I’ve retraced my step trying to remember how I became such a screentime hater. It started with me not wanting to be on board with Facebook or other proprietary apps. But after a few years years of this I got so sick of being a FOSS weirdo which no-one could understand or respect or see why it was important or mattered. Like people hate, really super duper hate on vegans but at least they understand what it is.
I think that’s why I wanted to unplug entirely instead. Somehow people understand ludditism waaay more than they understand GNU slash Lin slash ux or “I don’t have Google System Frameworks” or why I can’t open their doc files or whatever. That, they can’t get, but someone showing up with a dumbphone, that makes more sense.
But sooner than I would’ve thought, I internalized this ludditism and it became part of my identity, it became one of my things or at least aspirationally—I get sucked into online rabbit holes every now and then, like everyone else. To the extent that I often almost forget where it started.
I crawled back online after a few months of pandemic isolation and “joined socials” IRC at first, then Gemini and Fedi two months later. I had been on hobby forums all along like Story Games, BGG, or WRNU.
And it was great at first (and I got talked into ending my 22 year long streak of being FOSS-only, via an awful iPad) but then I got into my head that my health issues was exarcebated by screens after I took a couple of digital detox vacays and really enjoyed them and felt really healthy and serene. Going back on and off different kinds of screens I’ve found that some health problems do seem to correlate and others not at all. I got really really sick December 2021 and stayed sick for many many months.
Maybe I won’t ever be able to sustainably capture the “offline mindset” in my day-to-day and I’ll always just succumb to procrastination and temptation but I dunno. Gonna keep pushing on just a little bit longer.