Wasting too much time

Quarantine habit updates….

Blessed that I have a short work week from Good Friday! Although given the current social/physical distancing protocol the day to day life is pretty much the same.

Even with my new daily structure and habits I still have a lot of time on my hands. By now what have I been doing with it all?

Sad to say nothing too productive. I have fallen into some old traps. Now in this age we aren’t incline to spend time and money on consumer spending/goods or services but there are other ways that are still considered blind endless consumption. Common things right now are video games, internet browsing, streaming services.

Online Media consumption and addiction

I am not resilient to vices. Thankfully I particular aware of my internet habits and do use many forms of social media other than some messengers to chat with friends

While I do enjoy video games I wouldn’t consider getting too absorbed into this activity just yet. Reason being that most of my day job is actively coding on the computer. It is a very focused and productive task. In the past I was pretty addicted to video games. Particularly MMORPGs… After many years of fighting this I am glad I have cut that bad addiction.

Although I have picked up playing a console game on the side. Since gaming is a focused/active hobby it feels like work in a way. Therefore I would not consider this out of control.

My personal vice

Being very critical and observant of my behaviours over the last two weeks I notice a real big problem I have developed since quarantine. That has further spiked this week. That was the matter of constant browsing on YouTube for content to watch and binging shows on streaming services.

Just like browsing the internet or social media it is fairly easy to do, very addicting when the quality of content is great and not very active or focused like my work or gaming.

It is turning all my potential active time into dead time.

This form of passive consumption/entertainment can be a slippery slope to a path of continued laziness and bad habit forming. Instead of all this excessive content watching I can do more fruitful things with my time. Again it is all down to my own choices, just so happens that this activity is very easy to slide into. It is another reminder to be cognizant of my actions. Yet another reminder of my shortcomings.

Entertainment has its purposes

As all pleasures this isn’t bad, just an an excess is bad. Everything in moderation they say. I must attribute this great stuff as a blessing that keeps me entertained indoors. These past weeks I have watched amazing content!

On YouTube there will be content creators I enjoy for their entertainment and then some for educational purposes that I will learn and integrate.

In the period of COVID-19 I developed an interested in epidemics so I watched Pandemic and Contagion on Netflix. Watching those two does not make me feel better but they were very fascinating and pretty much tell-tale to what is happening right now. Alongside this I have discovered amazing series to watch, particularly I enjoy Anime. I have caught up with Castlevania, Boku No Hero Academia and started following other fantasy-like battle Animeseries like Demon Slayer and Digimon Adventure 2020.

Coda

Needless to say there will be a never-ending surplus to watch and I will appreciate this. From the endless stream of media to consume it is necessary to bottleneck/limit my consumption.

As long as this isolation continues doing this won’t be good for me in the long run. I am sure that I will find something to do that is enjoyable and fulfilling soon, now that I am aware of it.