The goodbyes are sad; none of them wants to go back home.

They can’t even converse with him. He can’t tell them anything. Yet you would commonly hear the phrases “he is tired now”, “he wants you to run”, and “he is saying slow down” as they play along. It is heartening to see the friends unable to talk to one another yet understand each other so well.

I had another realization today. Since we started walking Snoopy, I have been a lot social in general. Not swiping, committing and liking on my smartphone. But social in real #life. I have met and talked to many old friends with whom I had lost touch. And I love talking to people.

Why couldn’t I do that when I went on my walks alone? Well, for one, I always had headphones in my ear. So the only interaction we friends had was a nod of acknowledgement. Another reason was none of us had any topic to make us pause in our steps. Now we do.

Will this continue? Who knows. But I want to enjoy these cheerful evenings as long as they last.

How will these smaller groups of happier people be monetized? This is a tough question for the billionaires. Happy people, the kind who eat sandwiches together, are boring. They don’t buy much.

Source: God Did the World a Favor by Destroying Twitter →

I can’t remember the last time I had read all the new items from Stoop and Reeder. No unread items - they both read. It felt nice - we must get some badge for that.

I do not plan to crosspost any of the posts I write here to the known social timelines. So no Micro.blog or Mastodon. And, of course, not on Twitter. I may selectively share or reference them in other places. But there is no timeline where you can follow these. What I write here is first for the audience of one - me.

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It’s only been two weeks since I have written a post every night, and I already feel off if I do not sit down to write as the people around me sleep. This has been a nice routine. I feel relieved that I publish something every day. I was very close today to skipping writing. A brief moment ago, I was extremely sleepy. Then I needed to record one observation.

Even while doing nothing, walking around the house is enough to freshen me up. Putting me back in the mood to get back to the routine. And once I am in the zone, sleep doesn’t disturb me. It’s only a brief moment of weariness that I need to fend off typically. That I need to overcome it to sit down at my regular place.

And then the words start flowing.

What also helps is I have marked a corner as my #writing place. Every day, at a fixed time, I sit down and start typing on a blank page. Today, I tried writing at a place which wasn’t my regular corner. I failed. I was distracted by sounds. Or the lack of regular sounds in my corner.

The moment I returned to the writing place, the process became easier.

Being productive writing only at a particular place/time or in a particular environment isn’t sustainable. But it’s a hack that works for me and might help pull me out of the writing slump.

Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work. ― Stephen King

I am done waiting.